Crepitus - a grating or popping sound.

For nearly a month now I have been going to the gym. It is pretty much the same time every day and yet there is only one other person who I see most days. He dresses all in black like the Milk Tray man, and is what you might call a silver fox. I'm calling him Silver Tray.

Whenever I arrive he is usually on one of the running machines and is normally pelting out the yards. When he finishes he is absolutely dripping in sweat, his kit soaked through. He then does a funny thing. He prowls around the gym, it is sort of a warm down, but it seems as though he is doing it so that everyone there can see just how sweaty he has got, just how much work he has put in. After a full circuit, he dries off a bit and them drips his perspiration over a variety of machines. He's quite polite and tries to dry them off when he's done but that amount of sweat is hard to shift.

All this gym work has had a positive effect on the knee but one thing worries me greatly. Grab yourself an empty bag of crisps, now scrunch it up in your fist. That crunching noise is similar to the noise my knee makes whenever I straighten my leg. I mentioned it to the doctor when I had the last check up. This week I received a letter detailing that visit and to my surprise I was informed of the name of that noise: Crepitus. It's a brilliant Scrabble word and I can pretty much guarantee no one else will know what it means. It is actually a bit of catch all because it can describe the noise of two bones grating together or the sound made by gas, or fluid, squirting through soft tissue.

I took me, my crepitus and myself off to the Cup Semi Final this weekend. Everton offered a tame display and as I sat there at the end of the game I pondered what had gone on in the lead up to the game. To my left the Liverpool end were singing You'll Never Walk Alone, to my right, the Everton end had emptied. At moments like this I like to force myself to endure the pain of the defeat. If you rush away from it, without letting it sink in and witnessing the winning team's celebration, you lose perspective and have no vantage point from which to enjoy your next victory. So I forced myself to stay and suffer their joy. Did I regret the arguments I'd had with my brother over the ticket he gave to his girlfriend? Not really. He was wrong to do it, she was wrong to accept. Did I regret the week's salary it had cost me to pay for the tickets I did get? No, it was Everton's most important game this century and I had to be there. What hurt the most was that we had the better team but a collective inability to function against Liverpool, bred by the manager, meant that we threw away the chance.

As the last of the delighted Liverpool fans danced their way out of the stadium I finally stood up. Katie was quiet, not sure how upset or angry I was. We walked slowly to the bus stop, an empty bus came quickly and we realised that we'd make it home in time to watch the Grand National. Life didn't seem too bad after all even though I broke the silence on the bus with my crepitus as I walked up the stairs.

Nine 1/2 Weeks - Not the Film.

Just because the circuit training is for people who have had an operation don’t go thinking it is not hard work. Under the watchful eye of Clodagh and Minnie we are encouraged to do each exercise to the point of failure. Lunging forward on to the operated knee is, and I know this seems a little pathetic, scary. Every time you lean forward onto it, putting your full weight through it, there is the fear in the back of your mind that it will snap. Such things do happen but nothing serious has befallen anyone so far, although three week Aniston did arrive with a worry that she had done some damage whilst moving a mirror at home.

Kicking a football seems such a long way off at the moment. All I want to be able to do is get to level four of each of the exercises dotted around the gym. These are, as I have said before, all so simple with a healthy knee but all are really tough in our current state. Zooming around them is no good either, you have to do each one with care and attention as it is so easy for your body to trick you as I found when I had been practising the forward dip off a step at home.

In my mind I had been doing it perfectly but once in the gym it was quickly pointed out that I had been cheating myself. Stepping forward, my right hip was dropping forward and down too, thus putting the foot nearer the ground and taking the strain off the left knee.

A whole week of me working on my own had thus had no beneficial effect.

Shit, shit, shittety shit. Everything is tough, everything hurts and everything is vital to a full recovery. Leaving anything out is pointless and knocks you back.

Failure, that is, doing an exercise until you can not do it any more is hard both physically and mentally, because the point at which you can’t do it anymore is also the point at which the knee most feels like it is about to pop. I am so totally aware of every twinge in the knee both when doing the exercises and when going about doing my normal every day stuff. Something has to give because at the moment I can’t think of anything normal, even walking down the street I am concentrating on keeping the knee above the second toe, making sure the stride is even and so on. Hour after hour goes by and all I think about is the knee.

