I am avoiding anything to do with the Olympics, because I tend to remember what happens during an Olympic year. That would include what I call "surgical intervention."

I see a urologist in September and I have to get a subpubic cathetar. It will involve surgery and I have graphic memories of previous trips to the hospital.

Something as innocent as an Olympic poster can serve as a trigger for these memories. The poster in question was hanging on a hospital wall, near the tub room in the hospital in Montreal.

I may have other trips to the hospital in the pipeline and I want to do everything in my power to minimize my ability to remember my future encounters. If this includes totally confining myself in my room for the duration of my stay, not even going into a hallway and avoiding television and newspapers and music, so be it. I will even remember songs I hear in the hospital. Even listening to George Michael will serve as a trigger.

Listening to "The One" by Elton John will bring back memories of me lying in a hospital bed, in skeletal traction. I still remember the last time these vampires drew blood from me. I remember it quite vividly. No one quite understands how traumatic the hospital was for me and continues to be.

If it looks to you like this monster is controlling my life, you're right.

I'm going for whole nights without sleep and just sitting around church because of fear of what's coming. No one gets it, because I look so calm, cool and collected. I have no choice but to be that way, it was drilled into me to "be good for the nurses", even as they were doing horrible things to me.

I can be calm even as they are sticking a needle in my arm. That doesn't mean I'm OK!

I want to run away from all this.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.