Having had the amputations almost exactly a year apart, I find it very hard to remember what happened which year and who knows what. We’ve received Christmas cards from people who don’t know I’m missing any body-part, people who think I’m still recovering from the below-knee amputation and one or two from those who are hedging their bets by addressing the card to “Alastair and family”. Just before Christmas I ventured into a clothes shop I’ve frequented over the past few years. An assistant I thought I recognised greeted me with, “Happy Christmas! How are things now?” I watched her eager expression transform to one of abject horror and embarrassment as, too late, I realised hers was a generic cheery salutation and she very definitely hadn’t anticipated a detailed description of the latest amputation, the tricky rehabilitation process and my loathing of American tan Velcro leg attachments.
December 16, 2011
I’ve never been much of a party animal, scarred by High Commission cocktail parties in West Africa, where the frenetic flickering of people’s eyes, scanning the room to identify someone more useful than me to talk to, was always very off-putting. Now, as an amputee, I find social gatherings even more of a challenge. The first time someone trips over my prosthetic leg (which never folds away quite as neatly as the other one) and spills red wine on the cream carpet, people are quite kind. The second time, they are less so. Standing only really works if there is something solid to lean on within easy reach of somewhere to put a glass. Not being so quick on my feet can result in the unfortunate missing of circulating canapés. And it’s no good relying on Nurse Jackie for help. As soon as he’s through the door, he’s off - chattering away, exchanging recipes, extracting gossip and scandal and generally enjoying himself while I’m left trying to explain to the person next to me that just because I can’t move away and find someone more interesting to talk to, it doesn’t mean that they can’t.
I do have to admit to enjoying the Myriad Christmas party yesterday evening. I did stand on one fellow author’s foot for quite a long time before he politely brought the situation to my attention but, apart from that, all went well. I even managed to seek out (the delightfully modest and really nice) Elizabeth Haynes and congratulate her on her absolutely massive book sales, her very many foreign rights deals, and her forthcoming film of the book without sounding the slightest bit bitter and twisted. I hope.
December 12, 2011
The above knee amputation is clearly the Winter Look. Even Little Mix is at it.
November 22, 2011
I have experienced two small triumphs this week. The first was managing the two sets of escalators at Warren St tube station with prosthetic leg, walking stick and a modicum of dignity. The trick, I now know, is not to spend the whole journey up to daylight wondering which leg should lead from the top step and just leave it to instinct and luck. The second was taking Alfie the Pet as Therapy Dog to his favourite park. This was not quite as straightforward. The path through the woods back to the car had been transformed into a scale model of the Somme. At one point I found myself ankle deep in mud and leaf mould, clinging to the branch of a small tree, contemplating calling it a day, leaving my leg behind and crawling to the car. But luck prevailed; Alflie wandered up to see what was going on and I managed to clip on his lead, will him to muster his inner husky and drag me out.
November 4, 2011
Sitting in the cinema with Nurse Jackie last week, I experienced an unsettling moment of empathy with Lionel Shriver’s Eva Khatchadourian and a glimmer of understanding of why she needed to talk about Kevin. I know I am supposed to like my above-knee prosthesis – other people seem to be pretty impressed with it – but I really don’t. Like Kevin, the leg is a glowering, malign presence. I have moments when I think it’s not too bad but then it moves slightly, and puts unbearable pressure on places I’d very much rather it didn’t. I lurch into the disabled loo to try to adjust it and sense it smirking in the corner as, flustered and flailing around, I accidentally pull the emergency cord. I imagine it rolling its eyes as, morning after morning, I’m defeated by the leg-sock-socket-belt-pants-tights- shoes-order-conundrum. Like Eva remembering her childfree days as a travel writer, I’m wistful for a time when I was unencumbered by this new and unwanted entity which slows me down and makes me feel horrible about myself. I tell Nurse J that nothing good will come of him admiring it, but will he listen? …
October 30, 2011
My eye was caught by the cover of the review section of The Observer this morning – a self portrait of Giles Duley, a photographer who lost both legs and an arm in Afghanistan – a brave and interesting portrait of a brave and interesting man.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/oct/30/giles-duley-war-photography-afghanistan
The accompanying piece was informative and ultimately optimistic, though I take issue at the journalist mentioning “phantom pains from missing limbs” in passing, as though they were but a minor irritant.