Coming back from the gym is always my favourite time, the work on the bike and walking machine, you may call it a running machine, always loosens up the knee and the walk home feels almost normal. Under the old regime I never used to think about my fitness. Now it’s all I think about. Tomorrow is another day, and another step on the road to recovery.

Wembley Update

As it turns out I am not going to Wembley.

My brother did the right thing but it caused ructions with his girlfriend so I relinquished my seat at the most important football match that Everton have played this century. 

GF has kindly said that if Everton win I can go to the final. 

Signing off until a knee update.

18.68131% Towards Recovery

Seven weeks and two days since the operation, just 31 weeks and 5 days to go till my target recovery date.

The gym has changed my life. I've never been a member of a gym before, except for one year when I got free membership having done an advert for one. In that year I went to the gym three times. The first was to pick up my free membership card, the second was to  use the facilities and the third was later that same day when I returned to pick up my forgotten towel.

It was too far away, four miles, and I was playing football three times a week so didn't have time. Now though I am at the gym more often than most of the staff. I am slowly converting Ms Rable, the receptionist. I'm over-smiling and giving out cheery vibes to see if she will cheer up. It seems to be working although she may be pulling faces behind my back.

The time in the gym itself is all fairly routine now although I am trying to vary what I do a bit more. I went back to see Mr Knee this week for another check up. He was pleased with my progress and said going to the gym everyday was fine but not to do the same thing each time.

"A marathon runner doesn't run a marathon every day in training."

Sound advice from someone who knows.

Ms Rable is actually the receptionist for the leisure centre. She gives me my daily wrist band for the gym. I have no idea why we need this, but every day hundreds of people get a paper wrist band to use the gym. You go through a locked gate and then up to the gym. Ms Rable let's you in after giving you the wrist band, so it seems pointless. I'll ask about it soon.

On entering the gym there is another reception. A young chap, handily named Jim, works there. He does general cleaning and mild sexual harassment of female gym goers. You know the sort of the thing, standing right next to them when they are on the bike, or coming up behind them when they are on the weights. I have not seen anyone complain or baulk at his proximity so I have not intervened but I will keep an eye on him.

Yesterday, Saturday 31st March, I arrived at the the gym at about 11 o'clock. As I opened the door, Jim was sitting behind his desk eating a yoghurt and bran concoction.

"Hi Jim. Is that breakfast or lunch?"

He thought for a moment, looked at his food then back at me, back at his food and then a smile came across his face. "Brunch." He laughed, a big laugh. He seemed to think he had just invented the word. As I walked off I could hear him muttering to himself; "this isn't breakfast or lunch, it's brunch. hmmm. brunch."

It's been a big week with Everton getting to the Semi Final of the FA Cup. A brilliant win at Sunderland, which I watched down the pub with the Tuesday football crowd. This created the year's biggest dilemma. How to get tickets? One of my brothers had lorded it before the game saying if we got to Wembley he knew the someone or other of the FA and he'd get the tickets easy peasy. As it happened, he did. But them texted me.

"Only got two tickets. I'm taking my girlfriend." Just that. Oooh, cold.

I won't bore you with the whole back story of why this is not just wrong but so one wrong and every single person I told this too was astonished. I was telling people I didn't even know and they were amazed.

Here are some example responses:

"You're f@cking kidding." Next door neighbour.
"What is he on?" Old friend.
"He's a f@cking tw@t." Bus driver.
"No bl@@dy way. Moron." Bloke who sleeps in the park with a pram full of old newspapers.
"It's April Fool tomorrow mate." Postman.

Anyway, eventually he realised the error of his ways and changed his mind. It had reached a point where we were on the verge of never talking again, so whilst he made the error in the first place, he stood tall and made the tough call. Well done bro.

It is the second ACL Assault Course Circuit Training tomorrow. Bring it on, I'm getting ready for Wembley, but I won't be wearing this shirt...Everton FA Cup Semi Final Shirt - Wembely!

Using a Happy Sunday Tone

Joining the gym has taken over my life. I have quickly established a routine of getting Katie out the door and off to work and then going down to the gym. I'm back by 9.30 so ready for work at 10.00.

