Jean Martin is a retired podiatrist, living in Derby. She tells us about her life, and the role that her Cerebral Palsy has and hasn’t played in it.
I’m 73 years old. I’ve been part of the media presentation for people with cerebral palsy for 70 years. If you want to see me as a three year-old little girl, just go and look at the Wellcome Foundation’s website and there’s the film that my parents and I were in. I’ve always been part of the public face of Cerebral Palsy, whether or not I knew I was breaking glass ceilings or setting new standards.
I’ve just lived my life. People have always sort of said, ‘oh, we never expected you to do that’. There was no expectation from earliest times that I would get an education, that I would get a career, that I would find marriage or family or anything else.
The expectation was that I wouldn’t be here. My parents were given a life expectancy for me of less than 24 hours.
On my Cerebral Palsy
The nature of my CP is that I’ve got spastic diplegia below the waist. But on top of that, I’ve got atypical dystonia, in that my left leg is significantly weaker than my right, and I also have dyslexia.
I have the whole family of problems that quite often go along with cerebral palsy. And then on top of that, I’ve also got familial things like familial deafness. I wear hearing aids. My grandfather was deaf, I’m deaf, there is sensory loss in the family. So, I’m blessed with not only my own things, but also I inherit certain predispositions for things like deafness.
I was late mobilising. I was four before I really walked with anything and I never walked with confidence. I have poor core muscle activity. Sitting in this chair, I’m not holding myself.
The chair is holding me. If I sat forward, I could only hold myself sort of upright for a little bit. And then my body gives way and I slump back again. I have to remind myself to switch my core muscles on.
On expectations
When I was a child, they expected me to be in special education of some sort, either residential or long-stay hospital. My parents had recognised that I was already starting to show the intellectual ability to play with toys in an age-appropriate manner.
So they fought for me to have education. And having had the education door opened for me, everything else sort of slotted in behind.
I graduated on 1st July, 1970, and I retired on 31st July, 2008. Apart from having 18 months or so out to have my baby daughter, I worked for most of that time. I still teach medical students about cerebral palsy.
I’m married to another person with Cerebral Palsy. We are coming up on our 48th wedding anniversary in July. And this is a marriage some of the family said shouldn’t happen. One member of my husband’s family felt that it was wrong for us to even talk about living together – intercourse, having children, having a marriage, everything about that was wrong. We should be asexual beings that knew nothing of the world.
We chose to have a marriage, to buy our own home. We live in a four bedroom bungalow up here in Derby, and we have a daughter and two grandchildren. We’ve got a normal life, and we are part of society. My husband, volunteers at Derby cathedral. I volunteer with the local authority. They have a neighbourhood board, and I’m one of the residents that gets involved to improve things, to make sure that the whole diversity of society is represented on the board.
On advice to my younger self
My advice to my younger self would be: You will have a long life – I’m now in my seventies.
When people try to say, ‘we don’t know what you can do’ the answer is: we can do anything we want. Yes, it’s going to be a challenge. It’s a daily challenge. For me, the pain wasn’t the problem. Society’s attitude was the problem.
Don’t let other people predict what you want to do. If you want to do something, find it. You will probably find the solution from within yourself, go and do it.
Go out and be the best person you can. Find what out really love, and follow it in your heart. I’ve done all sorts of things. Write your bucket list and make sure you’re doing all of them.