Optimistic

Monday 29th March 2010

Another visit to see Kermit and as usual he was running late. The notice board in the waiting room said ‘45 minutes delay’ but it was actually an hour and a half….

“Hi there”, he said, “how’re doing”.
“My back is still giving me grief”, I replied.
He asked how I was getting on with the painkillers.
“I think the best thing I can do is to refer you to see a back consultant”, he said.

“Now, about your hip”, he continued, looking through my notes, “I received a letter from the plastic surgeon. Unfortunately I haven’t got it with me but from what I remember of it, it was quite a rambling letter.
He said that he couldn’t do the skin graft. However in his final paragraph he said that if I wanted to do the hip replacement, he would perform the skin graft”.

“I’m not happy about his letter”, he added, “so I really do need to speak to him.”.

He folded his arms, “the problem I have is, without a skin graft, I’m not able to put in a new hip. Because the infection did so much damage to the skin on your hip, there’s not a lot of good stuff left for me to use.
I was able to nip everything up using the damaged skin once the hip was removed, but once I put in a new hip, the skin will have to be stretched because of the length of the hip joint and the damage skin just won’t do that.
I don’t want to be in the position I was a couple of years ago when I put a new hip into a patient and there wasn’t enough good skin to nip it together”.
“There was a lot of pulling and heaving to get it closed”, he smiled.

“What it boils down to is no graft equals no hip”, I said.
“I’m afraid so”, he replied, “I’m really sorry I can’t be more optimistic and give you better news”.
“Let’s leave it for six months”, he said, “that’ll give me time to have a good chat with the plastic surgeon and also give you time to get your back looked at”.

While I was waiting for John to come and pick me up I pondered on the words ‘no graft equals no hip’.

The prospect of being on crutches, in a wheelchair when I go outside, not being able to do very much for myself and to have to rely on others for the rest of my life, was a very sobering thought.

For a fleeting moment sobbing my heart out did cross my mind. However what good would that do. No amount of tears, feeling sorry for myself, or people’s sympathy, would change things.

So I took a deep breath and put a smile on my face….