Racing

Things have changed significantly for me in two days. Now I'm on crutches, with permission to drive, my horizons have expanded enormously. Yesterday I went into the office, had a chat with our HR person and agreed a timetable for a gradual return to work. And saw my boss, who is very keen for me to get back. And caught up with all my collegues, which was great.

Crikey, but I was knackered by the evening, tho! Moving on crutches is hard, especially when the rest of your body has done bugger all for ten weeks. I'm hoping it gets easier. And also that my weight loss stops now - I'm down over a stone since the accident, but moving about will hopefully stop the muscle loss.

Today I popped over to see my mum, and tonight I'm taking my girlfriend out for dinner. It's almost like being normal!

Today was a big day.

First, the not so good news - the x-ray of my right femur shows little or no improvement. The consultant seemed relatively sanguine about this (I guess that's his bedside manner), but wants to wait 6 more weeks, and if nothing is still happening then it'll be time for more surgery.

But now for the good news - the left tibia is declared 'fixed', and I'm up on crutches. The doc wants me to 'stimulate' the femur a little by giving it a tiny taste of weight-bearing - starting at 10% now, and rising to 30% over the six weeks. So, I shook hands with the doc and headed down the corridor to see Louise my physio, who was nearly as excited as I was. With the aid of a set of scales we found that 10% of my weight is basically my leg, relaxed (which makes a sort of sense), so I can do what is called 'touch weight bearing'. And then it was up onto the crutches, and learning how to walk again. Which takes a fair amount of concentration, and is moderately hard work physically (and I have to be careful with the femur) but God it feels to good to be up on two legs. I had a brief moment of emotion, but Louise said not to worry, as she averages two patients a week crying on her.

And not only, but also - I've been given official medical approval to drive! So I may pop into work tomorrow. Because I can.

Yesterday my good friend Steve payed a visit, and turned up with a motorcycle and sidecar - he's one of a number of friends who are turning to such devices in their middle years. I guess there's worse perversions.

So, I climbed into the chair, Fiona got on the back, and Steve took us for a 5 mile run round. It was bloody great! Apparently, at one point we reached a heady 65mph! I was actually dead easy to get in and out of the chair, tho there was the small problem of what to do with the wheelchair (F stuck it back in the flat).

Tomorrow is the day for new x-rays of my legs, and all sorts of decisions to follow thereafter. Watch this space.

A few little details to report, but not much proper progress.

I managed to borrow an exercise bike (thanks Rudy), and have been doing two 20 minute sessions a day. Sometimes while watching the Tour De France on TV. Althought I've kept the resistance low, it's been great to actually get my heart and lungs working, and even break sweat. According to my heart rate monitor, I've been getting my heart up to around 100bpm, which is ok for now.

I also swapped some emails with Andy Mackay, who was the chief sector marshal at the point where I had my accident. I asked him how I crashed (as I have no memory of it), and he replied with the following:

As for what happened, well, you appeared to come into the kink before the bridge too quickly and when you realised you'd overcooked it you sat up and grabbed the front brake. When passing our point at the end if the coast road your back wheel was a couple of feet into the air and you were starting to go over the front. At this point you parted from the bike and it scuttled off to the left, clipping a bank and running back across the road and hitting the other side quite gently. Unfortunately, that was the only gentle bit of the incident. You, having parted from the bike, flew through the air at about six foot straight into a telegraph pole, which I swear is now bent backwards slightly! The pole protector was hardly marked by the way, so thanks for that! Given the force of the impact we initially feared the worst, but we never give up, so on reaching you we got to work and one way or another got you sorted and away in the ambulance (with a Police escort no less!). As the scruts needed to take the bike and measure up the scene, and we had to do statements for the Police, things were a bit delayed, but once we got underway again we soon got messages back through the Police and the Medics that you had perked up a good bit on route to Nobles, which cheered us all up no end!

