Tag Archives: pain

14 Feb 2026 · 7:37 pm

And this too shall pass …

Well, I thought it was about time I said something. Pardon my absence, I’ve been finishing my latest offering which went off to the editor late January, then I went into hospital for some knee surgery.

I may, or may not have mentioned the knee surgery but it is one I’ve had before, on the other leg. I was extremely nervous since all I remember about the other one was rolling around in agony at night well into the fifth week and that I had blanked how much actual pain was involved. Now that I’m close into the aftermath, I decided I might as well lay it out there, while I can, and while I do remember so I know never, ever to bloody well do it again! Mwahahahrgh.

Picture of a bandaged leg on a hospital bed. There’s a blue blanket and hints of a scarlet walking frame parked at the end. The bandage is crepe and fastened with buff coloured plaster.

The knee surgery bit of my local NHS is in slight flux, in that a new super-duper ritzy centre for knee excellence has been built in a town about 40 minutes away and so most of the operations from surrounding NHS trusts are now being done there. As a result, all the information I had came from them but the actual operation was being done in my local hospital.

This was a good thing as being somewhere for 7 am that’s 2 miles away is a lot easier than being somewhere for 7 am that’s 40 minutes away in the car, especially as I had to shower with some special stuff and wash my hair before I came in.

One of the things I was most nervous about beforehand was the fact they were suggesting I have a spinal block. They all wear barrier suits so it would have been like lying there listening to the sound of a bunch of spacemen fitting a kitchen. All that drilling and banging. Not for me.

One of the biggest pains in the arse about this op is that even when you are recovering you don’t really feel it for ages. I have spent the last 16 nights sleeping in the same position with predictable results. There is a noticeable improvement in the range of movement in my physiotherapy exercises, the thing that hasn’t dropped much, and won’t for some time, is the level of pain.

It’s not as bad as last time, but once you’re over a certain level it doesn’t really make much difference. I did blank it out last time so in theory it’s hard to tell but I am not writhing around in agony all night the way I was last time so this one is definitely better. Indeed the pain meds appear to be working rather well, even if Morphine has the usual effects.

Picture of a packet of prunes sitting on a wooden surface. The plastic ziplock bag is light blue and pink with a window to show the fruits and a white bit at the bottom.

Yeh, so I have to make sure I drink a LOT, I’m talking more than 4 pints a day, or the laxatives give me a headache!

However, because I have had the tops of my leg bones sanded down, metal glued over them and an enormous metal rod shoved into the centre of my tibia and my femur there is a fair amount of I-broke-my-leg level pain. Then there’s the swelling, which, just for extra shits and giggles, extended itself my ankle which was bruised and swollen as if I had twisted it.

Then there’s the fact it’s stiff.

The difficulty of course is that all these things cause pain, so while the pain of being sanded down and cut at the ends to fit the metal tips might be wearing off for my leg bones, the shock at having a massive metal pipe down the middle of them might not be. Meanwhile, being twice the usual size is not natural for joints and the way they react to this is pain, so the oedema also caused pain, although, thank heavens it is going away now.

I wasn’t allowed to shower but as ours comes off the wall I was able to use it to wash, protecting my operated leg using the huge plastic bubble I was given after my 2020 op. Incidentally, it looks very much like my leg felt when the oedema was really bad. I have physio lined up on the NHS but went to a couple of sessions with a private firm locally who were excellent after I had my last knee done. The chap I see there is lovely and so pragmatic and sensible. It was good to check I was on the right path and he massaged a lot of the fluid away in a way I wasn’t able to do. So I do now have a leg that looks like a leg as opposed to memory foam, as he put it.

Picture of someone’s legs, one wrapped in a pink towel from the knee upwards, the other in encased in a huge blue plastic tube to keep the water off it while it’s being washed

On top of all that shit, the cut muscles hurt because, why wouldn’t they? Basically, I guess what I’m saying is the pain is coming from so many different angles that even if you can cancel a couple out, it’s still going to hurt. You’re never going to get everything, something’s always going to be sore, ergo, it feels like you’re going nowhere. You have to look for improvement elsewhere; in the added movement you’re getting from the physio, or that you can walk a little further today than yesterday.

Talking of which, you also have to make sure you keep everything very much set in a nice routine, three lots of physio a day, three little walks and at least three sessions with your leg up, and ice on it. I need those after the physio and walk, indeed, I tend to fall asleep.

Another top tip, avoid morphine after about 4.00 am or you’ll sleep until about 10 and wake up so stiff and uncomfortable you will be unable to function for the rest of the day. Definitely a balance to be struck with the pain relief.

The only way through is to do the physio exercises and keep walking. The more you do them, the faster it heals. It was definitely a lot easier to get into a rhythm with that during lockdown, which is when I had the last one done. Never mind, I’ve managed my three sessions of physio today, with the three tiny walks and the three icings, and have managed that for the past 5 days. The last physio exercise, which involved heaving and straining while I stared at my leg and it just sat there on a blanket, has finally come off and I am able to lift my leg! Bonanza!

With any luck, if I can get set into my routine, I should begin to feel a lot better by the end of next week. For now, I am very weary of being in pain, even with a pain med regimen that’s working. Although it gives me a headache too, because I need to drink at least four pints a day with the laxatives.

So yeh … I may be quiet for a while. It’s worth doing this but the fact the end result is a bit of a godsend doesn’t make the journey any less grim.

Then there’s all the other shit:

  • Incidents when Mary shouts at an inanimate object to fuck off since operation day: 6 million
  • Incidents when that inanimate object was one or both of Mary’s crutches: 4 million
  • Incidents when Mary shouts fuck off at the fucking weather as she washes yet more mud and shitty gunk off the ferrules of the crutches: 2 million.
  • Alertness: Low, close to zero
  • Incidence of sleeping during joint icing: 100%
  • Incidence of sleeping in front of telly: high

Despite wanting to eat well, I have developed an unfortunate propensity to … well … to not to. A friend brought me a bag of butter kissed popcorn the other day. I have been enjoying a handful here and there over the course of the week. I have been eating chocolate. I have been eating too much cheese. I have, in short, been eating shite.

