Excuse me if I do a 2-week update – I’ll forget, you see, however much I now think I’ll remember, and be annoyingly vague when people who are about to have the same operation ask. As they will. I did. This is long, I’m afraid, but it’s not gruesome – however, I will write something totally frivolous tomorrow to make up for it.

It’s now two weeks since the operation. The wound has almost completely healed to a thin pink mark. It feels somewhat numb around that area and, comparing it to the other thigh, it’s still a bit swollen. When I got home, I took paracetamol for five days, a total of 16 doses.

I’m sleeping pretty well on my back, and I think the key to this is plenty of pillows so that my back can slope and is well supported. I also have a pillow in the bed which, to start with, I put between my knees so that I wouldn’t accidentally turn on my side and now (because I don’t, and as I’m not lying completely flat I can’t do in my sleep) I sometimes have it under my knees, sometimes under the length of the leg if it’s uncomfortable, and sometimes under my feet if the heels feel sore.

I’m walking easily with one stick and don’t limp. I can walk without a stick but I limp slightly as my right leg is a bit longer than my left – I still think this will correct itself and am not bothered about it. I also find that walking for long without a stick puts too much weight on my operated leg, so it’s more comfortable with, but if I want to carry something in each hand it’s quite possible. I must not bend that leg at an acute angle – less than 90º – but I can bend over, standing on the left leg and putting the right one behind me in the air. I can pick things up from the ground that way. What I can’t do is dress my lower body without tools – I use a grabber and a sock-aid. I can’t take off my own socks – or not off myself, at any rate. I have a long-handled shoe horn, but haven’t used it yet as I’ve only worn a pair of slip-on shoes and slippers.

It’s starting to be possible to sit on a lower chair, though if I do, I need to remember to stretch my legs out and lean back a bit. I’m supposed not to cross my legs at all – it’s really hard not to cross my ankles so I try to keep my left leg a bit ahead of the right when sitting, so that if anything crosses it’s left over right. After six weeks, the hip is much less likely to give trouble and I can have a bath, ride a bike and various other things. I’ve an appointment for a check-up in mid-March and can’t drive until then. Hm. After twelve weeks, it should be pretty well completely recovered, although if there’s anything that’s still not comfortable then, I shouldn’t assume that’s as good as it’ll get – it will continue to become stronger as I use it more.

Before the operation, I had a lot of pain in my knee. My hip was usually more or less sore and sometimes I had other aches or pains in my leg. Occasionally, my other leg hurt. This was not acute pain and I didn’t take more notice of it than it deserved – I blanked out a lot of it and can’t really evaluate it. I’d had pain in my leg for eight years, so was used to it. I rarely used a stick in the house but used one increasingly out of doors as last year went by. My limp was getting a lot worse in the last three months and I walked a lot slower, though I could keep going a long way if I needed to. I avoided it when possible though. For the last 6-8 weeks I was woken several times each night by a painfully aching hip. Sometimes this kept me awake for a few hours, but other nights I was able to turn over and get back to sleep. I slept with a cushion under my ‘upper’ knee to support it, whichever side I lay on – usually, lying on my back was too uncomfortable.

The first night after the operation, I had that familiar bad ache, but I felt I’d had sufficient medication and didn’t want to ask for more, so I bore it. It’s never been anywhere near as bad since. Since I arrived home, I’ve slept very well and now realise how much my sleep had been disturbed for a long time. I put my feet up for an hour or two every afternoon and about twice a week I find I need a good long rest. After that rest, I have found a big improvement, which has been sustained. In fact, every few days I’ve seen a jump in what I can do or how it feels. For example, to start with, I sometimes wanted a bit of help getting my bad leg into bed at the end of the day as it was a lot of effort to lift both legs together, but this has improved in stages and now I hardly notice it.

As far as pain is concerned, of course the arthritis is gone, and so I no longer have any problems in my knee or any part of my leg. I can always feel my hip, but that is certainly the healing scar tissue and not the bone – I do feel that sometimes when I’m walking but, after all, the top of my femur was removed and that is still healing and adjusting to an artificial addition – it is a lot less uncomfortable than one might think. Most of the time, I don’t feel it at all.

Peering at my eye, I know I’m still quite anaemic, but I don’t feel at all unwell. I’m taking an anti-coagulant for a month – I hardly feel it is necessary but it seems to have no side-effects except for a slight tendency to mild nose-bleeds, so I’m not unwilling to take it. Notwithstanding the chocolate – good quality, mostly plain – I am eating a very good diet with lots of vegetables and more protein than usual and, as I said, I’m getting enough rest. I know that, if I get exhausted, it takes me ages to get over it, and I want to remain well.