October 7, 2011
Yesterday, out of nowhere and just as I arrived at work, I was overcome by a rage so powerful that I had to sit in the car until I could breathe properly again. Rage that I’ll never again feel really good about how I look; that I’ll never be able to jump out of bed and get on with my day; that not a day passes without people wondering what has happened to my leg; that every day for the rest of my life I’ll have to strap on half a stone of metal, foam and plastic; that I have to live with unbearable burning and fizzing right down to my non-existent foot which people seem to think is “all in the head”; that I have to take drugs about whose side effects I don’t even dare read; that one missed step is a fall; that so much disability access isn’t at all; that I have to ask busy colleagues to make me a cup of tea; that I have to ask people to carry things for me; that I can’t get anywhere fast enough; that there is nowhere to sit down in shops; that the disabled showers at the pool are at the end of a wet corridor; that I have to worry about how to give a powerpoint presentation on one leg without falling over; that it takes longer to dress my prosthetic and get it on right than it used to take me to get up and out of the house; that I have to ask people if their stairs have banisters before I visit; that staying at friends’ houses now seems just too difficult; that people think that having a prosthetic leg that looks just like the other one will somehow make everything all right.
*Emil Cioran
September 26, 2011
September 18, 2011
Having, under the critical gaze of my personal style consultant, devised the capsule wardrobe to accommodate the below knee amputation, the below knee prosthesis and the above knee amputation, I feel rather weary at the thought of starting all over again, particularly now that my style guru has gone back to university. I am, however, lucky to have a hugely accommodating prosthetist and physio who are willing to film me walking, ostensibly to record my gait but really to advise me on what clothes look half-way OK with the new leg. I’ve started Alfie the Pet As Therapy dog on the arduous advanced “skirt-alert” course which trains him to bark whenever the back of my dress gets caught up in the hideous Velcro belt that’s keeping the leg on.
September 6, 2011
Having spent the week following my bone scan feeling strange pains in all my remaining limbs and not enough air in my lungs, and train journey to my hospital appointment reading an article in the Metro about how dogs can sniff out tumours, which made Alfie the Dog’s recent over-attentive behaviour suddenly make appalling sense, there was no way I was going engage in small-talk with my oncologist or be lulled into a false sense of security before the bombshell:
“How are you?”
“OK.”
“Rehabilitation going well? Plenty of physiotherapy?”
“Yep.”
“It must be hard work.”
“Not really.”
So when she finally got around to saying that the latest bone scan showed no bone metastases, and that everything looked fine, I had to struggle out of my recalcitrant teenager’s body back into my middle-aged, rather red-faced one. Mindful of the wrath of the gods, but wanting to celebrate, I hopped around St Pancras Station and invested in a handbag. As Matron Anna says, if they’ve got the results wrong, she can have the bag.
August 18, 2011
Nurse Jackie and I have just got back from a blissful week in Corsica. Blissful, despite Corsica probably being the least accessible holiday destination we could have chosen. The wheelchair had a brief outing in St Florent during which I was narrowly saved from being tipped into a deep gutter by a kindly passer-by. After that I stuck to my crutches. There was one particularly undignified moment at the railway station when Nurse J and the guard had to take hold of my arms and haul me up the two foot gap between the platform and the train. I have returned from holiday with a huge purple bruise on my shin from scraping up the metal train steps, biceps to rival those of Michelle Obama, and rather too much evidence of some very good Corsican meals.
