transabled.org

If you’re not skiing to injure yourself anymore, which I believe you promised both Alicia and I…

Consider using sitski?

Indeed I’m not skiing with deliberate intent to self injure. I agreed to three specific things in this regard:
1. I’m not deliberately going to ski off cliffs.
2. I’m not going to ski anything with a degree of difficulty greater than 9.75.
3. I’m not going to practice precision high speed falls in order to make accurate contact with a tree.

Anything with a degree of difficulty 9.0 and above is inherently dangerous regardless of skill and conditions. If I happen to acquire paraplegia on such a run, then that’s okay isn’t it?

I do often think of sitskiing. In fact the resort I am skiing at this year is one of two in my state renowned for their adaptive skiing programs. I’m not sure that would be any safer though. I’m not likely to try any cliff traverses on a sitski, but I would expect myself to be a super speed demon.

One of the several reasons that I ski, and hike, is that sufficiently strenuous exercise will create a real, albeit temporary, limp. I like this. The aftermath of skiing two days ago is the best yet. My left leg is still not weight bearing. It is truly a beautiful feeling to put on a leg brace and actually be able to walk around more easily with it than without it.

On the other hand, sitskiing would allow you to not have to walk, to spend more time as a wheeler :)

@Sean: Since you are poking me, I’ll have to admit that the primary reason I am not yet sitskiing has to do with OCD. It is thus irrational and therefore embarrassing.

Dear Chloe,

why should something that is irrational be embarrassing? Most important and valuable things in life are irrational: love, sex, the arts, poems. I would even say: There is no such thing as “rational” behaviour.

How can skiing have to do with OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder)?

@Phil, obviously I’m not Chloe and don’t know the ins-and-outs of her OCD, but I suspect it may have to do with the number of skis being different between AB skiing and sit-ski.

Like BIID, OCD infiltrates absolutely everything that I do. I can tell you all that I hope I’ll become paraplegic from a skiing accident, and it sounds perfectly reasonable in the context of this website. However, most of you don’t have OCD so I worry that if I explain those things it will sound like I am a complete nutcase; unless you have OCD, in which case it will probably sound quite familiar.

For the year following my next birthday the only stove settings I can use will be 5 and 11. I will use eleven strokes of my eyebrow pencil, five for eye shadow. A year ago my age was a prime number. Consequently, the number of times I could ski off a cliff on any given day was determined by an algorithm based on a four sided geometric figure constructed from two conjoined incongruent integer sided right angled triangles. I came up with this solution to the prime number problem when I was thirteen years old, and the longest side of the geometric figure is 13. There are thirteen different ski resorts in my state, and I have skied at thirteen different ski resorts in my state. Yet I have not skied at all of the ski resorts in my state. No I’m not offering prizes for figuring out that conundrum, just my respect. I have the impression that Lane is about as nutty as I am, so he will have already determined the possibilities of how many ski runs I can do on any given day, on how many different chairlifts.

I can’t sitski at a ski resort unless I have either already skied all of the runs marked on the trail map, or none of the runs. A year ago I had already skied 100% of the runs at the ski resort I am going to this season. However, that is no longer the case.

@Phil: Thanks for the encouragement.

@Sean: It’s not obvious to me that you’re not Chloe. How do we know that Chloe isn’t simply a figment of your imagination that you have constructed to express your feminine side here? It’s very suspicious that you would be thinking about the number of her skis.

Dear Chloe, your OCD sounds like a big talent for mathematics which I don’t have. You just seem to exaggerate a bit.

A stupid question: How does OCD feel? What are you feeling when putting up all these rules and following them?

And is this feeling in any way similar to BIID?

That would explain “ten minus five” then. Also 5 looks like a wheelchair and 11 must be crutches.

Dear Phil, there are no stupid questions. Did you notice that the number of tags on this post is six? Did anybody wonder why I used “Albatross” as a tag on my last post? It’s because it made the number of tags up to nine. You’ll be able to tell when my birthday is, because after that the number of tags on my posts will be either five or eleven. There’s not much heating in my office, so I have a hot plate sitting on my window sill. It is set at 6 as I write this. After my birthday I’ll have to turn it down to 5. Last year I could set it at 7. I had a nice choice of number of chairlifts I could ski from earlier in the week. Three worked out just fine.

It is indeed an interesting question you pose as to how different all of that is compared with my sitting here in a leg brace and wheelchair. I have to admit that there are some parallels. Wearing a single brace on my right leg instead of my left leg feels wrong. Setting my hot plate on 7 instead of 6 feels wrong. Why? Both of these defy rational explanation. It’s just the way it is.

I wasn’t sure what you thought I was exaggerating?

@Chloe, for all I know you are ALL a “pigment” of my imagination ;)

But I just don’t have enough imagination to invent one such as you Chloe :)

Dear Chloe,

thank you for your explanations. I never pay attention to the tags, I must admit. I even had to think about what a tag is.

So it is more about feeling wrong. That is interesting. I often feel A BIT wrong, but not always. Up to now I thought I just had a desire to be double-stumped, and that even think about it makes me happy.

Now I will try to be more aware if it is the other way round, i.e. that I feel wrong now.

