Dislocation of the Hip, A Most Exquisite Pain... Multiplied By Three, Please.

I remember many, many moons ago, as a young boy, being taken to the cinema by my parents, along with my siblings. It was something of a rare treat, but one that we all used to enjoy.

The year was 1967 and the film was called Doctor Dolittle. It starred Rex Harrison as a man who could talk to animals. It was remade some years ago with Eddie Murphy, but this, to me, was always the proper version, even though it looks very dated now. Anyway, I digress. So why am I rambling on about all this?

Well, quite simply, there is a particular song in the film that was sung by a certain Richard Attenborough, no less, and the lyrics are as follows:

“I have been around, I’ve seen the sights, I’ve seen things that could make your hair curl.”

Now, the reason I mention this is because, very recently, I had my right hip replaced at the excellent Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham. All went well initially, and I was delighted to be sent home the very next day. Admittedly, I was as high as a kite on oral morphine, all designed to eliminate the pain for the journey back to where I was to be cared for.

At first, all was fine. Then I noticed that if I put any weight on my right foot, it really started to hurt and my foot started to bend to the right. Over the course of the next 24 hours, it got worse, so my wonderful carer rang the ROH. They said we needed to call an ambulance, which we did at 12 noon on Wednesday. The ambulance arrived almost 24 hours later. By this time, I was trapped upstairs and could not get down the stairs.

The paramedics helped me downstairs and strapped me into an ambulance to take me to the A&E department at Worcestershire Royal Hospital. When we got there, we waited for two hours in the back of an air-conditioned ambulance on what was the hottest day since records began, with some places recording highs of 40 degrees. Now, as we all know, British people are not equipped to deal with such temperatures, so people were fainting, falling and becoming dehydrated in record numbers and, of course, all calling ambulances.

As a result, the A&E department was absolutely rammed, so I was placed on a trolley and shoved into a corridor. The air-conditioning system was broken and the heat was exceptional. The staff were brilliant. They were understaffed and chaos reigned, but they carried on regardless. As ever, the cheeky Dunkirk spirit kicked in among all the patients waiting for the care they knew would be coming soon.

Indeed, one particular experience stuck with me. One poor chap, whose name was Dave, had somehow allegedly been given a dose of morphine that he should not have had. As a result, he had managed to develop something called obstructive sleep apnoea. What happens is that your breathing can stop completely. It can range from mild to severe, and poor old Dave had it badly.

Members of staff would therefore pop into the ward where he was and try to wake him by shouting, “Wake up, Dave!” What would happen was that Dave would start snoring, and then it would get increasingly louder, but with longer gaps. Then there would be silence. Those of us who could hear him would join in with a rousing chorus of “Wake up, Dave!”, which he then did, often accompanied by a small cheer of approval from the assembled patients.

Anyway, after ten hours of being taken to different corridors and then for an X-ray, it was confirmed that I had dislocated my hip. I was taken to a side ward on the other side of the hospital. This was great news because I was no longer shoved into a public corridor. What I did not know was that it was located next door to the ward where the dementia patients were gathered. More on that in a later blog.

So, there I was, in a bed by myself, watching late-night World Cup footie, fairly high on morphine and happily oblivious to the tsunami of pain that was heading in my direction. To cut a long story short, my hip dislocated three times over 11 days. To be fair, I have experienced many different kinds of pain over the course of my career with cancer, including fairly heavy-duty surgery. I was once told by a doctor that I had been gutted like a fish. He knew because he was one of the two surgeons who had operated on me for over five and a half hours.

However, hip dislocations are different. When your hip pops out, it takes with it a very large collection of nerve endings and blood vessels, neither of which takes kindly to said violence. As a result, they record their unhappiness by sending waves of pain that are simply unrelenting. It is literally described as exquisite pain. The cure is strong drugs that numb it.

To be fair, the medical staff did all that they could to try to help, including, after the third dislocation, trying a new approach. This required binding my legs together in some sort of vice made from rubber and very strong towels.

It felt as though my feet had been nailed together, which they had not, and any movement was rewarded with another jolt of pain. The combination of strong drugs even resulted in me having a dream in which I somehow became a mermaid, which, to be fair, I had; I just lacked the fins and scales.

This brings me nicely back to Doctor Dolittle and talking to animals. If the truth be told, the pain quite literally did make my hair curl, which, ironically, it did. You truly cannot make it up, but it is all part of the rich tapestry of life, my dear chums.

The good news is that I was eventually taken back to the ROH, where my wonderful doctor, along with a small army of additional surgeons, performed the operation for a second time. Here I am, 23 days later, making a slow but full recovery, all thanks to our most wonderful NHS, which I can never thank enough.