Treating triumph and disaster just the same
Yesterday I travelled to the Pre-Operation Assessment centre at the hospital where I had my hip replacement operation last year, having been requested to do so in order to take further part in the research project which I had consented to join shortly before my operation took place.
Regular readers may be familiar with the back-story.
The purpose of the research project was/is to study the different types of arthritis that can cause sufficient degeneration of the hip joint that a replacement operation becomes necessary, elective or not.
Basically, as I understand it – and I don’t really, even when people ask what type of replacement I was having (porcelain or metal etc.) I hadn’t a clue before I went in for my operation and indeed am none the wiser now – when hollowing out the thigh bone in order to hammer into it the piece of equipment that is eventually going to constitute the artificial hip that was to replace my old, diseased, one, they either throw away the old bit – or can use it for research.
I consented to the latter, hence me being accepted into the research project. I was quite happy to take part – or at least to my old hip joint doing so. I rather like the idea of contributing my bit to the advancement of medical science.
It was a degree flattering and possibly also a degree noble on my part … albeit that, arguably, by even taking that attitude, by definition I may have detracted somewhat from the very ‘nobility’ to which I was aspiring.
Anyway, I pitched up in good time for my appointment and saw the medic in charge of the research about ten minutes earlier than anticipated in a little office along the corridor.
He asked how things had been and I replied “Splendid!” before going on to admit that I hadn’t behaved very well during my period of rehabilitation and thereby had done myself no favours.
I’d only done the recommended exercises and physio sessions in fits and starts, even at times given them up altogether – and thus had taken the very six months they’d predicted to ‘get back to normal’ functioning when in advance (being Superman) I had confidently expected to reach full fitness again in half the time they’d said I would.
And failed in that quest big-time.
Anyway, continued my inquisitor, now that it was a year since my op …
“Let me stop you there …” I interjected, “… It isn’t a year since my operation, it that took place on 15th July last year”.
Rather reassuringly, when the medic had looked it up in his paperwork he confirmed my statement and apologised.
In response to his query as to my mobility this far out, I boasted about my ‘stepping’ regime, viz. over the seven days prior to the meeting we were currently in, according to my own (Garmin-device counted) records I has amassed a total of no less than 169,671 steps at a daily average of 24,239.
On no fewer than three occasions I’d totalled over 30,000 with my best single day being 32,497.
The medic looked impressed.
“That is outstanding, in fact it is truly exceptional. Do you ever get any aches and pains?”
I replied that in all honesty I did have the occasional ache and pain, but none that I couldn’t attribute just as easily to the fact I was 65 years old and that at my age this was only to be expected – I genuinely couldn’t put these down to the fact, one way or the other, I was walking anything up to ten miles per day.
Over the past week, I reported, on two days I’d even completed a walking circuit in my locality that I have checked as being 5.7 miles in distance (and which takes me approximately 100 minutes to complete, whether I do it clockwise or anticlockwise) before 7.15am in the morning.
My companion looked stunned.
The upshot was that – given my arthritis has been borne of good old-fashioned ‘wear and tear’ rather than any genetic disposition, I was firmly in his ‘control group’ as they attempted to chase down ways of diagonising arthritis issues far earlier than any x-ray or equivalent scanning could achieve. One way of doing this (they were exploring) was via urine tests. From these, it seemed, you could detect ever so tiny bits of cartilage being flushed out of the body.
Further to this line of research, he asked whether I could now go back to the Waiting Room, fill out the questionnaire provided and then nip to the gents’ toilet and provide an urine sample in ‘this’ (and he then handed me a little empty phial with a screw top).
Off I went to do his bidding.
It was only whilst I was on my way driving home afterwards that I realised I may have buggered up his entire research project.
Having filled the questionnaire out with the pen provided and also filled up my phial with Ingolby urine good and true, I handed the first to the nurse on Reception and – at her instruction – threw the second into a tray which had been placed at the other end of her desk for the purpose.
This I had done with a flourish before setting off to the car park my journey home.
As I said above, it was on the way home that I registered I may have made a bish. Although there was a paper form stuck along the side of the phial, I’d bunged my full one onto the tray without filling in my name on it.
I do hope I haven’t thereby destroyed the integrity of the entire research project that my medic friend has been working upon for these past five years …