As I've said before, if it wasn't for Andy and his team, I wouldn't be here now, so I obviously owe them a great deal. I shall try to repay them, in beer, next time I'm on the Isle of Man.

I have my next appointment with Mr Holt, my leg consultant, a week tomorrow. This will be 10 weeks (and a couple of days) post-op. We'll see what the x-rays reveal this time...

...after a fashion.

At one of my bi-weekly visits to my physiotherapist today, she finished the session by getting me to use an exercise bike. I very nearly welled up, such was the emotion of being able to do something that approximated to normal exercise, and actually use my legs properly. I pedalled it round (with minimal resistance) for 10 minutes, and it was fine, so my physio (the simply lovely Louise) has recommended I try and get one for home.

Anyone got one they can lend me?

OK, so I know that x-rays of broken bones are a fairly important part of this story, and they've been sadly lacking so far. But I've finally got a CD from the hospital. Apparently the medical world has its own format for images (DICOM, if you're interested), so I had to do a bit of screen grabbing and cut'n'pasting to get them into jpegs for here, but now I've managed to load them.

There's six of them, but only one is really the money shot, so here it is:

And that was six weeks after the surgery. I don't know about you, but that still looks like a pretty big gap to me. For ref, the 'nail' down the middle is 10mm in diameter, which means some of the gaps are at least 10mm, if not more.

Links for the full set are here:
Femur 1.jpg
Femur 2.jpg
Femur 3.jpg
Femur 4.jpg
Tibia 1.jpg
Tibia 2.jpg

In other news I saw Louise my lovely physio today, and she measured the various facets of movement in my right hand, and was jolly pleased - virtually every articulation has gone up 10 or 15 degrees.

Wheelchair wheels :-(

Today was my 'big' appointment with the leg doctor (as opposed to the hand doctor, jaw doctor, etc). Six weeks and two days after the operations on my legs, I was hoping for the left leg (tibial plateau fracture) to be signed off, and thus to be allowed onto crutches (still supporting the right femur), opening the way to me moving home, driving my car, and generally re-engaging with the world.

But it didn't turn out quite so well.

Firstly the good news - the tibia looks great. The two screws holding the broken bits together look frankly huge on the x-ray, but there's been no movement - the break isn't actually visible now, and the whole thing is good. Which is the way it feels - I can easily support my weight on it, and there's no pain.

The femur is a little different. The x-rays show some rather large gaps (at least 10mm!) where there's no bone yet at all, just the pin holding things together. If I put any serious weight on this, the results could be extremely negative, and the risk of that happening when using crutches is too high. So, 'six more weeks' in the wheelchair was the prescription. On further discussion (and probably the pricking of tears of disappointment clearly visible on my face) the next appointment was set at four weeks. I'm very cheesed off with this, but I must admit those huge gaps on the x-ray have pulled me up a bit short.

The other good news is that, if I do what I'm told (as if!) the prognosis is for 100% recovery i.e. I shouldn't have any residual issues from my leg injuries. Which, given their severity (really, you want to see that x-ray) is something to feel quite happy about.

I'm still cheesed off tho.

I've agreed with my folks that I'm going to move home anyway - I can get about my flat ok in the chair, and I think I can look after myself. All I'll need is someone to do some shopping, and if desperate I can get Tesco etc to deliver. Of course, I can't get out of the building alone, but I can't get out of their house alone either; if there's a fire I'll just bloody burn. But I need to be back in my own space, with my own stuff around me, my own music and TV, not to mention my own decent internet connection (rather than this 460Kb mobile phone connection) so that I can dial into work properly, and at least try and keep my brain a bit alive.

I also met a lovely new physio today (Louise), who gave me loads of exercises, for hand (which is comning along nicely) and legs (to try and prevent muscle loss while I'm forced to sit on my arse). I'm seeing her twice a week, so that'll give me something to focus on, I suppose.

Now, excuse me while I try and find a cat to kick.