Three months, not a lifetime
Hello. Yes, it’s me, and yes, it’s been a long time.
I’m going to begin this entry by recycling the closing line of the last one — posted some 114 days ago — albeit with the addition of one word. It seems appropriate, after all.
I. Am. Still. Fucking. Terrified.
That entry announced my return to blogging after an eight-month hiatus. This entry heralds my return after yet another extended disappearance, though this one wasn’t of my choosing. And the reason I am fucking terrified is that I simply don’t know where to begin with The Story Of What Happened.
Blogging tip no.1: don’t launch a new weblog only to vanish again almost immediately. Your readers will simply think that your fickle, self-important primadonna behaviour has gone too far this time.
And it was annoying, because I had big plans for this site when I started it in the latter half of May. For ten weeks or so, I lay around without internet access (isn’t that against all known laws on fundamental human rights by now?), wishing that I could get back to An Unreliable Witness; and for the last four weeks, with text-only internet access available via the tiny BlackBerry handheld I bought to keep myself sane, I’ve been nervously wondering what (and even whether) to write here, and how I could possibly manage to sum up the last fourteen weeks.
I’m going to take a deep breath now.
Exactly three months ago, on 12 June, I stepped off a 155 bus at Clapham Common and promptly collapsed. My right leg had given way underneath me, and try as I might I couldn’t get back on my feet. Something was obviously wrong. Very seriously wrong..
One hour later — courtesy of an ambulance journey complete with sirens — I was in the Accident & Emergency department of the local hospital. By eleven o’clock that night, already drugged up to the hilt, I was being wheeled into what looked like a space-age operating theatre.
Fade to black.
I remember nothing from that point onwards. The week that followed has completely disappeared from my life, my memory. All I know is that by the following evening, attempts to save my right leg had failed and it had been amputated just above the knee. I then spent the next six days surrounded by numerous beeping and whirring machines in the Intensive Care Unit. Don’t ask me about any of it, though: I was well and truly away with the medication-induced fairies.
I could go into a long explanation of what happened to put me in this sorry state, but I won’t. First — with apologies to you, my undoubtedly inquisitive readers — I’m bored stiff of telling the whole story by now. Second, I don’t want this to turn into some tragic and long-winded medical tale, the likes of which I am currently forced to listen to many of my more irritating fellow patients relating on an almost daily basis. In summary, however: diabetes. I had no idea that I had it. I got a diabetic infection in the underside of my right foot. The poisons spread further up my leg. I didn’t notice anything because it didn’t hurt — and yes, I know that’s difficult to comprehend, but it’s absolutely true. A fortnight or so before my dramatic collapse, about the time that entries on this site ceased with this portentous Scribbling post, I fell very ill with what I thought was exhaustion. It wasn’t. On 12 June I got on a bus to Clapham Common. Three months later, I still haven’t caught the bus back home — but I am half a right leg lighter.
This is starting to sound very doom-laden and serious, don’t you think?
I will write more about all this in time, I suspect, but for now I want you to understand something. I have not spent the past three months in hospital mourning the untimely demise of my lower right leg. The resident shrink has seen me a few times, but on each occasion he has departed feeling somewhat nonplussed that I haven’t been weeping and wailing over the loss of “My leg! My poor, poor leg!” People who have visited or swapped emails with me will tell you how quickly I’ve developed a sense of humour about the whole thing, including a selection of blackly humourous (some might even say sick) ‘missing leg’ jokes.
I am fortunate enough, perhaps because of my background, to have realised early on that this newly-acquired impairment doesn’t mean the end of everything. Far from it. I’m very reluctant to start spouting trite positivist phrases like “there are folks who are far worse off than me” or “in the grand scheme of things, it’s no big deal”, because it would undoubtedly cause a bout of such hideous self-loathing that I would start attacking my good leg with a rusty axe in a desperate bid to get rid of that one too, but there is undeniably an element of that in my thinking.
So, er, in the grand scheme of things, becoming an above-knee amputee is a bit of a big deal. Ish. I suppose. Does that sound acceptable?
The problem now is that I can already hear the voices saying “you’re so brave” or “you’ve got such a positive attitude about what’s happened”. Before long, you’re going to be thinking I’m a fucking martyr, aren’t you? I’m not.
Look, I’ve been stuck in hospital now for three months. I’m institutionalised. I look like a stereotypical long-term in-patient. My hair is an overgrown mess and my skin is sallow and pale. I wear clothes that I wouldn’t normally be seen dead in. My brain has turned to mush. I’m going stir crazy. My lead physiotherapist is, to put it mildly, a sadistic bitch. My wound still hasn’t completely healed, even after all these weeks. My left leg still isn’t strong enough to support me, or allow me to manage the things I need to do before I can be referred to a prosthetic limb clinic. I can’t go home yet because my flat isn’t wheelchair accessible, but neither has accommodation (temporary or otherwise) been found for me by the local Social Services department. I desperately want to get back to my everyday life — work, socialising, even blogging — rather than spending long days wheeling around the buildings looking for things to do. And last, but by no means least, it’s impossible to sleep properly in hospital, so I haven’t had a decent night’s rest in forever. God, I miss my bed.
Self-pity? Yes. But if you’re going to reply to this post by having some sort of pity-fest in the comments, then feel sorry for me over those things, not over the loss of a bit of one leg. After all, Sir Paul McCartney is back on the singles market, and I reckon I’m just his type now, whereas he wouldn’t have given me a second glance before.
So I’m back. Kind of. Again. Though updates may be few and far between for a while. This is becoming something of a habit, isn’t it?