The main reason I wanted to put off the operation was because I know it will need to be revised in future, and the count-down has now started. I’ve been told 10-15 years – I know that some hips last a lot longer, but in view of my comparative youth and therefore activity, I’m more likely to wear it out. However, it could well be that the first revision, at least, will only need to be to the plastic socket and not to the ceramic ball and pin. This is extremely hard and durable, more so than metal, as long as I don’t have a bad accident as it can shatter – it doesn’t have the flexibility that a metal ball can have. On the other hand, wear can cause metal ions to enter the blood stream. Pros and cons in everything. There is metal in the socket which supports the plastic. One can have ceramic against ceramic – again, this is extremely hard and durable and probably more suitable for someone very active, but it can make a sound as you walk, and any wear means that you can only have china replaced with china, as any other material would wear out too quickly.

I found it hard to decide to have the operation. It was my decision when to go for it and in September I was still pretty confident I could go another year to fifteen months. But by November it was becoming appreciably worse. It was when I arrived home from my holiday in Portugal, looked at the itinerary for my booked visit to Glasgow in May and realised I couldn’t do it then, let alone in six months time, although I’d been okay to do it when I booked a couple of months earlier, that I decided to go ahead. It was a good thing I did, as it got worse subsequently – mainly, in how much I was woken in the night, how slowly I had to walk and how often the joint gave way briefly. I never had the awful grinding pain that some people describe, which is probably the reason I didn’t accept that it needed doing. I had to reason it out, I didn’t feel it as unbearable.

Once I’d been told the likely date, only a fortnight after my visit to the consultant, I decided to choose a positive attitude to the operation itself. This worked really well – but when I’m indecisive, it’s in early stages. Once I have made a decision, I go with it whole-heartedly. It was spectacularly successful in fact – being so positive about the operation that I wanted to be awake, for example. I still have a sneaking regret that there wasn’t a mirror so that I could see it being done – but of course, that would have been risky in case I’d been horrified and I am sure it wouldn’t have been allowed. I don’t in the least want to see anyone else’s operation, by the way, I’m only curious about myself. I also really would have liked to see what was being put in me, and the bone that was taken out. I wish I’d asked.

I almost forgot to mention the unexpected pleasure of being able to dress standing up. I haven’t been able to do that since last summer, when my balance became too uncertain to do safely, and then it became impossible anyway. Once I’m quite over this, I’ll be so much quicker at everything. It’s lovely.

T’internet reception, always pretty poor in Norfolk, has been abysmal here for the past couple of weeks. It takes several goes just to read emails, because loading is usually timed out repeatedly. Blogspot, for instance, hasn’t loaded yet as I write, after several minutes waiting – I’m writing this offline and will paste it in.

Today, I’ve mostly eaten chocolate. Oh dear. I did walk all the way down the drive and back, and did some housework that didn’t involve things I’m not supposed to do, but I hardly think it will have made up for it. And I made more soup, using oddments of vegetables that I suspected the Sage wouldn’t get around to serving, and the rest of the tomato juice that I feel no obligation to drink now that I’m on good red wine again. Still the one glass per night, but I look forward to getting slightly wasted in a few weeks’ time. When I celebrate being able to take off my own socks of a night, perhaps. I wonder what the Sage will celebrate most when I’m back to my normal behaviour.

I said *my* normal behaviour, before anyone says anything sarcastic.

Ro phoned this evening. He’d checked in here, just to see how things were going, and was quite impressed by the picture of the leg. So much so that he had no need to read anything I had written, which is fair enough. We chatted about music, films and the most recent website he’s been working on, also possible future holidays – not together though. It’s five years since I last went to India, and I’m thinking that next year would be a good time for a visit. When Wink rang last, she mentioned that she’d been to London to meet the daughter of her friend of nearly fifty years, who lives in Chennai, and she said “when are you going to visit us next?” I said to Wink, funnily enough Weeza and I had just been talking about that. Wink was thrilled. I think we have a Plan. The seed of it is germinating, at any rate.

When Ro rang, he woke me up, for which I was grateful. Falling asleep at 6 pm is not a good idea. I knew it was going to happen – I’d gone for a walk earlier, round the garden, in the hope of waking myself up but it didn’t work. I went to look at the depressingly untidy kitchen garden, which I can’t do anything about at present. The Sage didn’t put the chickens in there after all, because we didn’t get the wire sorted out – not so much to keep them in, as there are no foxes about at present, as to save them pecking things such as globe artichoke plants.

It’s noticeable, actually, what a shortage of foxes there is. I suppose that now there isn’t hunting as an incentive to allow them to live, and they are being shot or poisoned. Certainly, the rabbit population has shot up, although they must have suffered too in the snowy weather. While it was cold, the Sage put plenty of corn (wheat, that is, not maize) in the chicken’s feeder so that wild birds could help themselves too, and I daresay rabbits were glad of it.

I was checking through the seed order the other day and I’m looking forward to getting on with sowing. Not for a while yet – I used to start everything off as early as possible, but I’m more relaxed about it now. Still, when I’m able to stand and work for longer I’ll have a go. Mind you, the greenhouse needs a good clear-up first.