Oh and if you ever have to do this, say goodbye to your dignity!

Yesterday morning, having stuffed my face with said popcorn on several occasions during the day before, I held up my trousers and discovered this.

Picture of a pair of black tracksuit bottoms laid on a bed with a red top beside them. Stuck to the bum is a piece of popcorn

Mmm. Classsy.

Yes, at some point I had sat on one and it had welded itself to my arse. I do not know when, so I have no idea how many times I walked up and down my street with it stuck there, if at all, which is disconcerting. The first thing a visiting friend asked was, did I eat it? No. It was covered in very off putting black fluff.

On the upside, I have already given birth to any sense of dignity I might have had with my son so that’s fine.

I’ve had visitors, which has been lovely, but I can only do an hour or I fall asleep! I think we can safely say I am in the six weeks of twilight stage but I know things will get easier. Another week or so, and with any luck, things will turn the corner pain wise. It would be nice to be able to sleep in a different position to the one, single position I am able to sleep in now.

Also, I miss my cat. I miss that every time I lay on the sofa to ice my knee he would come piling in from wherever he was relaxing at the time and with a chirrup of delight would leap onto my prone stomach where he would settle, purring fit to bust and occasionally looking up adoringly at me. The great melon. I miss him terribly. He was only 11 for fuck’s sake and it was so relaxing just lying there, with this ridiculously happy and smug pile of tabby lard sitting on top of me.

Picture of tabby cat lying on the legs of a person reclining on a sofa with a towel (containing an ice pack) on one knee. In the background a window, a door and one crutch.

Then again, I was lucky to have him around last time, so there’s that.

Another ten days or so and I will definitely be starting to feel more human. For the moment I’m in the nadir after the op, the twilight, where you just keep pushing on, without looking ahead, because the objective, not to mention the light, is too far away.

Instead, I’ll just concentrate on each tiny improvement and each step. On the upside, my book is with the editor, so I’m really enjoying going through her edits at the end of each day, answering questions, discussing stuff and generally riffing about all things K’Barthan. So there’s that.

So yeh. Onwards and upwards eh?

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19 Dec 2020 · 2:30 pm

We’re not at home to Mr Cock-up … Ah. It seems I’ve just told a lie.

As I dot and carried down the hall and stopped to pick up this year’s obligatory longways Christmas card which inevitably slides off any surface upon which it is put if so much as a gnat flies past it – let alone a fat woman on crutches – it occurred to me that I haven’t written a blog post for a sod of a long time.

This is my attempt to put that right. It’s the product of ten minute intervals throughout the week.

Where’s the cock up in that? I hear you ask. Well … more on that story, later.

So the post operative stuff is coming on but mostly … gah! I am having a great deal of difficulty getting the knee to straighten to the extent it’s supposed to (hurts a lot so it’s hard to push, only gets there by the end of the day and the results never stick – next morning we are back a few paces and have to start again). That said, miracle of joyous miracles I can now sleep better. The worry, on the extension front, is the threat of more intervention.

Yep. If I can’t persuade it to not only extend but also for that extension to stick, I will have to go into isolation for another two boring weeks and then be anaesthetised and have it manipulated until it bloody does go straight. This is not an enticing thought. I’ve had enough pain to keep me going for some years this last seven weeks, and now that the levels are finally dropping to manageable I have no desire to go looking for more. On the up side it fared reasonably well after a trip to Mum’s and back this Wednesday and then, to my joy, the physiotherapist reckoned it was extending fully if pushed but just not going on its own because it was swollen. Woot. So I will continue with the ice packs and the weights of doom – sitting with the knee across the gap between two chairs and hanging an oven cloth with a 1kg weight in each hand hole over the top of it.

Onwards and upwards.

A grim discovery.

Oh dear …

Over my knee recuperation period I’ve discovered I need to drink  more at night. For some reason the water out of our taps tastes gross unless you run it for a bit, unfortunately the tap has one of those water saver things on it which means it takes a long time to get much out of it. Case in point it takes close to five minutes for the water in the basin to run hot. It’s only one basinful of water but the water saver attachment is very efficient. Even more so now it is clogged up with scale.

Anyway, the long and the short of this was, I brought a glass up to the bathroom so I could fill it before I went to bed at night with fresh water that doesn’t taste of metal. Some nights I forgot and just drank the remnants of the previous day’s.

Meanwhile in another part of the house, I was a little worried that McCat didn’t seem to be drinking his water anymore. Then again it was throwing it down with rain most days and he was probably hoovering up the contents of the puddles in the garden; not to mention the pond. That’s what I assumed anyway … until one morning I found him in the bathroom with his head in the glass drinking my water.

Yeh. So now I have a lid for the glass and every morning, before McCat is released from his ‘bedroom’ I empty any remnants of water down the sink and turn the glass upside down. The levels in McCat’s water bowl are now dropping as normal which can only mean one thing. I think I may have to sanitise my entire digestive tract. Then again maybe that’s why I’ve lost some weight. Perhaps sharing my water with McCat has given me worms.

Probably.

Garden detecting … sort of …

This afternoon, I doubled the last two physio sessions into one long one and rewarded myself with an hour metal detecting in the garden. The aim is to gradually build up my stamina (phnark) so I can detect for a morning without knee-related repercussions. But it also serves as a good way of taking an hour’s gentle exercise when I haven’t done anything all day. Er hem. Like today.

Type V tongue/chape to hold the buckles on dandy shoes.

Today’s session got off to a wobbly start. As usual I found a lot of foil and interestingly, a large metal tray about a foot across.

Then things began to look up a little. I found a musket ball, at least I’m pretty sure it’s a musket ball, I’ll need to examine it in better light as it has a blob on it which might be the remnants of a rusty hook, which would make it a weight. Then, with the last signal of the ‘day’ because it was pretty much dark by that time, I found a type V chape, which is the thing you would put behind a shoe buckle if you were a gentleman living between the years of 1670 and 1720. Mine is late and may even be after 1720 because the double pronged ones are usually later. Shoe buckles came in two parts; the chape/tongue and the buckle. Put them together and you are able to buckle up your shoe, clearly, but the joy and practicality of them lies more in the fact you can take them apart.

