Crutch Twirling Psychopath

Gratuitous Picture of a Manky Foot
Today involved yet another visit to the plaster room at Southmead Hospital...or for those of you in the know, the Land of Mordor...as usual there are no parking spaces. Helen is quite keen to drop me off by the door and she'd like me to just hop in and wait for her. But I have been scooting around on the crutches like a veritable Long John Silver...now there's something I don't understand, he only used one crutch and I've tried it and it is pretty much impossible...anyhow, I persuade Helen that she can drop me off in the multi storey whilst she finds a parking space. In hindsight this was not a good idea. I leapt out of the car and set off at a fair lick, this however, did not last. By the time I'd gone about 30ft I realised that I was less Long John Silver and more...more...ooh, this isn't easy, I can't think of anyone that is not violently offensive... more a fat middle aged one legged man from Somerset...will that do?

I am not going to be entering the 100yds dash for the crutch and plaster cast any time soon I can tell you. By the time I reached the double swing doors into the hospital proper I was blowing like an out of condition filly on the last straight at Epsom. The swing doors were my first real obstacle, I walked...crutched maybe?...up to them full of confidence only to find they weren't automatic. I tried prodding them with one crutch and nearly ended up on my arse as it's actually impossible to walk through a door you are holding open with one crutch whilst trying to keep one foot off the ground and hop with the other.

I finally managed to get them open and lurched through into the hospital and set off for the check in desk. This was much more difficult than I had thought it would be, imagine my relief when...still some distance from the check in area... I was accosted by a lady in her seventies who enquired whether I would like a lift to wherever I was going.  I gratefully assented and she quickly manoeuvred me into a wheelchair and we set off for the plaster room.

There is no sign of Helen, and no sign of any mobile signal either so I can't call her. I settled down to wait and spent an amusing 15 minutes or so playing with my crutches...yes, really...it turns out that I'm really not very good at twirling an aluminium crutch like a cheerleaders baton and I very nearly caused permanent injury to the elderly gent sitting next to me. He was sporting an impressive array of medals and it would have been unfortunate in the extreme if he had survived a world war only to be killed by a crutch twirling psychopath in a hospital corridor. I was the recipient of an extremely hard stare from beneath a set of eyebrows that could have possibly been used as a fairly effective comb over.

Look, I'm not good without something to occupy myself, generally a book and Helen had my Kindle, this time I hadn't taken any morphine so was in full control of my faculties if not in complete control of my crutches. Luckily around now Helen appeared from down the corridor, I mentioned this fact to my elderly companion but I didn't really get any response...can't say I blame him, I'd nearly inserted the end of a crutch into his left nostril after all. I may have attempted further conversation but the nurse came out and we entered the gates of hell.

And by way of a change this is what they did:

This is the famous plaster saw, I'm afraid that this is probably the most boring video you will ever watch, but,...and this is important...it's a video of my foot, and this is my blog, so there...my apologies I seem to have regressed to childhood, or at least further into childhood than I obviously already am.

This procedure tickles, a lot, it's almost all I can do to restrain myself from kicking the nurse in the face when they do this. If you know my sisters they can tell you that I have almost psychopathically ticklish feet...they used to torture me when I was little by holding me down and tickling them which has left me somewhat jumpy whenever anyone touches the little blighters.

I digress, what you really want to see is some more gruesome pictures. It all seems to be healing up pretty well apart from a certain loss of sensation in my toes. Though having seen my toes you would probably agree that this is almost certainly a good thing. The operation may have damaged some nerves and loss of sensation is one of the side effects.

 



 

So all in all not too bad, mind you those two pictures immediately above really don't look the best...jeez louise, that one on the left looks like a frankenfoot...another new word, you may borrow it if you wish. Luckily for me it's now encased in a snazzy orange plaster cast so I can't see any of this horror, otherwise I might have difficulty sleeping.  Which is what I am about to do right now

Night night

Charlie










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