Differently Abled

Perhaps I should run the London marathon.  After all, I'm meant to be trying to improve my fitness after my extended bout of ill health - it would give me something to work toward for next year.  That said, I've always maintained that running twenty six or so miles in one go just isn't good for you - an opinion apparently vindicated by the announcement that someone had died running yesterday's London marathon.  Mind you, these days you don't actually have to run the marathon, though.  I'd quite fancy doing it in one of those wheelchairs - not only is it much faster, but it looks like a lot more fun than running.  What I'd really like to do is get within sight of the finishing line, then leap out of the wheelchair and run the last few yards.  Just imagine the reaction of spectators and TV commentators as they think that they've witnessed a miracle.  Mind you, wheeling those chairs around must be pretty tough on the arms.  Perhaps they'd allow the use of a mobility scooter instead.

Now, before people start complaining that it is in very bad taste for someone to try and pretend to be disabled to try and get a cheap laugh, (not to mention winning a marathon without having to do any training), the reality is that I am disabled these days.  Thanks to my diabetes diagnosis, the government now classes me as having a disability.  OK, I know that I have Type 2 diabetes which is generally not that debilitating, but the Disabilities Act doesn't differentiate between different types of the condition.  So, I'm classified the same way as a Type 1 sufferer.  I can get free prescriptions, free eye tests and might be able to claim disability benefit (if I wasn't working).  I won't deny that I've exploited my new status in the workplace - pointing out to managers that they are now legally obligated to make 'reasonable adjustment' to working practices to take into account my 'disability'.  However, I also cannot deny that, like Homer Simpson, I don't actually consider myself 'differently abled', just lazy.  Hence my desire to do the London marathon in a motorised wheelchair.  Joking aside, there is no doubt that my spell of illness has, despite all my efforts at exercising more, left me physically weaker.  I certainly don't have the stamina I formerly possessed (although this might, in part be down to the beta blocker I take for my blood pressure).  Most perplexingly, I've found that my voice is now much weaker that it was before.  That at least has benefits - it gives me an excuse to speak even less to people at work.