When a foot injury took Jeanette off her feet, she thought that was that. No more gym, no more aqua aerobics, no more of the little victories she'd spent years building back after cancer treatment decades earlier had left her with spinal, bladder and bowel damage. Instead, she found herself on enforced rest, wondering what she was going to do next.
What she did was write a book.
Then she helped write a comedy show.
And this August, she'll be performing it live at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Facing enforced rest
Jeanette is honest about how low that first stretch of enforced rest took her. “I was on the floor, I was absolutely on the floor,” says Jeanette. After 30 years of living with disability, she says she genuinely felt she'd "had enough”. It's a feeling many will recognise: the frustration of a body that won't cooperate, the grief for the life you had before, and the fear that this time might be the time you don't bounce back.
It was her friend Bernie who gave her a tough love nudge towards something different. Bernie had come across research showing that creative activity can genuinely lower anxiety and used it to help pull Jeanette out of a dark space into a more creative one. “I was an anxious mess,” says Jeanette, “and it really did work because I was just concentrating on ‘I’ve got a book to write’. It really did change my mindset. It was amazing.”
The enforced rest combined with the push from Bernie finally gave Jeanette the opportunity to tackle the book idea she’d been thinking about for years.
The result is Rosie's Bloom – a contemporary women's fiction novel, threading humour, romance and disability alongside real experiences of illness and the support of close friends. It's now professionally proofread and out with early readers, with Jeanette hoping to find an agent.
Alongside the book came a comedy show, written with Bernie for the Edinburgh Fringe, exploring ageing and how it affects your body, including online dating and even a few songs.
Creativity is key
Jeanette's advice to anyone facing a similar loss of independence is refreshingly practical: give yourself something creative to do, even if it's just for half an hour. Not because it fixes everything, but because it genuinely changes what your mind is doing. In Jeanette’s experience, finding your creative outlet helps you get through the pain, the hospital appointments, the days that feel endless, and gives you something to look forward to instead of just something to endure. “It helps the mind if the mind can think about other things, even temporarily,” says Jeanette, “You get some temporary relief from your pain.”
She's careful not to pretend it's easy. Managing pain comes first, she says, and support from the right people matters alongside it. But once that's in hand, creativity becomes a genuine tool, not a luxury, but something that can carry you through.
Having the right support
None of this happened in spite of the equipment Jeanette uses, it happened because of it. “It probably takes people a bit of time to realise that they need to use aids,” says Jeanette. “We keep struggling without it…We should get into the idea of using aids and I would also say asking for support. That’s something I struggle with. I’m lucky enough to have a husband who helps me, but I will do something and fall on the floor rather than asking him to help me, which is crazy. We need to ask for support.”
But once she did accept them, the difference was enormous.
- A pair of crutches she describes as her favourite: stable, reliable support for a balance that can be unpredictable.
- A wheelchair, including a lightweight electric model for an upcoming trip abroad, so she can get out and explore rather than being left waiting at the hotel bar.
- A shower stool and a small step, which means she can shower on her own for the first time in a long while, with her husband simply nearby for safety.
- A long-handled shoehorn, recommended by an occupational therapist, which turned a daily struggle into something easy enough that she wondered why she hadn't been using one for years.
She's quick to point out that support isn't only physical – asking family, friends, the NHS or companies like ours for advice and support matters just as much as any single product. Her message to anyone newly living with disability is simple: “Ask for advice, use the aids that you have to use, and get support when you need it.”
The next chapter
With the Fringe fast approaching, Jeanette is rehearsing for the show, awaiting reader feedback on Rosie's Bloom, and preparing to search for an agent for it. Whatever happens, she's clear that this chapter of her life isn't a lesser version of the one before. It's simply a different one, full of its own things to look forward to.
As Jeanette puts it herself: “It can't be the old life, but it can still be a good life.”
You can see Jeanette and Bernie at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival performing ‘Ye Canny Shove Yer Grannie Aff the Fringe’ at 2:30pm from Sunday 23rd to Sunday 30th August at 3 Old Monks, 23 Commercial St, Leith, Edinburgh, EH6 6JA.
We wish Jeanette and Bernie the best of luck with their show!
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