A Big Trip Out - The Audition

I have something to confess. Don't think bad of me, it was Katie's decision - we have a cleaner. I won't go into the details, that would be a blog all of its own. But I have to admit it so I can relate this tale.

Kristina is from the Ukraine. Since the office has been at the house we have had a regular routine. She doesn't really like having the people at home while she cleans so I keep out of her way.

She opens the front door and shouts up to me [do you own accent here - it's fun] "Hello Daaaniel."

"Hi Kristina."

"How are you?"

"Good. You?"

"Fine."

She then goes about her business like a whirling dervish. When she reaches the office I move, and when the office is free again: "Daaaniel, you can go back to office now." I do as I am told.

We don't have much more to say than this, we're both busy. But then when I first injured my knee and she saw me with my foot up she came in and looked aghast at my situation, put a hand on a hip: "Daaaniel, what have you done?" It was sympathetic and she had an empathetic look on her face but I felt, as I explained, that I had been naughty.

The leg got better, time passed, then I had the operation. Hand on hip, look on face: "Daaaniel..."

So today when she was here and I had to go out for an audition, well she wasn't happy.

"Daaaniel. Where you going?"

"I've got a meeting."

"You go with sticks?" She pointed at my crutches. "Like this?" She gestured at my whole being.

"Yes. [Pause] Sorry." I'm was pleading now to be allowed to leave. She turned back to her dusting, tutting loudly.

I hobbled out, got to the bus stop, got to the audition, went in to the audition and spent 95% of the time explaining about my knee. I am beginning to sympathise with pregnant women who everyone wants to talk to. The audition went ok and then I got the bus home.

As I was sitting on the bus a couple of women got on and stood near me. Near enough for me to hear their conversation as we approached my stop.

"I fekking hate it round here." She was Irish, let's call her Sinead. She was early 50s. Her friend was Russian, let's call her The Friend.

"No, I don't like either."

"It's a shitehole. I told them I don't want to come round here. It stinks."

The bus got to my stop and I got off, the ladies got off behind me and continued their tirade against the area where I live. After a few more steps I could contain myself no longer and so I stopped and turned.

"I'm sorry ladies, I couldn't help overhearing you. Do you mind me asking? As you hate it around here so much, where do you live that is so lovely that in comparison this is a, what did you call it?, a shitehole."

Sinead's chin hit the floor: "Don't you use your filty language at me."

"I'm quoting you."

The Friend "Pervert." Sinead "Get out the way. We've got business here."

I was gobsmacked. I stood and watched as they crossed the road, not using the perfectly good crossing but going ten yards after it, and went in to the church.

I shook my head and looked down at my aching knee. We'd had a big day out, a nice audition in which I had not been too crap, and now we were nearly home and a foul mouthed Russian had called me a pervert.

My knee looked back up at me: "Ok, it happened, can we stop standing around in disgust and get home?" The knee was feeling swollen and a little painful so I did as he had asked.

The Pithy Elbow - A slight tangent

Being unable to get downstairs in the night to visit the toilet has been a major inconvenience, for Katie. I am enjoying the concept of the potty and have now found a method which makes the process easy, almost fun. She on the other hand is having problems sleeping while someone else is weeing in the bed.

Her response to this, even though she knows it is necessary, has been to pass a pithy comment at some point during the process, sometimes while I am waiting for it to begin, or maybe during the flow, and sometimes at the end.

Nothing nasty but enough to take the edge off my fun.

"Come on, push it out." or

"Tinkle tinkle little star." and so it goes.

It got to the point where my ability to go was being hampered because I was waiting for the comment to air, before I could get on with business. Eventually I had to say something.

"Katie, I appreciate that it is not conducive to a good night's sleep to have someone weeing in your bed. I know that. But I can do it all much quicker and more efficiently if I am not dreading your pithy comment at some point."

"Oh." She was a little taken aback. "Well it's not much fun waking up to hear the splash of urine disturb the quiet night air." She was a little defensive.

"I know and as soon as I can walk again the potty will go." I tried to hide my regret. "Ok? But please stop it with the pithy comments."

