Welcome to the World of Derby Canes and Diclofenac!

In the first semester of my second year as an undergraduate, which was about October 1999, I woke up one morning, and could not move my legs. This had happened before because of my cerebral palsy, but it usually goes away, but half an hour later I still could not move a bit. I appeared to be paralysed from the waist down. Feeling returned, but before twelve hours had passed, by which time I read almost the whole canon of Michel Foucault and listened to the entire corpus of Bob Dylan. The day after that, when feeling in my legs returned I bought a cane and have been using one ever since. After tests, my GP told me that my lumbar region of my spine had become stressed which would account for the day-long pain. This has now led to postural problems and arthritis in my left leg and use of prescription analgesics, in particular Diclofenac Sodium.


That was of course, ten years ago, and since then I have completed my undergraduate and postgraduate studies as a philosopher where I concentrated mainly on phenomenology, pain and medical humanities, my BA dissertation being on ‘The Phenomenology of Impairment and Pain’ and my PhD on Heidegger. I have, BA aside, avoided writing about my disability in a philosophical forum for a long time, I found it very difficult emotionally and physically to do so, it seems to increase my pain.

A Necessary Apology

This book is intended partly as a philosophical exploration of disability, partly as a journal or memoir. Some of the chapters are lectures or diary entries and this is not meant as a literary conceit, this may have been how I experienced certain event in my life, or how I think is the best way to present a certain idea, given that my philosophical approach is broadly phenomenological, the study of experience and of the experience of one’s life. Life, unlike some of philosophy is messy and fragmented; therefore what is presented will not always be coherent as neatly laid out ‘theory of disability’. However, I hope this approach has at least been partially successful.