Feb 2010

It’s easy to take an everyday thing like walking for granted. I’m a 50 year old man and I take lots of things like walking, driving a car, putting my socks on and sitting comfortably on the loo as the normal state of affairs.

It comes as quite a shock to be reminded of how vulnerable these assumptions are.

Even for someone like me who works with other peoples physical limitations all the time it’s still most uncomfortable to be confronted by my own mortality and the fragile nature of our lives.

I was walking out with Sally and the horses the other day and we were approaching the arched wooden foot bridge over the creek. A three year old girl and her mother were at the far end feeding some ducks small pieces of bread. I was on the other side of the horse and soon lost sight of them behind her long head and neck as we got nearer the bridge.

I vaguely remember hearing a noise from the bridge but didn’t register what it was. I couldn’t see her but the three year old had seen the horses and was thundering, as only three year olds can, across the wooden bridge towards the horses. Her mother, not a light weight, came thundering even more loudly, and yelling after her.

Susie, the thoroughbred, gave them one head tossing glance and jumped sideways three feet, neatly bundling me sideways as well. It’s an odd sensation that people who spend time around horses come to know. Suddenly your sense of place in the world is shattered as you’re collected up in the huge power of a horse moving quickly and depositing you somewhere else.

I kept myself in a half squat as I touched down and might have got away with it if Indy, the warmblood behind Susie hadn’t decided to also have a freak out about the dreadful monster that was attacking her friend Susie.

She also jumped sideways, upwards and backwards all at once. Susie saw her go and spun a circle around the lead rope pushing me along in front of her, already way off balance.

I don’t remember the rest but when the world stopped heaving I was lying in a heap with everyone looking down at me, especially the horses, as if wondering what new game I was playing now. But I knew it wasn’t a game.

Fortunately, Sally had been on the right side of her horse so Indy had jumped away from her.

I stayed down a while and Sally took both horses back to the paddock and fetched the car. I meantime, slowly climbed up my legs, avoiding putting any weight on my right one till I was standing. Sally had about a mile to take the horses back to the paddock, let them loose, get the car and rush back. I managed to make it 20 metres to the gates of the park in the same time.

It took about a 3 seconds to go from ‘normal’ to ‘everything’s changed’.

Subsequent investigations showed a fracture around the top of my thigh bone. I have two hip replacements and the fracture was near the top of the remaining right thigh bone where the artificial hip is pushed down into the centre of the bone. Not a good scenario.

Worse though was that the xray clearly showed the state of my 20 year old hip replacements, they were very worn and had lasted ten years longer than their expected life span already. The bone density wasn’t good and the surgeon didn’t have much hope of the fracture healing on it’s own.

Bugger!

So, crutches again, no driving, minimal weight bearing, no work, pain killers, fights with insurance companies, red tape, paper work, operations, rehabilitations, frustrations, frustrations, frustrations. Been there, done that, had the scars to prove it, didn’t need it again.

I’d known the state of my hips for quite a while but there was never a convenient time to check them out. Besides, out of sight – don’t sweat it. To tell the truth, I didn’t really want to know. While my hips were functional and I was managing. Why fix what wasn’t broke? – one of my fathers sayings, but now it was broke and needed fixing.

I joked that I’d been saying I needed a break for a while …. well, now I had one. You have to be so careful what you ask the universe for as you’ll most certainly get it!

When I’d had my hips replaced twenty years ago in Melbourne after one of the chemotherapy drugs shut off the blood supply to the balls of my hips, this type of hip prosthesis was brand new. Instead of two metal pieces, one a cup and one a ball being inserted to replace the originals I had the two metal pieces but with a ceramic ball the size of a large marble on the end of one which fitted into a neoprene plastic cup inside a metal frame of the other. The idea was that when these bits wore out they could be replaced with much less hassle than replacing the entire shooting box.

Good theory, but these ones had done so well that now there was some doubt whether the spare parts were still available. The manufacturers warranty requirement had ended a couple of years earlier.

When the orthopaedic surgeon had come to talk to me about the situation I’d mistaken him for one of the student doctors, or a doctor still in training. I’d been told I was very fortunate to have this guy as his specialty was hips and he’d just come back from working overseas. Still, he looked so young!

However, as we got talking, and as I got over myself he didn’t seem so bad. He certainly knew what he was talking about and had covered the bases already. He led me through the options and had anticipated my responses. He granted me the room to get my head around it all and to see how things went for the next month.

I left feeling heartened and grateful, which was so much better than the determined denial I’d arrived with.

I had a little time now though to get some perspective. All things considered we decided to give it a month to see if the fracture would heal, but still try to find the replacement parts my hips needed in the meantime.

I began to think about this grateful thing the next day when I woke up warm in bed on a cold drizzly morning. Normally I’d have been in the car heading off into town.

How had I come after the xrays and the surgeon and the ache in my hip had I come away feeling grateful? How come I still felt grateful?

I was grateful to find a man with the necessary skills who seemed to have a passion for doing the job I needed help with. I was grateful to have come so far down the track before having to do this. I was grateful for my current good health and for all the work I’d put into learning to walk well, and how well it had payed me back. I was grateful for the progress in technology that meant there would be a solution to my present problem and that it too would pass. I was grateful to be warm in bed with Sally on this cold, wet morning.

I was also grateful for the break. I had so much to do and my normal life wasn’t leaving me enough room to get it all done, now I could. I had a book to finish, and a course to write, and market research to do and a website, blog etc to get going.

It was coming up to summer and this looked like being a nice way to cruise into the good weather, obvious drawback excluded. It was a one trick pony problem. There was a problem and there was a way of fixing it, and then it would no longer be a problem.

It wasn’t and ongoing disease or long term disability. I had the skills I needed to be able to recover from this well. I’d done it before and learnt the hard way, but this time I was way ahead of the game. I’d spent years sorting out my own and other peoples movement challenges and now I could really put some time into my own wellness. I knew I’d learn a lot from this, and find even more motivation for my work.

In a way it was a clarifying event. It limited some things that I could do but left me with more energy to bring to the other things I wanted to do. It had a definite time frame and it could be worked around productively.

Lying in my warm bed, my favourite place, with a cup of tea and just an ache in my hip that said I’d been lying on it for too long it was hard not to smile, just a little bit. It may not be the best way to get a break but it was the break I’d got – so I might as well enjoy it!