Does following your mathematic rules give you a feeling of happiness, or do you just avoid to feel wrong?

What I wanted to say that you are exaggerating is your mathematical talent. Just a joke.

In one of the psychological questionnaire surveys among BIID sufferers here in Germany they have found a just slightly higher degree of compulsivity – but not in the successful wannabes.

Could your OCD be a (side-) effect of BIID? Or could BIID be something like an OCD?

Dear Phil,

Doing things by the numbers enables me to feel that everything is okay; I have less things to worry about. I don’t need to be concerned whether a correct decision has been made. If the mathematical rules have been followed, it is automatically correct. I suppose the feeling of well being is analogous to being in a wheelchair.

So far as I can figure, I have always had BIID. I had sudden onset OCD at age 10. I suppose it was fairly soon after my self injury attempt at age 9, but I can’t think of any logical connection between the two.

OCD got worse over the course of a decade, but has slowly improved since I was 20. Alicia says that there was a noticeable improvement in my OCD when I went on Prozac, but there doesn’t seem to be any effect on BIID. It’s often hard for me to notice my own OCD because after this length of time so much of it has become automatic. At each birthday the new set of numbers quickly becomes ingrained and doesn’t require much thought.

I guess there are similarities between OCD and BIID, but it’s not clear to me how there could be a causal relation. In my case the time courses have not been in synchrony.

Thanks, Chloe, for this additional information!

So OCD could be a consequence of the fear to make a mistake, a wrong decision? In this case, it would be just an exaggeration of the “normal” (but still useless) trial to put everything either in a “right” or in a “wrong” box.

Do these feelings come more from the head, from the heart or the stomach area – if they have a place in the body at all?

I’m not claiming to be an expert on OCD, Phil! I just have it.

It seems reasonable to say that it’s an exaggeration of normal behaviours. It has its uses. People I work with know that they can give me a technical document and I will find every last spelling error, every slight miscalculation, every ambiguous statement. I’m currently editing a book in one of my areas of expertise. I’m on the editorial board of several scientific journals. The buck stops here when it comes to work related calculations. Everything gets checked multiple times in different ways. As you say, part of it for me seems to be an obsession with getting the right answer. Actually it only just struck me that this aspect was clearly apparent by the time I was seven; pre-OCD behaviour? Like BIID, OCD can be seen as a gift to be used beneficially. But I can’t explain it, any more than I can explain BIID.

I guess I’d have to say that OCD seems rather cerebral. Nevertheless, there is an emotional content on account of the anxiety that results if the rules are not followed. One of the advantages of going to work in a wheelchair is that I no longer have to worry about the way I step on the linoleum tiles on my office and lab floor. I can only walk on tiling if I follow a particular geometric rule (stepping to a tile in the opposite corner of a two by three rectangle).

Chloe, I must have this or something similar but perhaps to a lesser degree. I like 6. I stir the soup or my tea 6 times. In the supermarket I go to checkout #6 or #2. Though if neither are open it’s not the end of the world. The second choice will be where the nicest looking guy is doing the packing.

@Peter: Welcome to the nut club. ;o)

This winter has gone on far too long. It’s evident several of us need to get out more.

Thank you Chloe. I have another tag to add to my name, not normal and now nut.

In my case I believe it’s to do with lucky numbers, maybe yours is too.

Anyway, it’s all very interesting and does no harm to anyone. Actually it’s really great to be so different and so nuts!

hmmm post #21 is not good but at least the 5 – 5 spam question has gone away.

Dear Different Not Normal Nut,

Roulette is a great deal of fun for me because the numbers on the table are arranged in a particular geometric pattern. I always bet four chips, and they each have to be in a different place, no more than one on a single, no more than one on a double, no more than one on a triple, etc. Within such constraints the chips are placed so as to maximise the coverage of the magic numbers dictated by my age. It’s an interesting little math problem that I get to solve once a year. Then it’s always the identical bet throughout the year. Apparently this has absolutely nothing to do with lucky numbers, otherwise I’d be paralysed by now.

Dear fruit and nuts,

OK on the Roulette but do you win? My 2 and 6 won me 5 numbers on the lotto once. It was a short swim tonight. I spent most of the time finding a suitable locker. Had to settle for #51 thinking 5 and 1 make 6.

Chloe, they have sitskis with two skis. http://www.spinal-injury.net/bi-ski.htm

Thank you for that interesting and informative link, Claire. Sean’s suggestion about me having concern over the number of skis was not correct. However, it does seem reasonable to learn to sitski on the type with two skis, before progressing to the monoski. Which kind did you use?

After giving quite a bit of thought to the matter, I’ve decided that a stepwise approach to adaptive skiing would best suit my personality. It would be analogous to my progression from crutch to leg brace to wheelchair at work. The first step would be to swap my poles for outriggers (elbow crutches with attached small skis). This would be a completely logical choice to compensate for my small amount of monoparesis. It should actually improve my skiing skills by allowing some weight transfer to my left arm from my weaker left leg.

Oh, yeah, I’ve now been limping for eleven days, having skied again on Monday (up to 9.5 this time).