Practically Alice

First of all, if you haven't seen Once Upon a Time and want to go into the show blind, then please minimise this, go watch it all and come back. While there are no ground-breaking spoilers here, I do touch on parts of the plot, and characters that may be considered of a spoiler-y nature. Back in 2010, I was babysitting for an old neighbour when what to my wandering eyes could appear but an advert. The advert was to become the beginning of an adventure in my life, spanning right up until this very day. It has indeed taken me since that dreary, dark night in 2010 until this very day to get up to date with Once Upon a Time ( IMDB here ), and my what a journey it has been. What drew me to the show initially was the basic theme of fairytales (I’m a sucker for a good story), and the added twist of modern day America meets the fairytales was just my cup of tea. Over the years we have seen a group of characters, once (upon a time *sniggers*) defined by their stock stereotypes of ‘her...

Tomorrow I am going into hospital so they can put a trial spinal chord stimulator (scs) into my back, which will hopefully reduce my chronic pain. If you've known me at all in the past four or five years, you'll probably be aware that in 2012 I was diagnosed with congenital syringomyelia. This basically means that residing in my spinal chord is a syrinx (or cyst); mine is pretty small, and I've had it since I was born so various doctors argued over whether I could technically get pain from this. I have so many emotions about tomorrow. First of all, I am so very grateful to have this opportunity to have this treatment. I am so lucky. The treatment is new and not widely used because it's administered by pain clinics as opposed to neurologists or neurosurgeons. I also know that if I have these two surgeries and they help me, maybe I can help encourage the wider use of this treatment. Over the past couple of years I've fogged my brain up with medicine, and to be offer...