She nodded agreement.

Phew. I'd seen a problem, I'd addressed it and thus avoided a potential cold war.

Nightime came after the discussion and at about 2am the urge to pee arrived. Creeping up on me unnoticed until it became urgent. Aware of our earlier discussion I attempted to do it in silence.

I slowly picked up the potty, got into position and started. All good. No comment from Katie, although I could tell from her breathing that she was awake. I thought she was probably struggling hard not to say anything but appreciated her effort.

All done, the potty went back under the bed and I lay back, feeling much more comfortable. Just as I was congratulating her, in my head, for not saying anything, she slowly but deliberately nudged me with her elbow. It wasn't a shove, but was more than a brush.

That elbow spoke volumes.

"I heard you wee." it said "but I kept quiet. I don't like you weeing in the bed, but I am adult enough to realise it is required. I am the better the person and we both know it."

In the morning, as I delivered the coffee, I had to say something.

"Thanks for keeping quiet during the wee. Was the pithy elbow really necessary?"

She smiled and supped her coffee. The Pithy Elbow was born and now rules over me.

The Daily Routine

I've now fallen into a pattern of behaviour, pretty soon, this will become a habit.

Every morning I wake up, thanks to a coffee brought to me by Katie, ah coffee in bed, the best moment of the day. Then I roll up my pyjama leg and see how the swelling is. I take a picture, Katie has a look too. We are waiting for the arrow to disappear. We have discussed getting it tattooed on as a permanent reminder but I don't kneed that just yet.

Then I do some exercises. Straight leg lift, straightening the leg, bending the leg as far as possible, and then lying on my front lifting the lower half of the leg as far as possible. All 20 reps.

I slowly make my way downstairs, yesterday, Saturday 25th was the first time since the op that I have done it without the crutches.

Once down I start making breakfast and Katie's sandwich for work. By the time I'm done, she is showered and dressed and we eat together at the breakfast bar. She doesn't like me calling it that but I can't think what else to call it. The window looks south-east so we always get the sun coming up over the nieghbours' houses' gardens. It's lovely.

We have a long established routine for our breakfasts so I don't have to think about it: Monday - cereal, Tuesday and Thursday - porridge, Wednesday - fruit buns, Friday - crumpets.

Normally we'd chat at the breakfast bar, but my leg aches when I still on a stool without it raised so I finish my coffee on the sofa, while she gets ready to, and then, leaves for work.

My work day begins and is punctuated by exercises, icing and raising the leg. I'm lucky that my job allows this without interrupting either. My figures are up on last January and February so far in spite of the operation and in a more difficult climate so I'm quite pleased.

Added to the bed exercises I also do a ten minute walk every couple of hours. This is up and down the house, and out round the table in the back garden. I've also started to doing squats against the wall.

The most painful moment is at the end of heel hanging, when I have to try and bend the knee again. It's like anything you do with your body. If you leave a limb or muscle in an extreme or extended position for any length of time and then try to move, it hurts. I always take it slowly as I raise the knee again but it's always painful.

And so the days will go by. It's already two weeks since the operation. For a 40 week recovery period that means I am 5% of the way through. 1/20th of my recovery already done. I'm not enjoying it as such, but I am looking forward to the challenges ahead.

Second Full Week

To cheer myself up I ordered a couple of CDs and a book on Amazon. The book, I listen to the wind that obliterates my traces, has still not arrived but the two CDs have. Ke$ha and Avril Lavigne's latest offerings. I know I should have outgrown this type of music but for some reason I haven't. As soon as they arrive I put them on and instantly feel better about the world. The nine months ahead does not seem that long. The peculiar thing about songs like theirs is that they make me want to have a really short haircut.

I can't explain it, but while I am listening to them I imagine myself going down to the barbers and getting a number 1 all over.

The same day that I went to see Mr Knee was pancake day. Katie brought home the ingredients, it is her second favourite day of the year. Her first is bonfire night. When that comes round I will almost be back to full fitness, if all goes well.