I start with a 10 minute static cycle ride. To motivate myself I am measuring how long the first mile takes and how far I get after ten minutes. In just a week there has been a marked improvement. On day one it took 7 minutes to do the first mile and just six days later I've got that down to 4 minutes. Admittedly I went exceptionally slowly on day one, not wishing to do any damage, but I'm still pleased.

After the bike, I do the leg press. I'm doing both legs separately to make sure they both get a work out. I'm doing repetitions on each leg. 43 kilos x 20, five times on the left and 88 kilos on the right. When I've done them I do a test to see what the maximum is on each leg. Minnie, the physio, has said I need to be able to leg press at least my own weight before I am allowed to go running. I weigh about 84.67 kilos so that is the target, although I really think I need to be able to press more than my weight for running as the impact must be at least another 50%. As of this morning my max on the left is 79 kilos, the right is 160, so still a bit to go.

I've never been a member of gym before so I'm also doing some of the other machines, just for fun. Some of the other people there are serious gym'ers, pumping iron like a Los Angeles beach dweller.

I got off the bike yesterday and was approached by one of the employees.

"Excuse me mate?"

"Yes."

"You need to wipe down the machine after you get off."

"Oh, ok. sorry I didn't know that."

"Did you not do the induction when you joined the gym?"

"No. I couldn't see the point in paying £20 to be told how to use equipment that I already know how to use."

"Ah well, that's where you're wrong. If you'd been on the induction, you'd have learned that you need to wipe down the machines when you're done."

"Oh, I see. You want me to pay you £20, so you can tell me how to clean the machines for you? In effect, giving you £20 so you can explain to me how to do your job for you so you can sit at the front desk reading The Sun." I said this in what Katie calls my 'happy Sunday' tone. It's a friendly joshing tone. Not confrontational but often allowing me to make a pithy point without getting punched. It doesn't always work.

"No need to get arsey mate."

"I'm not getting arsey," still maintaining happy Sunday tone, "I'm just trying to illustrate the difference between an induction which I'd be happy to pay for, and an introduction to gym rules which should be free because it helps you, me and all the gym users. Can you see my point?"

"As I said before mate, no need to get arsey." Happy Sunday tone is now a bit strained.

"If you call me mate one more time, you'll see how arsey I can get."

He shook his head, turned and walked away, as though I was a naughty child and he was a bored teacher who had more important kids to attend to. I got some tissues, provided free, and wiped down the machine.

When I get home I have to enter all my stats before I forget them. Obviously it would be easy to take a pen and paper down with me to note these and not rely on my terrible memory but I rarely do the easy thing. I've set up an excel spreadsheet for the cycle and the leg press stats. I've also set up graphs to monitor the progress on these. They are, even though I say so myself, works of art. The trouble is, that I spend about 30 minutes at the gym, and then about an hour doing my stats. Something is wrong there.

Apropos of nothing, I found the largest bran flake of all time in my breakfast yesterday. I've attached a photo herewith. The coin is a 5p piece, there's a normal size flake to compare and I promise there is no photoshop jiggery pokery here.

You Either Went to the Gym Today...

Yesterday I joined the gym. I did it online, it took a couple of minutes. Almost too easy. It also gave me the option to not have the induction session. This costs £20, and I had been informed by the woman behind the bullet proof glass at the leisure centre* that it was compulsory.

(*Leisure Centre - why? Does anyone actually go there for leisure?)

I limped down to the gym, using the journey as my warm up; little steps, lunges, high knees, back flicks etc. I had in my bag my printed membership form which I could convert to a plastic card on arrival. Or so I thought.

"Hello." I was putting on my happy Sunday voice and face. The receptionist, a more miserable looking person it would be hard to imagine, looked up from Grazia.

"What?"

I handed her my paperwork and persevered with smiling. "Can I have a membership card please?"

"The person who does that is on lunch. You can use the gym now and they'll be here when you come out." She pointed the way. I followed her outstretched over-manicured nail to the changing room.

The gym is well stocked with all the equipment a post-operative knee patient needs and then some. I had decided to use the gym just for stuff I couldn't do at home and so I started off on the static bike. I did a nice gentle ten minutes on that and then moved onto the leg press. This is the machine that allows you to lift weights with your legs. That doesn't mean that a trouser press allows you to lift weights with your trousers, although that would be fun.