People in the seventeenth and eighteenth century were a lot more sensible than us in many ways, they used a system for buckling their shoes that allowed the metal buckles to be moved/reused. This was because metal was expensive but also … fashion. This way they could swap the buckles over to different shoes which meant you didn’t have to buy a new set of buckles if you got some new or different shoes. If you were loaded it also meant your manservant could easily swap sets of buckles from your collection between different pairs of shoes or conversely, if you had more than one set of buckles but only one pair of shoes you could swap different sets of buckles around without any particular trouble.

So there we are, now we know a little more about the workings of the Scarlet Pimpernel’s foot attire.

This has not been my first foray into the garden. It started, rather boringly, with a ‘hoard’ from the lawn. Unfortunately said hoard was modern coinage to the tune of nine and a half pee. I think the lawn comes from elsewhere as about a foot down you come to an old carpet. I should imagine any interesting Georgian relics are underneath it.

The next session went rather better. I tried the jungle; an overgrown piece of ground near the back of the house where there are fruit trees and an extremely thuggish shrubbery which has subsumed most things. Nobody will be saying ‘Ni’ round here, unless it’s a ‘Ni!’ of disappointment on the grounds of impenetrability. Anyway, on Tuesday, I managed to dig up a medieval jetton from the mid 1700s which was rather exciting.

It’s worn smooth and shiny by din’t of being held and used which is rather lovely. It’s rose and orb type – ie a supremely unexciting one of which there are many. I think it’s an earlier one though, because it’s hammered and the metal is better quality and less pitted than they usually are.

Interestingly, well for me but probably less so for you, I also discovered a pile of what looks like three hammered coins rusted together. They are irredeemably knackered so I am in the happy position of being able to test restoration techniques on them. This is another word for ‘break them’. So far having read a report from a university in the Balkans somewhere, I’ve hit on acetic acid – or a dilute solution of white vinegar. Quite a lot of the kack has come off but I’m none the wiser as to what this thing really is. Never mind. I have also found another musket ball and another little bell since.

Each day I go out at about three and do forty minutes before it gets too dark to see. I got all giddy and excited today because I thought I’d found one of those little lead pots they used to put the gunpowder in. Turned out to be a piece of old shite but you can’t win ’em all. I did find a £2 coin today which I thought was a bit of a win. Needless to say the squirrel appears to be stealing those chocolate pennies you get around Christmas time and burying them. I keep digging up the foils along with little caches of nuts. Just more proof positive that the squirrel is a complete and utter bastard, then. Not that I needed it.

My lord, shall I prepare the guest room for Mr Cock up?

Yes, now we come to Mr Cock-up, a gentleman to whom, it seems, I am always at home.

That’s right, it wasn’t breaking the coins or sharing my night time water with my skanky cat. This one’s to do with books.

One of the good things about lock down this year is that I wrote a novel for the first time since 2015. It’s not my best, I kept it simple for one thing, but it’s alright. On the downside, I need to have it edited. One of the difficulties I have with editing is that I do not have the kind of life that allows me to hit deadlines. Let’s face it, I don’t have the kind of personality that allows it either, but with a bored demented Mum who rings to talk at the most inconvenient moment possible every day – unless I head her off at the pass by phoning her in the morning, which I do usually do. And there are the Wednesday visits, and THINGS happen and I have to try and fix them. But yeh, I daren’t book stuff, even months out, because I hate dicking people around and the only thing I can guarantee about any deadline I commit to is that something will go tits up and I will spend the run up when I’m supposed to be preparing putting the wheels back on my – or someone else’s life – and I won’t be remotely ready for it. CF the last deadline I set myself; my father died, which rather put paid to that one.

Clearly, with a 20k novella this isn’t quite such an issue because the editor is great at squeezing it in between other jobs. However, when the novella has mushroomed to an 85.4k novel it puts a different inflection on things.  It’s not the kind of thing anyone could squeeze in between other jobs. My bad. Once again, the inhuman organised people win at life and those of us who are not, or do something a bit random like caring for someone, miss out. This time, with the knee and all, I was even less keen to book a date for editing than normal.

Luckily, my usual editor has a slot but not until mid to late February – which isn’t too far away. BUT it’s also the point when Gareth reckons he’ll have a space to do the audio.

Gah! Curses!

OK so with any luck, Gareth’s schedule might slip a bit, and it’ll all work out. Or he might manage to squeeze it in before the next job.

From my, and your, point of view though, it means the book is not going to be ready for March the way I’d hoped and it definitely won’t come out in Audio at the same time as it comes out in all the other formats. If I can get as much of the ‘this doesn’t make sense’ or the ‘have you forgotten a bit here, I don’t think this was mentioned before,’ kind of stuff done before it goes to edit it will a) cost less and b) be quicker.

To that end, I have two plans. One, I’m going to try a kind of self-edit and two, I’m looking for beta readers. Not normal ones who are booked up for the next six months or charge money, but a bunch of folks like me who are happy to read my book on a whim and ask me any pertinent questions. I need people to ask questions and flag up things that make no sense. People who will spot the odd typo but, mostly, spot the other things. Nobody with a rigid To Read ethic, people who will go, ooo yeh, I’ll have a look at that.

Not hugely likely is it? Hmm. I have cocked this up a bit really. Never mind. I do have one volunteer, which is excellent news. And since I’m here, and doing a blog post for once, I may as well ask, anyway. So if you’re not too worried about bumping something into the middle of your to-read list, can get the comments back by the third week in January 2121, and if you fancy bagging a free book in return for doing a favour for a well-meaning idiot … just get in touch or leave a comment.

Looking for something to keep you entertained this Christmas?

Why not try one of my audiobooks? Available from my own web store for a sod of a lot less than they cost elsewhere, narrated by the ridiculously talented Gareth Davies. To browse my web store just click here:

Alternatively you can bag two audiobooks for free if you join my mailing list: Night Swimming – a mailing list exclusive story and a bit later on, you’ll receive another one: Unlucky Dip prequel to both the K’Barthan Series and the K’Barthan Shorts Series to try the short and join the list, just click here.