I always make the pancakes, she always produces the fillings. She's a traditional two savoury followed by two sweet type of person. So we have ham and cheese first, times two. Then she has sugar and lemon juice. I like sugar and cinnamon. Hmmm. Always on this day, I say to her as we finish the last one; "We should have pancakes everyday." She smiles and starts washing up.

The week is building up to my trip to the physio hydro pool. Jimmy has done his duty already this week so I ask another friend Paul. As he arrives and I fall into the front seat I think about the fact that both he and Jimmy are only friends because of playing football together. I then do a mental check of all my closest friends and without football and the playing of it, none of them would have survived. It saddens me a little that my life is so blinkered but gives me a further incentive to get playing again.

Paul has to be back early so has to drop me at the hospital about an hour before my appointment. I'm not too bothered and I sit at the front of the hospital watching people come and go. After about thirty minutes I realised that everyone I have seen would fall into what you might call 'character actor' territory. Not a single really good looking person. I become obsessed with this and try to search out, unsuccessfully, some lookers. I myself fall into the norm, I'm no looker and I formulate a theory that the genes of good looking people must just make them less likely to get ill. They have symmetrical faces, and all is good for them.

Time passes quickly and I have to hurry along to the pool.

The pool is about 20 foot, by 20 foot, the water comes up to just above my waist, and is warm like a bath. There is something slightly weird about standing there with two other patients as we listen to the physio. It's like we are old mates having a bath together.

One of the others had a knee op a few months ago and this is his last pool session. I'd seen him walking in earlier and he was still limping heavily. The other broke his ankle in January.

Jake, the physio, standing in for Helen who is ill, takes us through a very mild warm up. Some bending and lifting of legs. Standing on toes etc.

Then he gives us each an exercise to do for two minutes. I start with a buoyancy aid on my left ankle. The aim is to bend my leg backwards from the knee and let the aid lift it up and for me to push it down. This is followed by using a buoyancy noodle under my left foot which lifts the leg forwards, bending again at the knee, and then me pushing down. The third exercise is squats, and this if followed by going up and down the stairs into and out of the pool. I can't do this last one coming down, the knee feels weak and insecure.

When we're done we come back into a group for what I refer to as the ministry of funny walks. No one laughs.

Jake gives us various exaggerated walking styles to do back and forth across the pool. The final one is walking backwards "carefully. I'll tell you when you're at the side." Knee injury bloke is the quickest and bangs into the stairs. Jake apologises "Sorry, I was thinking about something else." We all walk backwards a lot slower after that. The patient physio trust has gone.

After the walks, Jake calls time and as we are getting out he issues a warning. "It goes without saying that you should not try any of these exercises at home, unless you have your own pool as it would be dangerous."

"As dangerous as walking backwards into the stairs?" Asks knee op. We all chuckle, Jake goes red.

 I am knackered. I feel more tired after that half an hour than I normally would after a full footy match. It takes me fully twenty minutes to get dressed. I'm drained and my knee is killing me. I've stopped taking the painkillers and right now I am regretting it.

As I wait in reception for Katie to pick me I get surrounded by sick people. One poor old chap is in a wheelchair, with his wife and son. They're walking, not in the wheelchair. He looks like death as his wife tries to feed him a sandwich. Every now and then his left leg starts shaking with pain. She rubs it, which makes it worse and debris falls out his mouth. On the other side an even older Indian lady is left in a chair whilst her son goes to get his car. She is mumbling to herself. I feel depressed for myself, sorry for them, and ready to give up as I see what awaits us all.

The old chap holds out his hand, and his son holds it for a moment. It seems to calm everyone down. Just that small touch, bringing them together.

And then they're gone and Katie's here. I'm glad to get out of there. I don't speak on the journey. I just think about death. It's been a daily obsession for a few years now, but to confront it at such close quarters was too much.

Back to Mr Knee

Just 11 days after the operation I was back at the hospital for my first visit to Mr Knee, followed by my first physio session.

