Dusty Wentworth

  Recovery Planning Is Not Just for Mental Health Recovery planning is often associated with addiction or mental health, but it is just as important for people living with physical disabilities and long term illness. In this context, recovery does not mean cure. It means living as well as possible within ongoing limitations, maintaining stability, managing symptoms, and reducing the impact of setbacks. A recovery plan provides structure when health fluctuates, energy is limited, or capacity drops. It shifts the focus from fixing the condition to protecting function, independence, and quality of life. How to build a simple recovery plan Define what stability looks like for you. Be realistic. Identify early warning signs that things are worsening, such as fatigue, pain, missed medication, or reduced function. Decide in advance what helps when symptoms increase, including pacing, rest, assistive equipment, or scaling back commitments. Be clear about what does not help, as well int...

What does a man do when his body turns traitor—when his voice vanishes, his muscles shake, and the only strength left is the will to endure? This is my life with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND)—a battle fought not on foreign soil, but within my own skin. Yesterday should have been a day of celebration. My new bespoke wheelchair—a bright orange Quickie Nitrum—had just arrived, coinciding with the first anniversary of my discharge from a neurological rehabilitation centre. But as so often happens now, my body responded to the surge of emotion in a cruel and unpredictable way. By the afternoon, the toll had arrived. Excruciating pain gripped me. My speech was gone entirely. Tremors and muscle spasms rocked my body without mercy. Despite the considerable amount of pain medication I take, the pain always finds a way through. By 01:30, the spasms had become so violent they resembled a seizure. In moments like that, medication is useless. You have to retreat into your mind,...