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28 Nov 2020 · 7:19 pm

Ouch. Post surgery blues … they come to us all

Today, I’m going to talk about pain management. Because pain management is quite a big part of my life right now. It does feel as if my full-time job is doing physio, three times a day. Having pathetic walks – three twenty-minute walks a day. Little and often works, but one big walk just makes it stiff. It’s particularly irritating when you have to get the anorak on and wrap up warm for a pathetic amount of time. Then there’s icing my knee. This has to be done five times a day for twenty minutes with the swollen limb higher than my heart. So that’s lying like a beached whale on the sofa with one leg in the air.

The hardest thing about the five 20 minute icing sessions is that you have to keep the swollen thing higher than your heart. That means lying with your leg above your head icing your knee and I always bloody go to sleep. Which is not really helpful because I need to be dog tired to sleep at night … and there’s only time for four. I’m probably supposed to do one when I wake up.

Then there’s three – or ideally four but I can’t squeeze the fourth one in – physio sessions every day. And of course, if you go for the third walk after three thirty, you’re going in the bastard dark. And it’s damp and the crutches slip on the sweaty pavements – or the ice (insert as appropriate) – so you have to be careful. Note to self, if I ever have to put myself through this purgatory again, I must do it in summer.

That’s the first golden rule then. If you’re looking down the barrel of major surgery with a long recuperation period, and you have a choice, do it in summer. Especially do not do it when you are looking down the barrel of a five hour car journey way before you are well enough. It’s got to be done but it’s going to hurt. Thanks for that Boris you honey monster-shaped git. And for keeping the window nice and small so the entire chuffing nation has to go at the same time thus clogging the roads. Never mind it hurts awyway so that probably won’t make much difference.

Seriously though, how do people do this? I mean, if I add in the odd household chore here and there, which, because I’m on crutches, I achieve at a pace slightly slower than that at which continental drift moves. Doing the washing up in the morning, and putting a wash on, hanging it out and folding it up is pretty much all there is time for over and above the stupid recovery routine. Then I have to ring my Mum, every day, and it takes an hour, and I wouldn’t begrudge Mum the time or the call, it’s just that it’s another thing to remember when my brain is addled, first with pain meds, and now that I’ve kicked those into touch, with … well … pain.

That’s been interesting this last couple of weeks.

The day before lock down a friend of Mum’s popped round for a visit. They had a lovely time except the following weekend, friend in question discovered she had covid. So as she came out with it less than five days after seeing Mum, Mum had to go into isolation for two weeks. Except that then someone looking after her on the Thursday also got Covid within five days, so the isolation period became even longer, moving from the Tuesday to the Thursday.

It’s been coming, in fact it’s miraculous it hasn’t happened but obviously it had to happen now. Three of Mum’s care team got Covid. Two testing positive and one with exactly the same symptoms but testing negative. I still can’t drive and so we decided it probably wouldn’t work if it was limpy looking after dotty. Instead my lovely sister in-law went down there, along with the one remaining carer still standing. During this time, Mum had an eye appointment on the Sunday which none of us clocked was actually a five hour laser surgery session. Meanwhile I was getting regular calls from Track and Trace asking how Mum was getting on with her isolation. Did she need help?

No, I expained, she was fine and sis in law was there. Finally one Sunday, after trying a longer walk, I’d dropped off, as usual, during the post perambual knee icing session. I was rudely awakened by the phone. Someone wanting to talk to Mum. I explained I didn’t live with her, but I could give them her number, except she would be off out to the hospital for an eye appointment soon. To my horror the voice on the phone told me she hoped not because Mum was supposed to still be in isolation. There would be a fine and legal action if she had.

Fucking fuck. Why does this stuff happen when I’m so ridiculously under par.

Ah, I said. I explained that I was addled and recovering from knee surgery but thought the folks down there would be sensible to put two and two together and not go. Did I want to ring and check? She asked me. Yes, I said, I probably did. She was actually lovely about it and said she or one of the others would call back later.

I rang Mum. No answer. Sod it, they’d already left. Rang Sis in law, brother and everyone else I could think of. Finally sis in law answered. Hopefully we didn’t break the rules but she had to go in to explain what had happened, at which point she discovered that what we all thought was a routine eye check for Mum was a 5 hour laser surgery. Oh shit. Hopital team were very understanding and Sis in law returned to Mum, who, thankfully, hadn’t got out of the car, and took her home. It was like a French farce!

Mum was very cross and wanted to make a complaint but I guessed that since the carer who would have originally taken her was one of the ones off with covid, she probably was waiting to tell Mum nearer the time so she didn’t get all of a dither. Over the course of this week the plague carers – and the non-plague plague carer – have gradually returned and everything has gone back to normal.

Meanwhile Mum is in a dither about plenty of other things, getting the right prayers for this week’s church so she can look at the right readings on the right day, and increasingly phoning me to explain that she can’t get the phone to work. She has started to muddle it up with the TV remote. Yesterday she hung up on me twice while she was trying to turn the telly off, eventually, I managed to talk her through using the right one. Then there’s trying to do proper admin on the group of authors campaigning for fair treatment from Audible, I’m not pulling my weight there at all.

I’m just a bit burned out because Mum … and I didn’t see the Mum stuff coming. I should have known, Dad would always take nose dive every November, but because Mum hadn’t reached that stage until now … and because we think she has vascular dementia … I had kind of hoped it would be different. Maybe she hasn’t. Maybe hers is Alzheimer’s. On the up side, I have now convinced her to have it investigated. The Doctor wanted to start the investigation into Mum’s mental health with some blood tests and offered these about a year ago but she decided against it. However, now she is finding her lack of memory a right pain in the arse and decided she’d like to know. I’m guessing if he’s starting with blood tests he might be wondering about kidney efficiency. She has told me she needs to go to the loo rather suddenly and can’t always get there. How brilliant it would be if the lion’s part of this turned out to be a UTI.

‘I really don’t expect to have to go changing my nappy in the middle of the night! It’s very irritating!’ she said yesterday.

