Blooming social media! This is a little bit of a rant and to get things off my chest, something happened last night and it really got me upset.
A friend of mine, no names needed, has just had a operation on his foot and is in a cast for 6-8 weeks, last night his family decided to go out to the shops and they took out one of the shopmobility electric carts. They proceeded to take a few photographs, post it on social media and say how the wife, the kids and he thought it was so funny.
A few hours later i go back to social media and take a look to see that loads of our āmutual friendsā thought that the picture of him in the scooter was, āhilariousā, āthe funniest thing they had seen in agesā etc etc.
I have used these scooters in a few places and have always been really uptight about how i must look, as we know MS is not a visual thing unless walking. I donāt do it that often but i really think i should do it more often so my family and I can share experiences more often, however all these āfriendsā thinking it looks āhilariousā has really just knocked me for 6.
I put some comments on the social media to say how I really didnāt find this funny, i hoped he would get better soon this, was a short-term thing, i pointed out that some people in life rely on this type of equipment to do things like shopping and it was very much a long term situation and that I thought that making fun of this was probably inappropriate, and then i apologised for my comment. (why i apologised i donāt know!).
This morning i awoke and had a few notifications to the original post, more people laughing at the photograph etc I then noticed that my post had been removed by the chap concerned but he had decided to leave everything else as it was! I thought I was going mad. I put on another post, āi see my comment has been removed, how come?ā he sent me a PM saying āsorry you were offended, it was meant as humourā andhe proceeded to remove my second post! I replied to his PM with "that still doesnāt tell me why you have removed both posts, his reply was āwhateverā.
The thing that really gets to me, this chap was one of the first people i ever told about my MS,nearly 25 years ago, I told him as he and I were really good mates back then, i hardly see him these days even though he lives 5 minutes away from me. Also to just add to the annoyance his mother has MS so he really should have more idea than most.
Right that is my rant over for the day!
Charlie (bloomin social media!)