At last - a surprise breakthrough!

Thank you to my long-suffering friends who have digested these medical bulletins. Hopefully, I am turning the corner. And you can skip this bulletin anyway!


7 weeks after surgery, my hospital visit this week involved another set of Xrays, followed by a consultation with my surgeon.  To our delight (oh, yeah!) he announced my bones were healing appropriately and I was even given a photocopy of the metalwork, resembling an inverted Eiffel Tower.  Cautiously, he advised me to keep my boot/cast on and begin weight-bearing by increments of a quarter of my weight each week over the next month. I was left more than a little puzzled by how to  calculate all this, and (honestly) some disappointment that I would inevitably have a hop-along gait for several more weeks.


Then I was whisked off to the Physiotherapy dept.  Conner (a lively Irish lad) who has overseen my exercises immediately tested my progress.  You know how that happens! Pressing hard (yes really hard) against my foot he measured my resistance in different directions.   He expressed pleasure at my improvement. (I must admit I have practiced my exercises relentlessly in order to impress him!)  But guess what!  He announced I could renounce my boot/cast for ever and begin to walk normally, with the help of crutches.  There and then, with him at my side, I walked the length of the room (though with a touch of bladerunner along the bottom of my right foot).


I need to be careful because walking 'normally' without crutches is still a considerable way off (and driving etc). But what liberation!  And what wonderful timing too.  For the next day I had to address a Thanksgiving Service for a friend whom I was proud to know,  David Ridgeon MBE,  whose stature in Cambridge and beyond brought over 600 to the service in my old church at St. A's.   To reduce all the drama of getting a wheelchair onto the platform etc. to a simple shuffle on crutches was a real answer to prayer.  Well, like the whole process has been!  So, I'm on the way.