August 5, 2011
I was mildly surprised at The Globe last weekend when, early on in All’s Well that Ends Well, the ailing King of France was pushed on stage in a rather tasteful sixteenth century wheelchair (or what looked suspiciously like an NHS issue chair, pimped up Jacobean-style with leather-effect, coat-of arm-embossed wheel covers). He wasn’t in it for long before being miraculously cured by Helena and her herbs, but long enough to get me thinking about my own complex relationship with the wheelchair. First amputation round, I’d never have imagined that I’d be someone who would readily agree to being pushed around supermarkets and department stores. Now I find myself humming with happiness as I’m propelled along aisles of food or clothes, something Anna finds particularly alarming. But it’s the thought of having to use a wheelchair for anything other than shopping trips and beating the EasyJet queues that keeps me practising with my Pneumatic Post Amputation Mobility Aid – a device as unwieldy as its name, comprising a blow up rubber tube and metal frame. Now that’s something I’d like to see on stage.
July 16, 2011
When it comes to high culture, there is almost nothing to rival Glee. But lately I’ve become increasingly irritated by Artie and his dancing wheelchair. I might have just about tolerated the casting of an actor with two working legs in the part of a paraplegic had it not been for the dream sequence in which he miraculously leaps out of his wheelchair to do a nifty dance number. Had a skinny white woman with a great voice been blacked up and put in a fat suit (no offence, Mercedes) there would have been an outcry. The producers deserve to be slushied. And that’s how Sue sees it.
July 3, 2011
I think I can definitely say that my unilateral decision to stop taking all the drugs I was prescribed to control both the grinding pain in what’s left of my leg and the zinging, fizzing and jabbing sensations in my “phantom limb” was a mistake. Before the amputation years, it would have been hard to find anything stronger than a paracetamol in the house. Now I have drawers full of tablets whose alarming information sheets I can barely bring myself to read. They make me feel as though little areas of my brain have been replaced by sherbet-infused cotton wool. This is not conducive to undertaking detailed dissertation corrections or even having conversations with friends lasting longer than a few minutes. But after two drug-free days I found myself fantasising about being humanely put down. Or just shot. So Nurse Jackie has resumed his dispensing pharmacist role and knows better than to say, “I told you so.”
June 27, 2011
Some friends concur that it’s all rather Groundhog Day. Others suggest it’s a bit Monty Python. I’d be the first to agree.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKhEw7nD9C4
June 17, 2011
In celebration of Carers Week I gave Nurse Jackie a day out to remember. We began the day with a visit to Newhaven WI where, as well as a particularly nice cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit, he had the pleasure of listening to me address the audience about The Cloths of Heaven. After a fine lunch in The Abergavenny in Rodmell on the proceeds of book sales, we called into the garden centre to buy some (reduced) Brussels sprouts plants. As Matron Anna would say, “Hardcore!”
June 10, 2011
Two days out of hospital, it feels a bit like being at home with a second baby – things seem both daunting yet strangely familiar. Apart from a slight difference in the quality of the phantom limb sensation, and the inconvenience of not having a knee on which to lean while hopping around on crutches, not that much seems to have changed. While the out-of-body effect of one of the painkillers is oddly enjoyable, the downside is that I can’t remember what I said or wrote five minutes ago, or whether it made any sense whatsoever.
June 7, 2011
I give up. I have been waiting for yet another “so bad it’s funny” NHS experience to rail against, but the whole place is conspiring against me.
The surgeons and anaesthetist exuded confidence and competence; the nursing staff are kind, careful and caring; the cleaners assiduous; the providers of tea and newspapers know my name and my order; the porters are prompt and courteous; the physios and OTs are encouraging. The day after my surgery the nurses pushed my bed outside into the sunshine where I felt I was in a Thomas Mann novel. Nurse Jackie is going to have to up his game.
June 1, 2011
Thinking back to the rather interesting discussion about medical school admissions I was having with the anaesthetist and surgeon just before I lost consciousness, I experience a moment of dismay:
V. Eminent Surgeon: “I think I only got into medical school because I was good at rugby.”
Me: “I thought that was probably the case.”
