They Shoot Horses

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Yes, and I wished that I was a horse.

For I was lying on the kitchen floor, somehow the legs were failing to get me up, the phone was out of reach, and Widget, the biggest and greediest of the four cats, was looking down at me hungrily, for his plate was empty.

I lived alone, well out of earshot of my nearest neighbour. Perhaps in another day or two the postie might bring some mail and hear me if I shouted; or perhaps he wouldn’t, and Widget would finish me off? Over the years I’d watched big, beautiful Widget and his siblings, Fidget and Mousie, and their mother, Sooty (all rescued many years back from the Cat Protection folk in Orkney).

I’d seen how Fidge would go up a tree and knock a squirrel to the ground, and then they’d all have a game of Squirrel Tennis, and I didn’t fancy the game of Human Tennis that could well be in store. Far easier to be a horse and be shot – quick and probably nearly painless.

I brooded for a while. How ironic that this was the first day since I’d had knee replacements two years ago that I felt once again totally confident walking over rough ground, that I’d come home rejoicing and cooked a celebratory casserole of chicken, mushrooms and leeks with cream and wine; and there it was in the oven, ready to eat. Out of reach.

How doubly ironic that the rug I’d just tripped over on the way from sink to table was the very rug that I myself had made many years ago, that a while back it had developed a curl at the corner, over which I had half-tripped a few times and Not Paid Attention (stupid stupid stupid) and now my own rug had turned on me, and my own cats were shortly going to eat me, little by little, aaarrrgggh.

But why had the lizard not saved me, as it had done so often in the past? [see Saved by the Lizard, posted August 2013] Sadly, it seemed that replacing the knees included cutting the connection between the lizard and the feet. I was on my own, lizardless. Shit.

Spurred on by this thought I made greater efforts: the phone was lying on the table; if I could just reach it …

Much time passed as I experimented with one-handed press-ups (not a thing that I had ever tried) and at last I swept the phone to the floor and called the neighbours, and they came and looked.

“Help me up?” Mike looked down at me. “No, I’m not touching that, I’ll call an ambulance.” For the first time I realised that something must have broken, that would be why the right leg was at such a stupid angle and not working.

Time passed, the immediate priorities - feed cats, switch off oven - were sorted out, and chaps arrived carrying a chair thingy, and with no little difficulty they got me off the floor, strapped in the chair, out to the ambulance, away to the hospital.

And I still wonder who got to eat the chicken-leek-cream-wine casserole. Because from that day to this, eight (I think) years later, dammit, I’ve not been able to make such a gourmet dish again. Och.

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At ARI (the hospital) a young doctor laid out the alternatives for me:

1. we straighten out the femur, and you lie still until it knits together: pro: you keep bone; con: you shit into bedpan and nurses wash you and turn you regularly which isn’t easy, for many weeks.

2. we fix the break with a metal plate: pro: you keep your bone and you’ll be up and walking quite quickly; con: the bone needs to be good enough to hold the plate.

3. we cut out your femur and give you a prosthesis: pro: you walk again quickly; con: you lose the bone, and prosthesis brings the danger of infection if you get a wound, ever after.

How to choose between 2 and 3, 1 being a clear no-no? Had I known a little more and been able to speak to people and google, I might have gone for 3, but lying on a trolley and needing to decide fast, I wanted to keep my bone, and chose 2.

In no time at all, the bliss of unconsciousness. None of that showering and back-to-front flowery hospital gown stuff that had happened with the knees. Just a minute (it seemed) of blackness and I was being wheeled to a ward, tubed and doped, with a leg that lay straight again.

I was confident that I would be home within the week. I’d got back from each knee in 4 or 5 days. so a day or two longer this time?

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(will Old'n'Idle's confidence turn out to be well-founded or seriously misplaced? the next instalment will shed some light)