Bless her. I also understand why she refused to have this knee op in 2012 when I was urging her to do so. I can’t imagine what it would be like looking after someone with dementia in this state. Well no … I can … that’s why my sister in-law did it! Thanks Emily! 🙂

It hasn’t been a huge help that all this has co-incided with the bit, five or six weeks after any big injury/surgery etc when I get weepy. This is like when I tore my ACL. It was so painful and it went on and on, grinding, awful, spirit-sapping pain. It was six months before I could walk without a stick. There would be points where I’d get really blue and just want to cry at how mind numbingly slow recovery was. This … this is very like that. And there were a couple of days this week where I just wanted to cry. It is a bit disheartening waking up every morning with your leg set in position like a brick and having to gradually work on it. Over the day, I get to the point where I can straighten it and bend it just over ninety degrees. Then it’s back to bed and the same shit the next day. I wouldn’t mind if straightening it all out wasn’t so effing painful. But it is. And of course that means the pain now is slightly worse than it was two weeks ago, which feels particularly bloody if I’m honest.

Having a of sense of humour failure with the speed of recovery is perfectly natural. I know what’s happening, I know what it is. I just wish I could shut my eyes and fast forward through this bit, or crawl into a hole somewhere on my own, away from other people until I was done so I didn’t have to be a pain in the arse to anybody.

For anyone doing major surgery, it is important, going in, to realise that you will feel less disheartened sometimes, and that you’ll get to a soul-crushing bit where you are just dragging yourself through each day and feeling as if you aren’t getting better (you ARE getting better but because it’s so slow you aren’t noticing).  It’s a pain in the arse but … yeh … I know. I’ll be 8 weeks out by Christmas. If I can just work hard enough now, I should get the ambient pain levels far enough down to cope with the Christmas uplift. Because they will rise over Christmas, they can’t not, because you can’t spend five hours each way in a car – on the two single days when Boris has doomed the entire long-distance-Christmas nation to have to travel at once so it may be more –  go to someone else’s house and spend the entire day putting ice packs on your knee, going for pathetic walks and doing physio … and if the loo is at the bottom of the sweeping, majestic stately-home-sized staircase, and your bedroom is at the top, you’ve got to suck it up. But that’s probably part of my frustration now. Because if I can get it right enough before I go, it should be fine. If. And if it isn’t it’s no bother. I just take a sleeping bag and an airbed and I can always kip downstairs in the dining room if it starts playing up and getting really stiff at night or something. It will be OK, it just adds to the frustration.

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Want something to take your mind off the nightmare that is 2020?

The lovely people at Kobo have a Black Friday/Cyber Monda Extravaganza Audiobook sale this weekend. If you’re in Canada and the US, many audiobooks are reduced to $4.99 or less, including mine. Likewise, you can pick up Small Beginnings there for the princely sum of 99p. Woot. Find out more here: https://www.kobo.com/ca/en/audiobooks

Or if you really want to push the boat out, there’s something else. There is the Bury St Edmunds virtual Christmas Fayre.

🎄The Bury St Edmunds Christmas Fayre is one of the largest in the UK, and this year it’s online! Head to https://exploreburystedmunds.com/the-virtual-bury-st…/ to browse for fantastic Christmas gifts – including books! Yes, the Suffolk authors are back, with a virtual stall and signed books for all the bookworms on your list, delivered to your door*.

Choose from a series of crime adventures set in Suffolk, a tale of dark magic in a mysterious English village, a life-affirming journey on the Greater Anglia rail network, a near-future UK-based dystopia, and a comedic sci-fi fantasy series. Or buy them all, and treat yourself! 😁

Tell your friends, tell your family, tell the person two metres away from you in the queue at Sainsburys. Christmas, sorted! 🎄👍

* Please note delivery for some of the books is UK only.

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2 Nov 2020 · 6:43 pm

Operation ouch …

Ha! No blog so far this week. Bet you were congratulating yourself on escaping the massive ‘my operation’ post weren’t you? Unlucky. I’m an eighth French and what that means, my lovely people, is that if you ask me how I am – or even if you don’t – there’ll be none of that ‘mustn’t grumble’ shit from me. No. You ask how I am and I’m going to tell you. Here, in a departure from the norm … on a Monday is the My Operation post …

I’ve had knee surgery before, so I was, undeniably, nervous about this one. It didn’t help that every single person I encountered who’d had it or knew someone who’d had it came out with a variant of ‘it hurts like fuck but it’s worth it’.  I know it hurts like fuck. It’s a knee. I’ve done labour, not too much, I give you, but enough to know that it has to go on for quite a long time before it passes ripping your ACL ligament on the pain-o-metre. Mmm.

Everything was packed and readied, including crutches because I already have some and, bizarrely, they aren’t covered in the cost of the insurance. We duly got up as sparrow’s fart and drove to London where, with a cheery wave goodbye to the boys, I was absorbed into the bubble. My room was at the back looking out into a light well rather than at the front, overlooking the Thames but hey, you can’t win ’em all. It was comfortable and well laid out.

The NICKERS.

On the bed were the THINGS I must ware; a lovely purple disposable robe, a pair of totes toastie socks – in beige – and a pair of dark green pressure socks.  I was instructed to put them on, with only one green pressure sock on my good leg, so I obeyed orders and waited. Also included were … THE NICKERS.

Suffice it to say, the first time I encountered a pair of these I genuinely believed they were a hair net and put them on my head.

They leave nothing to the imagination but I suppose they stop stray pubes from getting into things, I don’t know. Anyway there they were.

My operation was scheduled for 11.30 which meant I was number three in. I was quite tired, because we’d been up at four in order to get to the hospital for seven am, so I dozed a bit, not that I had time to doze much because a whole host of people popped in to see me, including the surgeon, Mr Davies. He gave me a bit of a look and I confessed that I might have peaked too soon with getting the kit on. See me rocking it here.

