I had the good fortune recently to visit the orthopaedic hospital in Birmingham, having been on a waiting list for 43 weeks, and now at last it was my turn. If the truth be told, my mobility has been rapidly declining quite badly; on some days I can hardly walk. What I have discovered is that the worst thing I can do is not exercise; it just makes a bad situation worse. So I have learned that two things help: the first is to make sure I exercise as soon as I can and keep doing that every day, all day. The second thing that helps is ibuprofen, something which I find extremely hard to say in public places like chemists or in front of medical staff. My mouth tries to say the word, but for some strange reason, something utterly different comes out, making no sense and bearing no resemblance at all to what I am asking for.
It is not the first time I have made a monkey of myself. I recall going into my local chemist in Hagley about three years ago now. It was at that stage of my treatment when I would get mouth ulcers, a regular side effect of chemo, and you do not just get one; you get a few. My record number at any one time is 11, and they sting like anything. It is hard to eat and hard to drink, so I had to get something to manage the little blighters. I thought of only one thing: I would pop down to my local pharmacy and get some Bonjela, the rapid healing gel that you put on the affected area. So there I was in Hagley; I popped into the rather posh shop where a lady in her mid-fifties was standing there in her smart white coat, looking like the doctor that she was not.
“Good morning,” I said. “Do you have any Bonjovi?” There was a silence as she tried to process what I was asking for, which was actually a healing mouth gel and not, quite clearly, a huge American rock band from New Jersey, which of course they do not sell. Now, in retrospect, if she had any sense of humour and knew her soft rock anthems, she might have said, “Bonjovi? No, we don’t sell that. I think you must be living on a prayer, but we have a special offer on Springsteen, ideal for nasty and sensitive rashes.”
In the end, I did the only thing that mute people like me do: I just pointed at the Bonjela, at which point the penny dropped. However, for all the good that Bonjela does, it does not work on hips. So there I was at the orthopaedic hospital, where I had an X-ray that took all of 10 minutes. I then waited in outpatients for less than 5 minutes when a very nice doctor came out and called my name. I followed him into his office, where he asked how I was doing. I replied that I was doing okay, thanks.
He then said, “Right, I am going to do some tests, so lie on the bed. This will hurt,” at which point he said, “I am going to lift your bent right leg towards your head; tell me to stop when it hurts.” So, at that, he lifted it all the way back behind my head with no pain. “Does that hurt?” he asked. “No, it does not,” I replied. “Well, that’s astonishing,” he said. He then bent it to the right again with no pain. He then did the same to my other leg, again with no pain. “Okay then, that is over. Come and have a seat,” he said. He then showed me the X-ray, which clearly revealed that there was no soft tissue left at all on the left hip and hardly any on the right, so it is literally bone grinding on bone.
He then said that 99% of the time people with that level of disease have to walk with crutches, which he said he was expecting me to do. He was surprised when I waltzed in on my own two feet, unaided. I then explained that my fitness regime was quite brutal, as I exercised every day either doing a super hardcore spin lesson on my Peloton bike at home, or at least an hour at the gym on the cross-trainer at a high level of resistance, followed by weights for 20 minutes. I also mentioned that I teach karate for 3 hours every week and, while I cannot kick or do some stances anymore, I work around it. He then gave me the good news: I am a very strong candidate for a full hip replacement. He explained the risks, which in my case include a higher risk of infection due to my low immune system from the chemo after 111 doses and counting. But I am more than happy to take that chance. Quite simply, I just want to get my health, flexibility, and former lifestyle back, please. And even better, I do not have to pay £18,500 for each hip, which is brilliant. Nor will my chemo treatment stop afterwards; it will just need a bit of recovery time before it can resume as normal. So, yet again, the wonderful NHS have come up trumps. I should have my operation for my left hip within 8 weeks and then, within 6 months, my right hip, assuming of course that my next scan reveals that the cancer is still under control. But as you know, my dear chums, I never give up and never give in. So I will confront the challenge like I do all the other ones that the cancer journey has gifted me, and that includes my meeting with a cardiac specialist at the John Radcliffe Hospital on August 20th to see what he has to say about arterial fibrillation and heart flutters. But no matter what, I praise the Lord every day that I am blessed with the life that I have. So, no matter how bad life seems, it is actually wonderful and needs to be lived to the full. Live each day like it’s your last, because one day, my dear chum, it will be, but not yet.
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