Medical Day 2
This week I went back for a final (‘signing off’) appointment with one of the team that did my hip replacement surgery three and a half months ago. It was relatively uneventful largely because, having pitched up for a previous appointment early in September, I had learned my lessons as regards carrying out the expedition.
On that occasion, although I had a rough idea of the location of the health clinic to which I had been summoned, I had used my car’s sat-nav device and found myself not only arriving via a strangely circuitous route but in fact – because I was operating via the post code only (there was no house number to tap in) – arriving nowhere near my destination. Which is why my ‘final approach’ had to be improvised by peering out of my windscreen in search of a sign advertising the establishment I was trying to reach.
This time I was able to drive straight to it and also immediately secure a slot in the car park by not being over-ambitious. The plan worked perfectly.
Once inside I ‘registered’ at the reception and, after a brief stint in the waiting area, was taken off to have an x-ray (a necessary prerequisite of having my ‘signing-off’ appointment).
After another short wait I was shown to the x-ray room where it was soon a case of ‘shoes off, trousers down’ and a vault onto the examining table over which hovered a giant x-ray machine. (Well, not so much a vault as a gingerly-executed sidle up onto it).
My lady x-ray operator then manoeuvred my hips firstly into a flat on my back position and then slightly-askew and then onto my side for the purpose of taking two x-rays, presumably to provide an all-round view of the surgeon’s handiwork.
As she disappeared behind her screen/wall to press the buttons and take her photos I managed to refrain from making my usual quip (“I trust this isn’t going to make me impotent!”) in such circumstances and was then pleasantly surprised when she expressed birthday greetings to me, a healthy sign that the computer data-banks of the much-maligned NHS were working better than some of its detractors like to maintain.
Subsequently it was a case of back to the waiting room for about ten minutes until a nurse walked in and called out my name and I soon found myself in a consulting room in conversation with the same male assistant surgeon that I had seen last time, still apparently aged about fourteen.
I opened by explaining that, from my perspective, the operation – and in the scheme of things a hip replacement is on the major end of the spectrum – together with its recovery had gone smoothly and without incident.
Such residual discomfort as I retained was almost certainly nothing to do with the trauma inflicted upon me in carving through my thigh to reach the business area, the subsequent drilling into my thigh bone and the insertion of the artificial ‘hip’ into my body, but rather effectively all to do with the issue of training my thigh/leg to walk ‘properly’ again (as opposed to with the pronounced ‘drunken sailor’s’ limp that I had developed in order to get about whilst suffering from the degree of osteoarthritis I had been living with pre-operation).
On that score, I admitted that the process of persuading my thigh muscles to return from ‘limp’ to previous ‘normal’ (no limp) mode had been an arduous – ultimately frustrating and debilitating – and as yet continuing slog.
It had involved actively trying to suppress my natural propensity to limp (by willing those muscles that I had developed over time for the purpose to stop working) whilst simultaneously persuading those that had atrophied in the meantime to return to full working order.
The quack responded by assuring me that my travails were perfectly natural. As far as he was concerned I was doing well and in time would undoubtedly regain my original walking state and a new lease of life.
He then pulled up on his computer screen one of my latest x-rays, pointed out the position of my artificial hip and commented that the cement had done its job and my bones were now (as intended) grafting themselves onto it.
Nevertheless, there were two matters of concern to take away with me as I departed the building.
The first was that – just before I was dismissed – the surgeon had pointed out in passing that my other hip (the left) was displaying early signs of similarly developing osteoarthritis which eventually might require another hip replacement. Under his direction I had scrutinised the state of my left hip as revealed by the on-screen x-ray: he showed me where the ‘sinew or was it cartilage?’ [I am not medically qualified enough to know whether either of those is the correct term] between the thigh and the hip bones was wearing away and certainly, to my inexpert eyes, it seemed thin enough to be non-existent.
That was enough on its own to get the old brain-box working overtime as I jumped into my car and began my journey home, but it was a mere bagatelle in comparison to something else that I had noticed on the x-ray in question.
Nestling right in the centre of the ‘negative-like’ x-ray on the surgeon’s computer screen – unmistakable and obvious – had been an image of the Ingolby wedding tackle standing out. When I say ‘standing out’ I do not actually mean that. A more accurate description of said item(s) would be that they resembled something that one might see if by some sad intervention of Fate one had chanced looked through the wrong end of a telescope.
I could not prevent an horrific nightmare scenario entering my mind.
In a couple of months’ time, at some nurses’ Christmas party in full swing on board a river boat travelling down the Thames, with the drink flowing and the streamers and paper hats flailing amidst the deafening sound of the disco, the chosen ‘MC for the night’ suddenly calls the gathering to order and introduces an informal (and secret) ‘Bloopers Of 2016’ sequence, towards the conclusion of which said x-ray image of my ‘meat and two veg’ will feature as ‘Gag of The Year’, inducing hysterical mirth all round.
On my drive home I made a decision that, if my left hip’s osteoarthritis should ever develop to the point where a second hip operation becomes necessary, I shall be going private.
In Bulgaria.
