Hullo my lovely readers
Successfully blogging for the second week since restarting! That feels like an achievement after not managing for so long. Especially as I had my Covid booster today.
Me - a white person with short brown hair and brown eyes - sitting in my powered wheelchair in a GP surgery waiting area. I'm wearing a white mask, which I'm smiling behind, blue trousers and an orange t-shirt. I'm leaning forward, so the t-shirt slogan is out of shot, but it says, "That's How I Roll".
So this will be a fairly simple post. But the booster is why I want to post. Because my beloved NHS is beleagured.
It's underfunded and understaffed, and the staff who are there are so overstretched and underpaid that they've been pushed to striking recently - at all levels - with more strikes scheduled. And a day on which I got my latest booster feels an important day to sit in specific solidarity with the people who carried us through the lockdowns, and who continue to carry us through now, in the still-ongoing situation around Covid - and more generally.
As a disabled person, I rely on the NHS. I have done since I was born. (It's something I have written about before - both on this blog, and in this Instagram post for the seventieth birthday.) But that means I know that, if it isn't properly supported, it can't properly support us. I also know that we are lucky to have it at all. And I want to express my gratitude alongside my solidarity.
So my post-booster fog doesn't turn this into more of a ramble than it already is, I'll end by sharing a link to the words of a fellow wheely doctor (of the medical rather than the theatre and performance studies variety), the wonderful Dr Hannah Barham-Brown. I cited Hannah in my PhD thesis, so it feels apt to do so again here, because she gives a powerful dual perspective as a patient and practitioner.
Which, conveniently connected to my own specialism, also illustrates the importance of representation.
So thanks to Hannah for being an eloquent #RollModel and allowing me to reference her, to all of you for reading, and to the NHS for ensuring that I, and other disabled, older, or otherwise vulnerable folks, can be boosted this Autumn. I believe it deserves a booster of its own.
Sharpish.
Until next week,
J
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