We had a brief chat, in which I said I was a bit nervous because he was, basically, going to be sawing the ends off to of my big leg bones. He said, ‘I prefer to call it a light resurfacing procedure on your knee joint’ at least I think that’s what he said but as you can imagine, what I heard was, ‘I’m going to cut up your leg with a big electronic saw.’ Demonic laughter optional. I signed a form to say that I was alright with that, using his extremely swish Mont Blanc pen and handed it back so he could draw a very discreet arrow on my leg. You might just be able to make it out in the picture. There are certain aspects of talking to Mr Davies that remind me of McOther. He’s gloriously understated. He asked me if I had any questions – I didn’t really – ‘splendid, I’ll go and get my pyjamas on now,’ he said and headed off to green up – or at least blue up.

The rest of the morning passed in visits from various people. I had a chat to the anaesthetist, the physiotherapist, I think and a couple of others, all of whom gave me forms to sign saying that I understood what I was doing and that if they accidentally killed me then, short of negligence, I understood it wasn’t their fault. They also took copious quantities of blood. I discovered I couldn’t get the safe to work for my valuables, which stern signs all around the room warned me I must do, so they assured me they’d fix it. When the time came, two cheery porters appeared and put me in a wheelchair.

The lift was a large metal box with two blue circles stuck in opposite corners where people need to stand for appropriate social distancing. They both seemed quite surprised when I said it reminded me of the transporter in StarTrek but they laughed so I chalked it up as a win. Next it was into the anaesthatists’ area. There were two cheery gentlemen with accents I couldn’t place until one of them explained that he was Greek and his name was Adonis. How golden is that? He was a med student and would be asking the questions today, overseen by the actual anaesthesitist. I duly informed him that he had the best name in the world because it would be very churlish not to. His colleague was called something equally fabulously Greek, which might have been Netzahualcoyotl but he’d stuck a cannula and rather a lot of pain med into me by then so I failed to remember it. I’m quite pissed off about that because it was a wonderful word, with a whole stack of syllables beginning with Netza-something.

Greeks at the gates then. My mother spent a lot of time in Greece as a child just after the war while my Grandfather was helping set up the Bank of Greece. It used to take her and my Uncle one and a half days to fly there in a Dakota for the summer holidays. Consequentially, when I was a child, she and Dad took my brother and I back there for a succession of gloriously bizarre holidays. And a special detour to Corinth to see the ten seater loo. Being anaesthetised by Greeks was like being given a little benign blessing.

Introductions made, it was all very business like. I suspect people are often scared so they make it like buying a cup of coffee. Anyway, at that point Netza-not-Adonis (but with the equally fabulous name) told me he was giving me the general anaesthetic and the next thing I knew I could hear voices and the little machine that goes beep. Hoorah, I was awake. I had learned the hard way that no matter how interesting the sounds of the recovery room DO NOT TRY TO WAKE UP QUICKLY AND TAKE A LOOK ROUND. So I just lay there drifting, thinking, ‘I have a new knee.’

The nurse was quite stern and as I drifted in and out of consciousness I heard her saying that I’d been there two hours at one point and that it was probably time somebody came and took me away. There was a slightly strained tone to her voice, as if I was cluttering up the place. Two porters arrived to take me back to my room and they warned me to keep my eyes shut. I had an oxygen tube up my nose … not right in there just up. I felt as if I’d had about fifty pints so was happy to keep my eyes closed if it meant it was just me that moved and the walls and ceilings  stayed reasonably still. They were kind enough to wheel me quickly as well, for which I was eternally grateful.

Back at my room I was informed that there was a front room available and that if I liked they could move me into it. Yes. I very much would like. I drifted in and out of consciousness and finally managed to tackle supper, an omelette and sticky toffee pudding and a flask of coffee McOther had made for me. I rang people and then I went to sleep. I was woken regularly during the night for blood pressure tests and pain meds. I began to be aware that my knee hurt. A LOT. Not so much I couldn’t admire the view though, although I took this picture much later, on my last morning.

The staff were gloriously multicultural, from absolutely everywhere in the world and were utter darlings, every man jack of ’em. I’d forgotten how multi-cultural London is and how much I loved that when I lived there.

During the night the mattress on my bed deflated, which made things a lot more comfortable for my feet but which, apparently, was a bad thing. They pumped it up but it wouldn’t stay full, instead gradually deflating or, if left on, starting to beep after a few minutes and continuing to do so until someone came and turned it off and it went down again. They gave it three strikes and then swapped my bed with another one.

The physio popped in and we had a little walk and she showed me some more exercises and I realised that my leg was turning blue.

Seriously, here are my legs, as they are now. A lot of the after pain is caused by those bruises. The left leg is probably about three or four inches greater in circumference than the right leg.

I was also brought a commode and urged to have a crap. Since they seemed very keen that I do so I obliged. I didn’t fully appreciate the importance of this … By Thursday I was ready to go home. The lady from the pharmacy arrived with what looked like a bag of duty free but which was, in fact, a massive bag of drugs to keep the pain at bay. I noticed it also contained a box of sennacot and what looked like a jeroboam of some other laxative.

Ah.

By Saturday morning, despite taking extra care to dose myself up with the laxatives, as proscribed, I was wondering if I would ever poo again. Ah the joy of opioids. At the moment, things get too painful to stay in bed after about 5 am so I come downstairs, make a cup of coffee, do my first round of Physiotherapy exercises, take the first set of paracetamol for the day and then doze on the sofa in my room of shame. This one morning, I was particularly knackered after a night of needing to … you know … go and yet at the same time, not being able to. There’s nothing more disheartening than sitting on the bog with stomach cramps, and a bottom that feels as if it might be actually tearing … but with no action.

Nurse! Forceps.

So there I was downstairs, having to eat because, ibuprofen, but nervous that I was in very real danger of filling myself to bursting point, like Mr Creosote, because there was nothing coming out the other end. And I noticed, by my bag, a one use surgical glove which had fallen out of my ‘filling up with petrol in times of Covid’ pocket. And I had an idea. An idea of such complete and utter brilliance … but also horror.

I mean … how did they unblock particularly difficult cases?

Did they …?

No.

I looked at the glove.

Surely they had to ‘help’ sometimes didn’t they? If I put on the glove and—

Gads! No!

Could I though?

No.

Than again, maybe it was better than the alternative, I thought, as another wave of stomach cramps hit me. And I swear that bastard glove winked.

Operation one; dignity, nil.

