One week to go!

A week from today I'll be sat in my shiny new hospital bed, wearing my freshly starched jim-jams clutching my brand spanking new tooth brush waiting for my fabulous all singing all dancing ceramic hip replacement. The operation is scheduled for the Thursday (2nd October 2008). I'm kind of hoping it will be an early start on 'op day'. Not that I'm keen to go under the surgeon's knife it's just that I want to get it over with A.S.A.P. and get on with the business of recovering.

You see - this has been a long time coming. During my teens I played a lot of football and did a lot of running. Both activities were always followed by periods of excruciating knee pain... (Ahhhh...)

After many visits to various specialists and after enough x-rays of my knee to make me glow in the dark the health profession in all its wisdom decided I was suffering from 'growing pains' and that my knees would eventually settle down all by themselves! We (me and my knees) were not entirely convinced by this diagnosis but went merrily along on our way hoping for better days to come! I continued to play football and would often run the seven miles or so from my home in South Shore Blackpool across town to North Shore to see my then girlfriend so I can't say that my 'knee problem' curtailed any of my activities because it didn't.


It was about ten years later that my dicky knees raised their ugly heads again - (do dicky knees have heads that can be raised?) - I was working as a postman at the time and was finding the morning deliveries more and more troublesome... now some of you that know me may just think it was my aversion to early mornings kicking in - but trust me on this one my 'knees' were really
starting to hurt again.


So off we go again on the jolly NHS trail looking for a diagnosis and treatment to rid me of these pesky knee problems. One doctor decided I was riddled with osteo-arthritis and would more than likely end up in a wheel chair so I might as well stop walking any great distance, get buses or taxis everywhere... he even offered me a walking stick... Now I'm no expert but I think he was a bit of a dick brained platypus! I spent months trying to come to terms with this outlook - I was twenty three for God sake!

I decided to change my GP at this point and registered with a surgery closer to where I lived (I had to reduce my walking after all... ;-) )
My first visit to my new GP was the turning point. Dr Brown came out with something revolutionary, something that no less than six other doctors had completely failed to grasp.
"You had Perthes disease as a child didn't you?"
"Yep... So?"
"I think we need to look at your hips..."

It turns out that the pain I was feeling in my knee was actually my body saying 'I can't make you feel the pain in the place where you are actually hurting i.e. your hip - so I'm going to send the pain signals to your knee...'
Technically its called referred pain. Whatever... Dr Brown - for connecting the dots... Thank You.

This blog is not going to be a pop at the NHS. It's just about a knackered old hip joint that's going to be replaced with a shiny new one. And about my experiences during the whole process. The good things and the bad. Warts and all.

And yes... I am scared... very scared. It is the NHS you know!