I did the same weights that I'd done at the hospital and finished off with a further bit of cycling. I felt good, felt that this was something I could do to speed up my recovery and maybe catch up with Ms 3-Week-Aniston. Not that I'm competitive at all.

On the way out I saw that Ms Rable was still at the desk. "Is the membership card issuing supremo around yet?" I thought a joke might lighten her mood but she was on the phone to her mum.

"Sorry Mum, I've got to go...yes bloody work." She put the phone down, closed her magazine with a slap and looked up. "Sorry? What did you say?"

"If it is not too much trouble, it would be really fab if I could exchange this piece of home printed paper for one of your rather lovely membership cards. Is the person who can make this happen in the building?"

She picked up the phone. "Sean? A gentleman," she said the word gentleman as though she was actually saying piece of poo, "wants a membership card...yes...there aren't any...under the what?...(she moved some stuff around)...oh...yeah...me?...oh ok then."

She slammed down the phone, obviously been working on the free weights I thought, and grabbed my paperwork. She started typing, wrote a number on the back of a membership card and handed everything back to me.

"Thank you. I didn't realise you could do it. I thought it was a specialist job for Sean."

"No, anyone can do it."

"Oh, but earlier  you indicated that the person who issued membership cards wasn't around."

"Did I?"

"Yes."

"I don't think so."

I dropped the subject and turned to leave. Blocking my way were two hefty blokes in their 50s. I hobbled round them and overheard one say to the other: "I'm just going outside for a fag. I'll see you in the gym."

I was in front of him and we exited the building together. I should have carried on walking but I'm an idiot. I turned to him.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help but overhear you say that you were going to have a cigarette and then go to the gym."

"Yeah."

"Well, I know it's none of my business, but you do realise that if you gave up cigarettes the benefit to your health would probably outdo anything that you do in the gym. You could stop paying for the gym and combine that with the money you've saved on cigarettes and maybe have a really nice treat, a holiday maybe."

"You know you said it was none of your business?"

"Yes."

"Correct."

ACL Class - Circuit training for invalids

The text came on Friday to confirm my appointment for Monday morning at 8.30am for my first ACL class.

I woke up early and got ready for the cab to pick me up. I was a little anxious about getting there on time.

"Hi. Can a book a cab for 7.30 tomorrow morning."

"Yes. From where?"

I gave her the details of starting point and destination. She asked for my credit card details.

"Thank you. Monday at 7.30am. We'll do our best."

"What do you mean you'll do your best?"

"Well it is rush hour."

"Yes, but I am booking it now, 24 hours before I need it. You must know how many cabs you have on the rota at that time, and how many are currently booked, and where they are going. It is not your first day of business, so surely you know if the cab will be with me on time or not."

"It is rush hour. We'll do our very best."

"Ok. I'll do my best to pay. Bye."

As it happened I needn't have worried for the cab arrived only ten minutes late. I had already factored in a delay of 30 minutes so all was well. The driver turned out to be what Katie and I call a chatty hunter. You couldn't shut him up.

As I opened the door. "Morning. Oh dear, what you done to your leg. I've had trouble with my back for years. My brother did his acl, but he had the op and he was fine. He'd dead now. I had a friend in my old job, I used to work in the City, well he had the ACL op. Never walked again. I'm going ski-ing next week. Granada. Dropping the girls at the beach and me and my mate go ski-ing for four days. I hope my back's alright." I closed the door and settled in for the journey.

After a while I stopped listening to cabbie, and tried to work out if he was wearing a wig.

At the hospital I sat and waited as the other class members arrived. First up was a Spanish sounding chap, not hair bun. This one had had his op at least three months ago. Then came Jennifer Aniston's younger not quite as good looking sister. Then they came thick and fast and I couldn't assign identities to them all.

We got the call over the tannoy and I followed the old hands into the gym. It is like a gym at a proper gym but not as swanky and with just one or two versions of each item of equipment.

Some people, like kids at school, already had their PE stuff on. In fact they all did except me. I got changed while they all went through a simple warm up. Not dissimilar to the one we did in the pool, but a bit quicker. By the time the warm up was over I had got changed and joined the queue to pick up our sheets.