Suffice it to say I an not taking any more opioids, even though I probably should and joy of joys my insides are back to normal, even if my leg is still purple. Strangely, despite the ongoing pain, I can feel that there are things which used to hurt which no longer do, and most of the stuff that does hurt is due to swelling and bruising. It takes my weight and I am taking small walks each day and doing three sessions of my physio exercises, hopefully I can work that up to four later in the week. I’ll see what gives when I go to my first, post-op physio session on Thursday. Also, I’ll discuss pain relief when I go see the nurse practitioner to have the staples out on Friday.

In the meantime, I suspect that, for the next couple of nights at least, I’m just not destined to sleep much. If I get truly desperate, I’ll do a midnight physio session, as the physio seems to help at the end of the day when it’s starting to stiffen up.

Onwards and upwards …

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If you need something to take your mind of that, my audiobook test is still on.

Yep, I’m still doing my beta test for distributing audible via my own site. Or at lest via my own site an alternative way. If you’d like to give it a go, you’ll need to download the bookfunnel app or join bookfunnel. If you’re happy doing that feel free to help yourself – the link is below.

It’s in beta, yes you are testing. That’s why you get a 13 hour audiobook for free read by one of a man who can seriously do funny; Gareth Davies. The fellow who made Roy Hudd laugh … and laugh enough to be asked back to do it again.

Once you click on the link, below, you’ll end up on a download page for the book. When you click listen/play it will ask you to download the bookfunnel app and enter this code, which it gives you right there so remember to write it down.

When you’ve done all the installing malarkey and you click to play it’ll ask you for the code you jotted down. I don’t know if the code is case sensitive but I’d presume it is!

This is a brand new app and brand new audio player, and Bookfunnel appreciate any and all feedback. If you get into trouble, or can’t get anything to work, contact their help address – which is given on their site, help @ bookfunnel.com – with a header: ATTN: Julie.

Here’s the link: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/fxd6bnoy7k

If you decide to listen to the book. I hope you enjoy it. I leave you with this fabulous book-shaped light. Rock on the lovely gift/interiors store on Peebles High Street. Go there, buy stuff. Oh and pop down the other end and have a sausage roll as well!

Wink wink

 

 

 

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15 Apr 2017 · 6:27 pm

Learning the hard way, or at least, the cold squelchy way…

Not that I’m melodramatic or anything … mwahahahahargh!

This holidays, McOther, McMini and I joined another family of friends skiing. I have never been skiing before, for the simple reason that from the age of about twelve I’ve been under doctor’s orders not to.

Some of you will know this, some won’t, but basically,  my knees have taken a bit of a pasting over the years; bone disease as a kid, torn ACL after jumping over a wall aged 25, and then twenty years later, a ‘possible’ tear in the other ACL (MRI ‘inconclusive’) after I rode my bicycle blithely across what I thought was an empty street and was surprised to catch a slow moving Ford Fiesta in the back. Not their fault I genuinely hadn’t seen them. I’m just lucky they saw me.

The net result of all this – apart from the fact the knees now match – is arthritis. First knee was knackered pre ligament reconstruction and arthritis is the natural result of soggy knee ligaments. The second knee is so arthritic after 25 years of taking the extra weight that even with an unequivocal MRI result, it’s probably reached a stage when reconstruction would make the arthritis worse. Which is why they can’t do the original, of course. The ACL damage doesn’t hurt but the arthritis in the knees does. Eight years ago they told me that were I sixty, they’d fast track me for a left knee replacement because it was so bad. Alas bionic knees only last 10 years, and you can only have two so no can do until I’m sixty. Oh well. Only another 12 years to wait.

So here I am. Aged 48, with knees that are, frankly, a bit fucked. A lot more fucked than they were when the first doctor ordered me to stay off the ski slopes. But, for the first time, I was in a position to try skiing somewhere that it wouldn’t matter were I unable to go piling up and down the slopes all day, because there’d be other stuff to do. And McOther is an excellent skier and McMini wanted to try it.

So, ever the adventurous one, I bought some huge knee braces like scaffolding, packed a HUGE box of aspirin and off I went. Here are some of the things I learned:

Spring in the mountains is hot.

No shit, Sherlock? I hear you say. But yes. I was thinking snow=cold, mountains=cold.

Schoolboy error.

It is is not true.

Here in Blighty we bought ourselves lovely thick warm coats to keep out all that cold mountain air. It does get cold but only at night. Also, as a novice to skiing I was tense, partly because it all happens a bit fast and partly because the feedback through my knees is less than sharp and I had an uncomfortable feeling, after waiting for 30 years and through a great deal of deterioration to flaunt doctor’s orders, that I was about to die at every turn. Rank fear aside, this is the kind of exercise that pushes your beats per minute up to one seventy something until you learn to do it properly, stop fighting and relax. Now even if it’s minus forty out there, beats per minute of one seventy plus is only going to mean one thing: a flop sweat.

But it wasn’t minus forty. Spring in the mountains is gorgeous; clear blue skies, lovely sunny days and temperatures of eighty degrees Fahrenheit (twenty something centigrade). Now if you’re going to do high intensity aerobic exercise in those kind of temperatures, take it from me, you’re going to get hot in a t-shirt and running tights. Thick gloves, huge woolly socks and clothing that is, essentially, a duvet, waterproofed and crafted into Michelin Man style duds is … less than comfortable in beachwear temperatures. To be frank after about ten minutes, it was not so much a coat I was wearing as a portable, always-on sauna. I didn’t know it was possible for a human being to sweat that much or for a t-shirt to become sweat sodden enough to wring out in ten minutes. So here’s an interesting discovery. It is and it can.

Nice.

You will discover new things.

Let’s talk about gloves. At these temperatures, your ski gloves will become very hot inside. So hot that you will discover the new and unnerving phenomenon of hand odour. Yes, put your hands in warm gloves and let them sweat profusely for three days straight and your gloves will come off soaking wet at the end of each day – sod days, in my case it was an hour and a half, tops. Even so, after 3 days they will smell like the rankest socks imaginable … until you smell your ski socks after a day in those hired boots and realise your imagination hadn’t even scratched the surface of the concept that is, ‘rank’.

