This is what happens when you are taken on a wild canter by the biggest stallion in the stables - JACK TAR. While on this canter, the riding teacher yelled at me for all she was worth "Stop it, you are ruining that horse's mouth! It's the best horse in the stables!" ? All I was doing was trying to rein it in, trying to pull it towards the fence where hopefully Jack Tar would stop and behave. He wasn't having any of it. Not a darn. He wanted to show me who was boss. He wanted to frighten the living daylights out of me. He ran to fences with huge ditches on the other sides, pretending he was about to jump, but stopped at the last minute to blow huge amounts of air through his widened nostrils and steal a superior-looking glance at me. In a flash, he was off again running around as if his life depended on it, wondering if he should just throw me off or keep me on his back and continue to terrify me. Oh yes much better to frighten this one, I could feel him thinking. Away at top speed to a nylon cord strung between two trees, right at my neck height. Who put it there and why? Jack Tar bolted towards it, knowing he would go under and I would go off (unless of course I'd been decapitated).
In the end Jack stopped short of doing that and bored, decided to walk with the rest of the horses back to the stables for a long drink. As I dismounted, my legs felt as if they would buckle under me but I wanted to get away from Jack Tar - and fast.
A week passed by and I found myself at the riding school again. I walked determinedly past Jack Tar's stable to the end of the row. I took out the slowest horse in the entire stable - a gentle white mare. Together, we gently trotted out to meet the rest of the school. Today, we were to learn how to weave in and out amongst poles. One at a time, the riders gave their horses a gentle kick to their sides and off they would go, responding beautifully. Oh, they knew this game well. And then it was my turn. I gently kicked the gentle white mare on her sides and woke up in hospital.
And that is basically the story of my neck. I have very little memory of what actually took place that day - you see, I was asleep - deeply concussed. Apparently my gentle white mare shied and did what they call a 'dirty stop' on me. I was flung into the air on landed head first, breaking my right elbow in three places, damaging my neck and probably sustained the brain damage that makes me what I am today.
So there you have it. My neck and I have an ongoing fight. The vertebrae are tired of being in a long slender neck. They want to crumple up and just be. But before they finally go their resting place, they will ensure that they stomp on every root nerve they can find. Nerves which send shooting pains down my arms and hands, into my temples, into my head, into my neck, into my shoulders, even into my jaw and through my teeth.
I have tried to find solutions to the problems - but my neck will not play ball. And if it does, the solution will only last for this.... long and return to torment me. I tell myself it is my punishment for everything I did that was mean, nasty, horrible and hateful in life. It's a train that has smashed into the side of my head somedays. At other times, it is a continually irritating series of stabbing pains which cause me to say "Oh!" at inappropriate times.
So what the heck - I have to live with this and in dealing with daily agonising pain I still have to find a way to be friendly, to smile, to work, to not complain, et al. Loads of people are doing it every day.
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