And a very small child, at that. Even Squiffany, who is not yet five, is allowed to go across the drive between her house and ours unescorted. As the Sage was to be out this evening, he arranged with Dilly and Al that I should eat with them, and he relayed the message that I was not to go alone, but that Al would come and fetch me. In the event, a cautious Sage took me himself, as he had to go out before Al arrived. It transpired that he had, himself, asked Al to fetch me. “As if I’d let you walk here on your own,” chortled Al.

It’s not frosty any more, I should mention. Wet, but not frosty. And I can’t remember the last time I fell over. Even when I walked funny.

Al escorted me home again afterwards, too.

Then I went and, using my favourite corkscrew (it is splendid, I must show it to you some time) opened the bottle of Provençal wine I’d left in the kitchen, put on the kettle, made a pot of coffee, poured a glass of wine, put all on a tray and carried it through, fetched a miniature bar of Green & Black’s dark chocolate with cherry and sat down to watch an episode of Deadwood, which I can’t watch in front of the Sage as he’d hate it, and with purple-stained mouth, enjoyed the rest of my solitary evening.

I’ve had enough of being alone now though. I hope he isn’t much longer.

After a really lazy weekend, I was full of energy today. And Weeza and Zerlina came to visit, so I was glad of it. Zerlina added to her repertoire of joined-together words – she’d picked up a napkin (yes, darlings, it was indeed a double damask dinner napkin) and played peep-bo with it. Then, putting it down, she remarked “went ‘boo!'”

This afternoon, I went in the car to the surgery to have my dressing removed. I decided I could just use one stick, so as not to be conspicuous and, the screen saying ‘0 minutes’ delay, I actually was called in a couple of minutes early. The two nurses and I were pretty impressed with how my hip has healed and I now don’t have a dressing on at all. Hooray! I can have a shower.

Indeed, darlings, I throw modesty to the winds. Weeza said “are you going to put a picture on your blog?” I admitted that I probably would, and she offered to take the picture. I have cropped it for modesty, but that means it is a bit startlingly close-up, so I’ve done it small and recommend that you don’t enlarge unless you feel very prepared. And I’ll put it at the bottom (heh) of the post by some way, so that if you don’t want to see it at all, you don’t have to. She also measured it and it’s 6″ long. 15 cm, if you prefer.

Afterwards, it felt a bit unprotected and, in case it hurt later, I trotted over the road to the chemist for some paracetamol, and then went into Al’s shop to say hello and buy some fruit. The Sage thought I would get vegetables too, but I reminded him that he was in charge of cooking and it was entirely up to him. Besides, potatoes and greens were all out of my reach, being low down.

What was really good was to just go about in a reasonably normal way. I’ve been sometimes using a stick for a while, so this wasn’t too odd. We went over to the bakers afterwards for macaroons, to celebrate. We bought a gingerbread animal decorated with Smarties for Zerlina, too. And later on, Dilly brought Squiffany and Pugsley in for the cousins to play together, so the day could hardly have been better really.

Later, I quite wanted a little lie-down. But I didn’t, because I knew I would fall asleep and then I wouldn’t sleep tonight. That reminds me, after all the kneeling shenanigans last night, although I recorded Mad Men, I watched it at the time anyway, so needn’t have bothered. Still, no harm done, hey. And I haven’t felt inclined to take any paracetamol, so that’s good.

I am not, I confess, going to last much longer without a drink. I’m not sure life is worth living. The anti-coagulant I’m taking for a month might, among numerous side-effects, impair liver function. Well, it only says ‘might’. And I eat a pretty low-fat diet, so that should help the liver. One little glass a day should be okay, don’t you think?

Right. Photo to follow. Stop here if you don’t care for bruised thigh.

I forgot my hip just now. I was pleased to notice that Mad Men was being repeated on BBC4 at 11 pm and even more pleased that I’d noticed it at 10.55. I’ve mentioned before that I find it very peculiar that they don’t say when the repeats of anything are – since they may be on any channel and at any time of the day or night, they are not easy to spot in a tv guide. I know about iplayer but, unless it’s changed recently, it only shows as a small box on a Mac, so it’s not that enjoyable to watch. Besides, not everything is shown on it, so it’s not to be relied on.

Anyway, it’s a double episode and I probably won’t want to be up that late. So I went to the recorder, and found that it had been left on, which it shouldn’t have been of course. I turned over to it, and found that it had stuck on the 27th January at 9 pm. So, I fiddled with the controls for a while and then knelt down to check it was all plugged in.

Ah.

I’m not allowed to kneel down.

Fortunately, nothing has dislocated. The Sage helped me up, once I’d decided what leg to use first. The good news is that kneeling doesn’t hurt. The other good news is that, although my hip is sore, no harm has been done. I feel a bit of an idiot though. I can see that the more it heals, the more likely I am to forget the rules.

I turned the machine off at the wall and on again, and it’s working fine. I think that happens regularly to my brain as well.