These boots are made for walking.

I have many pairs of in line and roller skates and the boots are similar to ski boots. The rationale is that if you fall awkwardly you will break your legs, mid shin, rather than doing potentially crippling Potts fracture style damage to your ankles. The same rationale is behind ski boots. Only not. Ski boots were invented by the Spanish Inquisition in the eleventh century but shelved after they were deemed too inhuman a torture to inflict on mere heretics. A few hundred years later and here we are resurrecting them to protect ourselves from breaking our ankles. They are very good for this. And for skiing. But when the snow is melting, you also have to do a lot of actual walking in them. They are less good for that.

Walking in ski boots is clearly an acquired art. As far as my efforts went … hmm … well … let’s be generous and call them, ‘a work in progress’. People who have mastered the art have a kind of slowed down gait that’s a cross between a 1970’s disco swagger and someone walking on the moon. It involves putting all the weight on the most painfully arthritic bits of my knees and every walk was unspeakable.

There are many different types of snow.

Yes. This is so. And ALL are scary. I confess on the first day we thought we’d ski down the small looking hill to where our lessons were. So off we went. I snow ploughed as I’d been taught to do, a sure way to slow me to a stop and … ah … hang on … not stopping … at all. So I bailed and yes then I walked down the slope in those infernal boots. I was sweat soaked and knackered before I even got to the ski school. Because it was ice. And very slippery.

Skiing is fun … sort of.

Like that Scandinavian thing, is it Stockhausen syndrome? No, I don’t think so? Stockholm Syndrome? Possibly, that thing where you grow to love your kidnapper/abuser. Yeh, well, it was a bit like that. I didn’t like it to start with because, to use a technical term, I was shitting bricks. I was in a complete funk, most of the time, and when I say funk, I mean in the fear sense of the word as well as the smell. Then on the third day, suddenly, I relaxed. Not much, but enough to realise how people did it all day. They were not super-fit, just super-relaxed. My fear levels reduced a tiny bit as I began to feel more in control, beats per minute dropped to about one fifty and recovery time shortened to the point where I could do a run without stopping. Suddenly I got what the fuss was about and why people do it, which, I confess, I expected to do much earlier.

The great thing about it was that the actual skiing bit doesn’t hurt. Not at all. The time it hurts is when you stop. So that Wednesday, I even tried to go skiing with the others but realised, as soon as I got to the top of the mountain and put my skis on again, that the dicky knees were not up to more than an hour yet. So we had lunch up there and I crept home to the chalet and made full use of the spa, oh yes I did.

Will I be going again?

Amazingly, yes. Although I will try to manage my knees better this time.

What did I learn?

I learned that I am disabled. Genuinely, physically handicapped in a way I hadn’t actually grasped until I tried to do this. I have not been able to run for some years. There’s a reason for that. Days one and two I cried a lot. I cried because I was stiff and I cried because I knew, from the pain in my knees, that they were far, far more comprehensively fucked than I have ever given them credit for. The pain levels were about commensurate with the second week after I cracked my collar bone. So I had to take a long hard look at myself and accept some very unpleasant truths, one being that I may well end up in a wheelchair for a year or two before I reach the magic age of sixty and access to a NHS knee replacement comes. Because they seem intent on my having quality of life while I’m old, rather than now, while my boy is small. Me, I’d rather do the wheelchair later on but the NHS demurs. Another thing I learned then. If I carry on the way I am, I will be even more disabled. Soon. I will never play football with my boy, or any of the other things I still hope to do.

That was sobering and pretty grim.

IF I carry on the way I am. But there might be a get out.

So, before I ski a second time, several things have to give. I read somewhere about a thing called spoons. Run with me, I’m not talking sub duvet snuggling. It’s a way of explaining a disability. So the idea is that you have say, ten spoons each day and they represent your physical capabilities. Every time you do something that takes you over a certain level of pain/exertion/your disability you count it as using up a spoon. So you can do, pretty well what you like, but you have to ration your spoons so you can get through the day. If I have ten spoons in a day, an hour’s skiing is about seven. So I need to do two things. I need to balance it against the other things I do in a day and I need to find a way to extend the range of each spoon.

Next time I go I will be a better more confident skiier so a skiing lesson will use up less of my energy. That will help. However, because of the pain that comes after I’ve been skiing, I will have less spoons free each day, as the consequences of skiing build. I will also have to keep my eye on what happens afterwards, which I didn’t this time, which is how I ended up with a fair amount of pain and walking difficulties, which aren’t going to go away anytime soon – about three weeks, I reckon. In short, I need to make everything last longer, so I can ski more with less pain.

Back to the get out.

Over the past three years, I have been doing physio and going to the gym to try and keep myself physically fit and able and to prop up my knees. That’s good and it’s worked but, of course, I am also menopausal, which makes for a hard time losing weight. I’m also busy, which makes for a hard time losing weight – nothing causes a person to eat crap more effectively than their not planning their meals. And I have IBS, and nothing causes an IBS attack more effectively than changing your diet … except the 5:2 which is OK but gives me a mega headache.

Never mind. I’ve put on a stone of muscle under the same amount of flab as I had before. It should raise my metabolic rate but pre-menopause that’s less likely and I have to accept that it isn’t happening to the extent I’d like, or possibly at all.

So what I realised, through the medium of skiing, was that this extra stone could well be what has tipped my knees over the edge this last year.

Menopause, schmenopause, IBS, IB bollocks, this is not a drill. My back is against the wall. I have to lose weight or lose my ability to walk. I know this sounds melodramatic but that, in a nutshell, is it.

Not just a bit of weight either, a lot.

A whole effing stone. And to be honest, a second wouldn’t go amiss.

That’s going to be hard but the alternative: registering disabled, enduring a genuine physical disability, some impressive levels of physical pain and gradually losing my ability to walk without a rollator or sticks and while there is hope that I can avoid that before I hit 70, by any means possible, I’ll do whatever it takes.

So hurling myself down a mountain was a bit freaky but it wasn’t the daunting bit, not really. The daunting bit was the cold hard truths I have learned about myself.

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