Something strange happened over the Christmas period. I am use to having people asking about my disability and most guess right by asking if I have cerebral palsy. I don’t have a problem explaining it to people as it can develop friendships, as long as it doesn’t remain the main focal point.
I have found that most who knows of cerebral palsy have at least a basic knowledge of the disability, yet over the Christmas period I had not one but two people, on two separate occasions, after asking me if I had cerebral palsy, asked me when I got it; like it is some disease that can be caught or I got through an accident. This didn’t really disturb me as such, yet I found it somewhat strange that these two people recognized that I have cerebral palsy yet seem to have the misunderstanding that it was a disability that one acquires later in life. I think I have never been asked about my disability in this manner. It was quite amusing.
There is plenty of information on the web on cerebral palsy so I won’t go in detail now, however, I grew up being taught that CP is brain damage that occurs before or during birth or up to two years after birth, which causes involuntary body movements and in some intellectual problems. This is a very broad explanation of CP so please don’t quote me. In my case, due to complications during birth, a lack of oxygen to my brain resulted in some damage to the part that controls muscle movement.