Nobody tells you about the recovery bit
I am sitting here with my foot in the air and an ice pack strapped to it, thinking about how far I have come in ten weeks.
And also about how far I have not come in ten weeks.
Nobody really tells you about the recovery bit after an operation.
They tell you about the operation. They tell you about the anaesthetic and the hospital stay and the wound. They tell you when you might be able to put weight on your foot and when you might be able to drive again.
What they do not really tell you is how much you are going to have to dig into yourself afterwards.
I consider myself pretty resilient. But this has required rather more digging than I expected.
To be fair, I had been putting off the operation for more than a year. I would like to tell you that eventually I took a deep breath, weighed up the evidence and courageously decided that the time had come.
I did nothing of the sort.
I was more or less frightened into it by my very good, very capable and extraordinarily patient surgeon, who explained what could happen if I continued to leave things as they were.
There was a possibility of what he described as a “catastrophic event”.
That sounds dramatic enough.
The catastrophic event, dear reader, was that my bone could snap.
Right.
Operation it is then.
Preparing for battle
Once I had finally accepted that this was happening, I decided I was going to prepare for it.
My theory was that if I was going to spend weeks being unable to do very much, I needed to go into it as strong as I possibly could.
So I went to the gym more. I tried to get fitter. I tried to lose a little weight because, frankly, the less of me my recovering foot had to carry around afterwards, the better.
And I researched.
Oh, did I research.
Collagen for healing. Turmeric for inflammation. Vitamin C. Beetroot juice for blood pressure. Spices. Black pepper. Nutmeg. Lotions, potions and concoctions.
I made a spice mixture that I take every day. I shall put the recipe somewhere because if nothing else you can see what I have been inflicting upon myself.
And then there is the vitamin C.
Can we discuss vitamin C for a moment?
It tastes disgusting.
I have literally just taken some while writing this and I feel this needs to be recorded for posterity. Perhaps there are delicious vitamin C drinks somewhere in the world. Mine is not one of them.
I also drink beetroot juice with a splash of lemon every morning because it is supposed to be good for blood pressure. Is it working? I have absolutely no idea.
But it is not horrible and I cannot imagine it is doing me much harm, so I am continuing.
This is apparently who I am now.
Thirty minutes of ice and… nothing
The ice pack has just come off.
It has been on my foot for thirty minutes, during which time my foot has also been elevated.
I was expecting a transformation.
There has been no transformation.
My foot looks exactly as swollen as it did thirty minutes ago.
Also, has anyone who tells you to “elevate your foot above your heart” actually tried to do anything while their foot is above their heart?
It is surprisingly difficult.
Try having a cup of tea.
Try using a laptop.
Try watching television without arranging yourself into something resembling an advanced yoga position.
I will say this for the whole experience: at my age I had no idea I possessed this degree of flexibility.
Every cloud.
Giving up control
The physical stuff is only part of recovery.
The thing I was much less prepared for was losing my independence.
I could not drive.
I could not just get up and go somewhere.
For weeks, I could not properly shower. The wound was horrible, I could not stand for long enough and I simply could not safely do it.
For someone accustomed to having at least one and sometimes two showers a day, five weeks of flannel washing felt enormous.
Except, strangely, it also did not.
Because what are you going to do?
It reminded me of being in hospital and using a bedpan. In theory, the idea is mortifying.
In reality, you cannot walk.
So you use the bedpan.
Nobody cares.
You discover that quite a lot of the things you thought were terribly important cease to be important when you simply cannot do them.
And that has carried on at home.
Jules has cooked. Jules has cleaned. Jules has done all the things that I would normally do — and, more importantly, all the things I would normally have very definite opinions about how to do.
Normally I am the person saying, “Stay away from the kitchen. I will do it.”
Or quietly — perhaps not always that quietly — noticing that something has not been done in what I consider to be the right way.
I have had to abdicate responsibility.
And do you know what?
I think I may be a slightly better person for it.
I am calmer.
Things can be left in the kitchen overnight.
Apparently civilisation does not collapse.
Sometimes we can say, “We will do that tomorrow.”
And I can go to bed.
I am not proposing that we make a habit of this, obviously. There are standards.
But I have learned that I can loosen my grip a little.
I can trust someone else.
I can trust the process.
And then there is learning to walk
This is another thing nobody really explains.
You think you know how to walk.
Of course you do. You have been doing it for decades.
And then somebody says:
Heel. Toe.
Suddenly walking requires concentration.
Heel. Toe.
Stand upright.
Heel. Toe.
Do not fall back into the movement that feels comfortable simply because that is how you have always done it.
Because one of the reasons for going through all of this is not merely to get me back to where I was before the operation.
The ambition is better than that.
Better movement. Better functionality. A better way of walking.
And that means that some of the recovery is about not returning to normal.
It is about learning a new normal.
That is difficult when your body has spent years becoming extremely good at compensating.
Every instinct says: do the thing that feels easiest.
Recovery says: no. Try this instead.
Heel.
Toe.
Again.
The bit we perhaps do not talk about
There is another side to long recoveries.
Isolation.
I am not lonely. I am extraordinarily lucky. I have a partner who has been fabulous, kind and patient and who has not once complained about suddenly acquiring a full-time passenger who cannot drive herself anywhere.
But I have thought about people who go through this alone.
And about relationships that find this sort of thing much harder.
There is something slightly reminiscent of COVID about it.
Your world becomes very small.
You cannot drive. You cannot go somewhere by yourself. Your normal routines disappear. You are suddenly spending an enormous amount of time with the same person in the same place.
COVID tested relationships in exactly that way.
We survived that rather well too, which presumably means Jules and I actually quite like one another.
Useful to know.
But recovery has made me think about how much independence contributes to our sense of ourselves.
And what happens when, temporarily, it disappears.
Ten weeks
So here I am.
Foot elevated.
Ice pack discarded after achieving apparently bugger all.
Vitamin C consumed.
Ten weeks after an operation I avoided for more than a year.
I am stronger than I was.
I can do things I could not do.
I am learning to walk differently.
I am learning to relinquish control.
And I am learning that recovery is not a straight line from “operation” to “better”.
Some days you suddenly realise how far you have come.
Other days you stare at your swollen foot after thirty minutes of icing and think:
Seriously?
Perhaps both things can be true.
Perhaps recovery is partly about getting your body back.
But perhaps it is also about discovering what happens when you are forced to stop, surrender some control and accept help.
I am not sure I would have volunteered for that particular lesson.
But I think I might be glad I learned it.
So, over to you.
If you have had an operation, an illness, an injury — or anything else that temporarily took away your independence — what was the bit nobody warned you about?
And did it change you?
Put the kettle on. I would really like to know.