These consist of the all the exercises we need to do to get better, listed down the left hand side, with weekly sections going across for you to monitor your progress through the levels of each exercise.

In charge of ACL class were Clodagh and Minnie so at least I knew someone. I didn't know if we were allowed to chat so I just began doing some exercises. Clodagh and Minnie went round monitoring every one and making sure we were comfortable with the things we had to do and checking if we had any problems since we last saw them.

I told Minnie that I was concerned that my knee had been clicking a bit recently, in a very similar way to before the op. It felt like the the same click that Mr Knee had shown me when he manoeuvered my knee before the op. I'd been worried about this for a few days but had not discussed it with Katie. We're not doctors and I thought there was no reason for us both to have sleepless nights about the op not working. Minnie put my mind at rest;

"All knees click. It's probably a release of pressure or something like that. But keep an eye on it. If it's really painful when it clicks that is a different thing."

I breathed a little easier and got on with things. My step forward off the step is very weak. You stand on a step with your injured leg, and try to put your other foot on the floor in front of you. Try it. It's simple if you're not injured but with the injury it felt like my knee was going to collapse under me.

I went over to the weight machine. You load up the weights, sit in a chair, sort of thing, and push to lift the weights. The idea is you need to be able to lift, with your bad leg, at least your body weight before you are allowed to start running again. the aim in the end is to lift as much as your good leg.

Good leg managed 160 kg, twice my body weight. I was quite pleased. Injured leg could only do 60 but I thought my patella was going to shoot off as I lowered the weight back down. I'd say it is comfortable with 40 so I've got a lot of work to do in the next six weeks. Minnie advised joining a gym. I thought back to my totally unsuccessful attempt to do this last week and gulped.


She left me on the weight machine and Jennifer Aniston came and sat on the static bike. When she'd arrived she was walking quite normally and I assumed she was one of the physios.

As she sat on the bike she asked me how I'd done the injury. I told her. She too had done hers playing football. I decided it was too early in our recovery relationship to say I'm not a fan of women's football. I was glad I didn't.

"When did you have your operation?" She asked as she burned through another kilometer on the bike.

"Five weeks ago." I thought, she'll be impressed with how well I'm doing. Look, 40 kilos on the weights. "How about you?"

"Three weeks." I thought I'd misheard her.

"Sorry? How long?"

"Three weeks." I nearly fell off my chair. How can she be doing so well after just three weeks? Alright she's half my age so the body recovers quicker but this is nuts. In a funk of maleness I loaded up the weights on the machine and pushed. It didn't move. I closed my eyes, scrunched up my face and pushed. My ears were popping when Clodagh came over.

"Alright Daniel?"

"Erm yeah, I think the machine's broken."

She looked at the weights. "No I think you've got too much weight on." She adjusted it and I pushed that 20 kilos up like it was nothing.

From then on I just felt like a failure. I kept mumbling to myself three bloody weeks, my arse.

Minnie booked me in for a another visit in two weeks and I made my way to the bus.

On board I sat in front of three ladies in their 60s. Their accents indicated that they were from abroad, Middle East I think, and I thought they may be on holiday but it quickly became apparent that they lived here.

"It takes two years to get a visa to move to Australia." Said the leader of the troup.

"I know." Chimed in her friends.

"But here, five minutes and you're in, with benefits. Crazy. We let anyone in."

"I know." Chimed her friends.

I turned round. I knew I shouldn't have but I couldn't stop myself. I was still fuming about three week Aniston.

"I'm sorry ladies. I couldn't help overhearing." I was addressing the ring leader. "You seem unhappy that it is so easy for people to move here. I feel proud that we take people from all over the world, find a place for them, make them feel welcome, and give them a chance of a decent life. You disagree?"

"It's too easy. They let anyone in." She adopted another foreign accent. "I'm poor and my country is poor. Can I come and live off you?" Now she put on what I think was her version of a posh English accent. "Oh yes, please come in. You can have my house." Now back in her own accent. "Disgusting."

I should have turned away.

"Forgive me, but based on your accent you weren't born here. Surely you have benefited from the very system to which you are objecting."

She stared at me as though I had just shown her my genitals. (I hadn't.) She rang the bell.

"Come on, I'm not riding a bus with a racist."

The bus stopped. They got off.