I Didn’t Mean to Disappear

I didn’t plan to vanish from Vocal, not for this long...

No dramatic exit, and it wasn't caused by any kind of creative burnout- I didn't make any grand announcement either. I simply stepped away for “a little while, yet it turned out to be longer than I thought,” and then life quietly rewrote the script.

So, What Have I Been Doing?

Over the past year, I’ve been working on my third book (yes, my third book!). That alone can swallow time, energy, and entire seasons. But alongside the writing, something else was happening, something I could not fully understand until recently.

I was discovering the truth about the disabilities caused by my 1972 neurosurgery and radiotherapy. A painful truth that arrived decades late, a truth that explained everything, and a truth that changed everything.

And that’s why I’ve been gone so long.

The Long Shadow of 1972

When you’re a child who survived neurosurgery and wide‑burst radiotherapy in the early 1970s, everyone celebrated the miracle with comments like, "The danger is over," and "The future is yours." But the doctors don’t warn you about what might happen at 40, or 50, or 60 years of age, because they simply did not know at that time.

Late‑onset effects weren’t even part of the post-surgery conversation. They weren’t part of the understood science yet.

So I grew up. I scraped through school, putting up with the daily emotional abuse from the other kids, with comments such as, "Is that zip on your neck where you put those cheap supermarket batteries?" and "Hey, zippy, whose hands are you going on today?" Those were mild compared to the ones I simply won't publish here, and my school life was like 'Groundhog Day' (a 1993 comedy film) directed by the late Harold Ramis (who passed away sadly in 2014) and starring Bill Murray, about a day that repeats every time he wakes up.

In the same way, my whole school experience repeated itself with the same insults, including "Watch out, Frankenstein's about."

Yet, I went on and worked as a clinically registered mental health nurse. I built a happy working life for thirty-two years. I must have walked miles along those hospital floors in that time, and carried other people’s emergencies. I assumed that my body was my ally.

Then, slowly, almost politely, it felt as if my own body stopped being that ally.

1. My balance shifts to 'falls risk'

2. Stamina suddenly drains

3. Unexpected tremors arrive

4. Fatigue becomes an everlasting companion

It certainly robbed me of my confidence. This was when I began tripping over things I never used to notice. I started sitting down more often than I ever used to. Then started wondering why my legs felt like they were negotiating with gravity instead of cooperating with it.

For years, I didn’t have a name for any of this. I just had symptoms and frustration, with a growing sense that something wasn’t right. All of my medical and surgical records had been destroyed when I reached twenty-six, which I never had a clue about until I queried getting access to them with the health services, only to be told, "this is what the NHS does once a child attains 26 years of age."

It really was no wonder why doctors kept guessing and misdiagnosing me.

It wasn’t until recently, through specialists, scans, and the kind of medical hindsight only decades can produce, that I learned the truth: my childhood treatments didn’t just save my life. They shaped the rest of it.

The disabilities were always coming. They were simply late to the party.

There’s a moment, and I’ve written about it elsewhere, when you realize the ground is no longer a reliable friend. When walking becomes an act of concentration rather than instinct. When independence becomes something you negotiate rather than assume.

For me, that moment arrived quietly. There was no drama. No collapse. Just a slow, undeniable recognition that wheels would carry me further than legs now could.

It wasn’t defeat. It wasn’t surrender. It was the plain truth.

And truth, once seen, doesn’t unsee itself.

While my body changed, my writing expanded. My books became the place where I poured everything: the science, the memory, the humor, the grief, the stubbornness, science fiction, the rediscovery. It demanded my full attention, and for a while, VOCAL had to wait.

Medium became the space where I explored depth. The articles became the space where I built a new world. And VOCAL, well, VOCAL became the room I kept meaning to return to, but never quite reached.

Not because I didn’t care.

But because I was busy learning who I was now.

The truth is, I’m returning to VOCAL because I’ve missed the community, the creativity, the freedom to write pieces that don’t belong anywhere else. Medium is where I dig deep. My book is where I build something lasting. But VOCAL is where I talk to people, directly, honestly, without the weight of chapters or deadlines.

I’m not the same person who last published here. My legs have changed. My energy has changed. My relationship with movement has changed.

But my voice hasn’t.

If anything, it’s clearer now, shaped by a truth I spent decades outrunning.

So I’m back. Not because life has become easier, but because I’ve finally stopped pretending it hasn’t changed. And because writing, whether in a book, on Medium, or here on VOCAL, is how I keep my mind moving, even when my body can’t.

MY PROFILE