Is this the world's strangest motivation to exercise?

This is going to sound a little odd, so bare with me, I promise I will explain myself. As anyone who has known me for a while can testify, I am terrified of spiders. I don't mean that I shriek like a baby and squash the poor little arachnid, I mean I scream loud enough to wake the dead. Since I am fairly certain that none of us want zombies walking the earth, I would like to request that all spiders remain outside and do not enter my home.

Unfortunately at 4:00 am this morning, one particular spider decided that it did not want to stick with this restriction. My husband and I were sitting in the living room on the sofa, as lying down was - and is - causing quite a lot of pain around my rib cage. I glanced down at the floor, impersonated a boiling kettle and attempted to exit the room vertically, via the ceiling. It would appear that although me shoving the pouffe across the floor as I attempted to move my legs did cause the invader to pause momentarily, but it soon resumed the attack.

I promise that I am not exaggerating; it was the size of the palm of my hand. I am including the legs in that size estimation as, to me, they are the worst part of the spider. There is a strong possibility that the spiders do have a 'terrify her to death' contract out on me. There have been times in the past when it should not have been possible for any spider to confront me, but... Some eighteen years ago I was walking across a car park in West Bromwich with my mom after checking out a wedding dress shop - in the days before I got my wheels.The rain was torrential; I mean it was so strong that it was bouncing a good three inches off the floor when it hit. We were around a third of the way across the car park when something made me look down; a huge spider was sitting on the car park, in this terrible rain, giving me the evil eye. It is no exaggeration to say that I was both petrified and astounded to see this hairy-legged critter there.

Believe it or not, I am actually a lot better than I used to be. I once missed college because I couldn't get up the stairs to get showered or dressed, I have called friends round to dispose of them and once refused to sleep in my bedroom for several weeks because my dad had squashed a spider on the ceiling. To be fair that had left a spider-gut stain that I just couldn't cope with. I slept in one of the spare bedrooms until dad had disinfected and re-painted the ceiling. Yes, I am full-on phobic rather than a wee bit unnerved by them.

Yet there is something I am more afraid of than spiders; daddy long-legs (crane flies). Those things have lead to some far more dramatic room exits than the spiders. I once ran out of a meeting with senior managers at the DWP, back when I worked there, because a crane fly was dangly-legging its way round the room. Someone did eventually take pity and remove it, but not before everyone had laughed themselves silly.

Oddly this does have something to do with exercise and mobility. As you have probably guessed, it is a little difficult to scream like a siren and run out of the room when you can barely move. Add to that, I am certainly not sitting in my wheelchair all day, as my butt tends to go numb after a while. So, seeing that huge, monstrous beastie has given me motivation to carry on with my physio exercises in the hope that mobility will improve somewhat. 

I am continuing to be very careful about what I do and making sure that I don't go overboard with the physio. I will be honest and confess that I haven't yet started my yoga as I can't find the DVD. Yes, I know, bit of a lame excuse really as there are, no doubt, hundreds of low impact yoga videos on the internet. I do want to be careful though, hence the desire to stick with the DVD that JJ - the physio at my GP practice - recommended.

I hope that you are getting on with whatever challenges have cropped up in your life lately - and more than that - I hope that you are coping better with your fears than I am with my arachnophobia.

Evil puppeteers jerking me around

Seeing the dawn from the wrong side once again, I am reaching the point where I just don't quite know how to get my body working well enough to sleep when I am supposed to. As a life-long insomniac I have tried just about every trick in the book, from drinking warm milk and avoiding television or the internet for an hour before bed, to listening to hypnosis tapes designed to help people sleep.

Unusually for me it isn't the pain that has been keeping me awake. It is the muscular jerking that is putting paid to nice relaxing sleep and pleasant dreams - if you can count being a kick-ass, sword wielding zombie killer in your dreams as pleasant. The muscular jerking first raised its ugly head a couple of years ago, just very occasionally at first, then increasing more and more.

It is kind of hard to describe to anyone who hasn't experienced something similar, but I am going to try. Does it make sense if I say that it feels like an electric shock suddenly shooting down from my elbow, zipping down my arm, through my hand and into my fingers? It hits my hand like a hammer, jerking my hand up and open or slamming it down onto the bed or the keyboard that I can't use. Things have started to be thrown across the room not by a poltergeist but by the evil puppeteer who is controlling my movements.

My GP did say to me that muscular jerking is rare with gabapentin, that it is more usual for it to stop as a result of the medication. I appear to have gone with my usual trick of doing the opposite - something a little childish that I normally relish!

As the medication change hasn't done the trick, I am going to try something else. I am going to try a combination of using a TENS machine on my arms to see if that helps and - not at the same time - I am going to try using light weights and just doing some bicep curls and maybe a little triceps work. I am going to be sensible and try not to get competitive with myself. I need to try something, but also go about this intelligently. If anyone sees me putting anything online anywhere that makes it looks like I am being an idiot about things, please deal me a verbal slap to get me back under control!