Prunes and Prisons

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“Imagine you’re walking on egg-shells” they said, as they levered my wincing carcass to its feet with one of their giant hoists, “because it’ll be a bit fragile at first.” And indeed zimmering across the open spaces of the ward to reach the toilet felt desperately fragile at first, far more so than with a knee replacement. But I was confident that it would come right in a few days, and I would go home.

How to make the fastest recovery? What are the pluses and minuses that can get you home or leave you in limbo? Medical stuff, obviously, but that isn’t in your hands; you must assume that the medics are doing their best for you. But there are bits where you can maybe help yourself a little.

For me, first priority was the unblocking of the bowels, familiar from previous post-operative dependency on morphine; but I’d already found out that the prune was the magic bullet that gets you going, so I had great wads of prunes for breakfast each day. Indeed I overdid it a bit, in view of the long time and serious effort needed to reach the toilet. It’s not easy to find the right place on the spectrum between concrete bowel and excess prune: on the one hand you are reduced to breaking through the concrete barrier with a teaspoon and unbalancing contortion, on the other a sudden speedy zimmeration is needed – hard to achieve while on eggshells. The websites that advise you on post-operative care are largely silent on this point, yet your feeling of well-(or not)-being is dependent on it to a great extent.

Food in hospitals gets a lot of criticism, but if you had to cater for all those people with different conditions. you’d find it hard to do on the budget. There is always choice, and it doesn’t take long to find out what suits you best: personally I found fish and chips on a Friday great, and macaroni-with-potato the pits. Best to stifle that longing for a bit of wine and a cup of proper coffee – it wasn’t going to happen.

Routine humiliation is unavoidable. One of my worst moments was the first compulsory shower, for which I was taken to the shower, clothes all removed, shown how it worked, by a male nurse, an ex-sergeant-major; as I sat in the chair the shower head leapt out of my soapy hand on to the floor where I couldn’t reach it, nor could I reach the controls to turn it off, nor was there any visible means of summoning help. And he had put my zimmer out of reach (all nurses do this, I think it’s an unconscious control measure). So I sat and enjoyed the steam for a long time, until the sergeant-major returned, shouted “Ach, what a mess you’ve made”, gave me a towel and my zimmer and went off to do more caring things elsewhere.

Blubbing in public is simply Not On, so you have to hold on to the thought that these are kindly people doing their best for you and you are slow and feeble (sob) and irritating, and they’ve been up since sparrow-fart and don’t get paid nearly enough … etc.

But I found myself blubbing uncontrollably quite by surprise, on being ticked off by an auxiliary for failing to step on to a weighing machine, which I found impossible to do. Nurses came and took the auxiliary away, and said “You’ve gone quite white” and brought a chair and sat me down, and indeed I felt a bit odd for a while. Emotions all over the place.

But never mind, time was passing, soon I’d be home and everything would be fine.

Came a day when they asked “Where do you want to go for rehab?” “Eh?” “Rehab. Inverurie?” and they explained all the reasons why I couldn’t go home, still needing a zimmer, to be alone in a house with two steps down to the kitchen. “How long is rehab?” “Oh, usually a fortnight.”

OK. another two weeks and then I’d be home …

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So off in the ambulance, to Inverurie, Friday lunchtime, missing the fish and chips. Och.

It was a big Nightingale-type ward in Inverurie, and my bed was a long way from the toilet, and I couldn’t yet walk properly with the zimmer. But it’s only for two weeks, no worries. Before they’d let me home I had to be able to do stairs and make my breakfast in their kitchen, using a trolley instead of the zimmer … yeah, that would be fine. Surely.

Only two weeks later it wasn’t yet fine, the stairs were impossible, I couldn’t put weight on the right leg, I couldn’t go the length of the ward on the zimmer, it was too tiring half-hopping to keep weight off the bad leg. And I couldn’t get up the step to the kitchen to make breakfast.

Time passed, people came and after a bit they did the stairs and the breakfast and went home and new people came … And there was unavoidable TV (Eastenders etc) and CD (Daniel O’Donnell – an experience akin to drowning in warm syrup). And there was the Bed of Doom, a bed in the massive heat of big bay window where each occupant in turn went spare and had to be wheeled away – the last one after throwing her whole tray of plates, food, cup and drink hither and yon to the floor.

I washed in the basin, but eventually they insisted on a shower. But that was at the far end of the ward, so they wheeled me along and showered me, which felt great, but I couldn't stand without holding on to the pipes.

There was a phone on wheels which they would bring occasionally, and I could have a chat with the outside world. But one day my youngest daughter phoned and they said “We can’t bring it to you, you’ll have to go and answer it.” But it was at the other end of the ward. I couldn’t get there.

It was clear that their strategy was designed to make this lazy creature walk instead of sitting and lying about. But the desolation of being cut off from friends and family sent the soul into a very dark prison.

Physios came and tried to improve the walking. One physio, a blonde of perfect physique, tried to make me walk farther, and was very severe. When my daughter and her husband were visiting, I told them about her, and Will said “She’s Helga, the Horrible Hitler Handmaiden, and she keeps knives in the toes of her shoes, like Rosa Klebb”, which was a cheering thought. One day Helga the HHH got irritated and said “Let’s stop this silly hopping, shall we?” whereat tears of frustration rolled down my face. My GP, who was visiting, heard of this and had a word in high places, whereupon Helga disappeared and was seen no more.

But I still couldn’t do stairs or breakfast or walk properly, and weeks were rolling by: I’d crashed early February and now it was near the end of April.

One day an auxiliary watched me hop-zimmering and said “I saw a gentleman walking like that once. It turned out that a screw had come out and his plate had worked loose.” I wish I’d got her name because she deserves a huge bonus for observation and diagnosis; but at the time this thought was so horrible that I didn’t want to know.

My GP came a visit. “You look a bit down.” “Ug.” “I think you might be depressed, I could prescribe some antidepressant?” After a deep breath I reached for the only weaponry that was available to me: the vocabulary and tone of voice that I’d soaked up from monitoring the girls’ cloakroom at Stromness Academy, turns of phrase that I’d seen produce an effect.

Through clenched teeth, and in a monotone I said “Yes I am effing depressed, I can not effing walk, I can not effing climb the effing stairs, the effing steps to the effing breakfast are beyond my effing powers … “ and I subsided into blubbing remorse because he was a nice man and none of these words had actually been effing and many of them had been different and none of them at all nice.

“Oh!” he said, and reached for his phone. I expect I’ll be sent to a bad place now, I thought, and I heard him say “Bill? mumble mumble..” and he drifted off to where I couldn’t hear. Presently he came back and said “I’ve spoken to Bill, and he says to send you to ARI for an X-ray. That’ll convince you your leg’s all right, and you’ll find that you can walk.” Ah, Bill the head Orthopod.

And so, without packing anything, because it was only going to be a lightning visit, I was put in an ambulance and taken to ARI, where the leg was X-rayed.

The X-ray technician looked at the picture and said “Of course I’m not an expert, but no-one could walk on that leg.” It seemed that one of the screws had come loose and was gradually excavating away through the bone. But no worries, they could cut out the damaged bone and put in a prosthesis and I’d be fine.

“Hm, good”, I said, “but I need to pee, would you give me my zimmer” (which they’d put out of reach, as they do). “Oh no, you can’t walk on that leg, you’ll damage it. By the way, your GP rang with a message for you. He says to keep your sense of humour.”

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(will the prosthesis be the end of Old'n'Idle's problems? the next instalment will reveal all, or at any rate some of it.)