Katie was at work so my good friend Jimmy gave me a lift. He had a great route, thanks to a building job he'd done a few years ago which was on the same route. Little had he known at the time how handy that would be.

As always I arrived early, I'd given Jimmy a false time because although he is a good friend he is from Cyprus and drives very safely. His route made my fears ridiculous.

I sat in the waiting room right in front of the sign which reads Patients will be seen in appointment order, not arrival order. Jimmy must have been laughing.

In came the Spanish bloke who had been first on the list on op day. I saw his hair and realised that his top of the head bun was indeed a fashion decision not an operative caution. Hey I'm no fashionista and don't have enough hair for buns so who am I to judge. Then in came Lumley-lite. It was then that I understood that what Mr Knee was doing was recreating operation day.

Spanish bun went in first. He hadn't come out when I was called in and I lay down, trousers off, in the cubicle next to him. I heard Mr Knee come in and tut as soon as he saw Spanish-bun's knee. Oh dear, I thought. As it turned out Mr Bun had not been doing his exercises, had not been doing the 10 10 10 , and had generally not lost any of the swelling. Mr Knee gave him a right good telling off.

Whilst this was going on Nurse Joan entered my cubicle to take out my staples. When they tell you they have stapled you rather than used stitches, for some reason I never imagined actual staples, but when she took off my plasters there they were, industrial staples from a staple gun. She had an office staple remover and started pulling them out. I winced in pain.

"I can't stop," she said in a friendly but firm tone "if I stop we'll never get it done."

To take my mind of it I told her that I was taking a picture of my knee every day and that at the end of my rehabilitation I was going to put them together in an animation of recovery.

She looked at me with pity.

"I would tell you to get out more, but your knee probably won't let you."

Mr Knee bounded in and stroked my leg for a bit. They all do this. They treat your leg like a project that they and you are working on, not like it is part of your body.

He told me straighten it, bend it and lift it.

"Looks good."

"Better than Spanish-bun?"

"Oh yes. He's a very naughty boy."

Then he did something that I wasn't ready for and nearly fainted. He sat on my foot, with my leg bent at 90 degress, clasped his fingers together at the back of my knee and pulled. I was expecting my leg to come off at the knee joint but..

"Rock solid." He declared. "Didn't move a millimetre."

"Don't do that again please."

"What?" He did it again with an evil chuckle. "This? Hey, that joint is stronger than its ever been."

He stroked my leg again, almost absentmindedly, and thought for a moment. "Ok, let's see you again in four weeks. Keep up the 10 10 10. Good work." and then he was gone.

I got dressed and made my way over to physio.

Clodagh came to get me and I hobbled after her to another cubicle.

"Trousers off, on the bed." This was after a series of questions about what I'd done to injure my leg (some bastard fouled me) and what my aims were in my recovery (to play football again as soon as possible). She started stroking my leg and I began to wonder if this is the first thing they teach you at medical school.

She got a special ruler out that bends in the middle. At school I would have known the name but not now. She told me to bend my leg as far as possible. I managed about 90 degrees, she measured it and noted it. She did the same on the good side. It seems a lot of this is about getting your leg as good as the other one. Then we did the same with straightening. She took a deep intake of breath.

"Ok, we need to get that bend up to 90 degrees. I'm going to book you in for the pool."

This is serious I thought. She booked me two pool sessions and then back with her after them and I made my way out.

No Jimmy to pick me up, he had an audition as a dictator's double, and the dictator for a play in Bath. I ordered a cab. It cost £15, and I began to wonder how I was going to afford to recover.

This had been my first big day out since the op and when I got back I was knackered. It made the walk to the co-op seem like just that. I lay on the sofa and fell asleep, dreaming about people stroking my leg like a Bond villain stroking his cat. I awoke with a start to find Katie sitting on the sofa, stroking my leg.

The Second Weekend

Katie had to go away for work on the second weekend. Well that's what she said. It may be that she was sick of me talking about my knee, and tired of my middle of the night bedside urination. Either way, I was home alone, still on crutches, unable to drive and no one to help me if I fell over.

