The Adventures of Dysfunctional Dan

Fighting Covid was tough but getting over it was probably tougher.  For the first few days after testing positive I felt ill and my body was facing an unpleasant battle against the nastiest virus it had ever come across. Then the main symptoms began to dwindle away and I sort of thought 'well, that could have been worse'. The problem was, it didn't end there.  Obviously one of the biggest issues is that having Covid means you have to self-isolate for ten days. When you are feeling really ill this isn't a great issue because you have no desire to leave the house anyway. But once you start feeling better it's pretty unpleasant. Of course I totally understand that I have been infectious and that I could spread this disease if I broke the rules and headed out. That did not however mean that I in anyway enjoyed being under house arrest.  We've all been through lockdowns and have spent much more time indoors than we would normally would during the pandemic but this fe...

Realistically, it's only a matter of time before everyone suffers a bout of Covid at one point or another. Unfortunately this week it turned out to be my turn. I'm not actually sure when Covid first hit me. Last Sunday I woke up and felt pretty ill so the first thing I did was take a lateral flow test. I waited the allotted time and it remained negative. I spent much of the day feeling unwell and being sick but I gradually began to feel better and had had no symptoms that matched Covid whatsoever so I went to work on Tuesday. Later that evening I felt worse but just assumed I perhaps should have taken another day off and went to bed. I awoke at 2AM and was instinctively aware that something was wrong, took another lateral flow test and a second line indicating I had tested positive appeared.  The moment of realising I had Covid was quite overwhelming. My first thought was for the people I'd seen over the previous few days. I felt really guilty about having gone into work bu...

Sometimes I have a period where I go about my business considering myself to be a normal person but then something happens that is a bitter reality check. I'm dyspraxic and my brain doesn't function in the same way as most other people.  This week is Dyspraxia Awareness Week and I always like to do my best to spread a little awareness. I spent my whole childhood and adolescence continually feeling different and inadequate before finally learning I have dyspraxia aged twenty-one. I'm still really annoyed that I was denied any support due to the ignorance of the world at large. If you look at a list of dyspraxic traits in children I ticked pretty much every box yet no-one had any clue whatsoever. Other neurodivergent conditions like autism, ADHD and dyslexia are fairly well understood by the general population and certainly are well understood in most educational environments (though there's still enormous room for improvement) but I feel that dyspraxia is still something...