As she left she said, "Oh, sorry, I forgot to get the bread. Bye."

I sat and looked around me. Suddenly the house felt very big, I felt very small and my leg totally useless. I decided that the trip for bread should be done early while I still had energy. I had not left the house since the operation so it was all very exciting.

I wanted to get back for Football Focus at 12.30, so left at 11.15, thinking that would leave me plenty of time. Oh I could not have been more wrong.

Under normal circumstances, the Co-Op is about a ten minute walk. On crutches, in pain, with a rapidly swelling knee, it took over 40 minutes. I had taken my radio with me, and at one point Radio 4 switched to the Shipping Forecast. I can't remember which region they were talking about but I do remember them saying about a storm "moving slower, losing its identity". They were talking about me.

At one point I saw ahead of me a woman on crutches. I thought about high fiving her, but quickly realised we'd both fall over. Instead I thought I'd give her a friendly smile. She looked at me like I had farted on her breakfast. So much for crutch solidarity.

The journey there had been awful and long but it was a breeze compared to the one back. At one point I just stopped, hoisted my leg up and considered getting a cab. I realised that in cab terms I was only 2 minutes from home so abandoned the idea. All through the trip, I had been trying to do the walking properly, just using the crutches to take the weight, but I was in too much pain now and was bored of the whole adventure. I started just swinging away proper crutch style. Much quicker, less stable and very tiring on my arms.

That did get me home for Footy Focus but I was so tired I fell asleep as soon as I sat down. I woke up at about 5. So much for my afternoon of sport. I've never been to Everest but I doubt that more effort is required to get to the summit than I expended getting to the Co-op. And so the weekend went. When you are doing stuff on crutches everything takes ages, and is ridiculously tiring.

When Katie arrived home on the Monday evening I greeted her like she'd been away for 3 years, not 3 days. I think she was touched that I had missed her so much. I hoped she'd never go away again.

A Week of Work

I'm lucky that my office is at home and all I need is a computer, a phone, a piece of paper and a pen. This meant I could stay home, do everything I needed to do for work and also fit in my various exercises.

The one problem to be ready for was if I was on the walk around the house and the phone went. I had to convince myself that I could get to the phone without hurrying. Hurrying when you're on crutches is dangerous. I found this out on day 1.

I was really excited when I  saw Katie appear in the front window on her bike and was suddenly determined to open the door for her. I'm chivalrous like that. Stupid.

I jumped up grabbed my crutches and set off without steadying myself, my left leg whacked into the crutch and I went flying. As I was in mid air, I just managed to get my right leg under me and to land on it, my left was all over the place and it felt like the surgery had exploded. I didn't want Katie to know how stupid I was so hid the pain, opened the door and smiled.

Once she was in I went back to the sofa and tried to assess the damage. It felt bad. I tried some movement but everything hurt. I was convinced I had undone the surgery. I breathed slowly and told myself to calm down. Katie was busy getting dinner ready but I was in despair.

In the end I convinced myself it was ok, but the extra pain only subsided after bed time.

As each day passed the exercises improved and I was starting to move the weight from my crutches to my leg. By the end of the week, I couldn't walk without them, but could hobble.

The only major excitement of the first week was a shower. You're meant to keep the wound dry for the first 12 days. I didn't have my first shower till the Tuesday evening. That was five days after my previous shower. Urrrghhh, I hear you cry but luckily, when you don't move about much, you don't really sweat, so you don't really smell. I'm lucky too, that I am generally not a smelly person. If I wear my boxer shorts, by accident, for two days running, they still smell clean. I kid you not. I've smelt them in this situation to try and work out if they are clean or not. Nada, zilch.

So I wasn't smelly.

How to keep the wounds dry? Cling film, it says it the leaflet. On the first shower I used a bit too much, enough to wrap a small cow, but boy was my leg dry. Over the next few days my technique improved such that by Friday, I was using hardly any and still keeping it dry.

It's a bit nuts how strange situations force you to learn new, and totally useless skills but if you ever need anything wrapping in a rain storm with not much cling film, let me know.