May 31, 2011
I think I know how Alfie the Dog must feel when he gets out of the car expecting to have arrived in the Yorkshire Dales only to find he is being dropped off at the kennels while we go off somewhere more exciting without him. Driving here with one of my dearest friends; finding a nice little cafe for lunch; being shown to my bed; unpacking my dvds and magazines – it has all felt oddly like being on holiday. Only now that I’m lying in the semi-darkness of a hospital ward, listening to a symphony of snoring and thinking about what tomorrow will bring does it begin to feel as though I really should have read the small print.
May 21, 2011
I imagine that, had Lady Bracknell been with me when the surgeon concluded that amputation above the knee was very definitely my best option, she might have opined that “to lose one part of one’s leg may be regarded as a misfortune…to lose both seems like carelessness.” So far, the only positive thing I can think of in this latest twist in my amputation adventure is that I’ll get a second season’s wear out of my Primark linen cut-offs. That, and a good excuse to buy season two of Glee.
May 8, 2011
Over the past few weeks, while I’ve been having endless scans, tissue and bone biopsies and waiting for results and opinions, I’ve been reminded of a poem I used to look forward to reading on the underground:
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
This is not because there has been a sudden, unexpected, advance in the treatment and cure of giant cell tumours or a great leap forward in limb cloning or that I’ve become a glass practically over-flowing kind of person. It’s because my oncologist has taken the trouble to phone me himself to keep me abreast of the latest news, even if that news is no news; because the surgeon to whom he referred me clearly knew about me and my case – and was interested in both; because the Macmillan Nurse offered to coordinate results and appointments. It doesn’t sound much but it has made a huge difference to the quality of the long wait.
Incidentally, the author of that poem no longer wishes to be associated with it, but for access to her other poems and prose see http://sheenagh.webs.com/
April 21, 2011
I have at last found a good use for last year’s post-operative tracksuit bottoms. I have put them on, together with a particularly unattractive t-shirt and neither are coming off until I have written the remaining 10,000 words of my PhD in Creative Writing. While my trackies do a good job of deterring me from leaving the house or seeing anybody outside the family, they aren’t a strong enough defence against endless trips to the garden to check up on the newts and the sweet peas or to the kitchen to make yet another cup of tea I’ll forget to drink. Suddenly even a quadriceps exercise-break has some appeal.
April 15, 2011
Here I am in Punxsutawney, having the same scans, biopsies and conversations as I had this time last year, some of them eerily on exactly the same dates. Last year I was devastated when I heard there was evidence of malignant giant cell tumour in my tibia. Today, I am celebrating that there is evidence of malignant giant cell tumour only in the tibia. Last year, having my leg amputated below the knee was an appalling prospect. This year, having had to contemplate losing the whole leg while I waited for the scan results, I wonder what on earth I was making such a fuss about.
March 30, 2011
“It was all very well to say `Drink me,’ but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry.” Unlike the wise little Alice in one of my least favourite books, I drank the bottle of foul-tasting liquid that the nuclear medicine technician handed me yesterday with no idea whatsoever what it was or what it would do to me. Neither did I have a clue what the nurse injected into my arm as she announced, “you’ll feel yourself going very warm all over inside and you may feel like you’ve wet yourself.” It amuses me to think how many pages of detailed information I would have been given about both procedures had I had them in the context of medical research rather than treatment. I’d still be poring over the information sheet and consent form now, rather than consenting then by not getting up and hopping off down the corridor.
March 18, 2011
My understanding of statistics is slight. But recent experience confirms my suspicion that if there are two things that are very, very unlikely to happen – one very positive and one very negative – it will always be the negative one that prevails. For example, it is probably about as likely that I will get a call from a well-known production company saying that Emma Thompson has managed to get hold of the manuscript of Interpreters and is interested in writing the screenplay and taking the lead in the film adaptation as it is that I’ll get a call from my oncologist saying that, against all expectation and despite the amputation, there is evidence of spread of a tumour that is not known for spreading…
March 6, 2011
My children would say I’ve always been a tutter. I tut at people who refuse to switch off their mobile phones at the theatre and have text (or actual) conversations during plays; who unwrap their sweets or rustle through their popcorn during films; who don’t give up their seats for anyone on buses, trains or tubes; who get affronted if Alfie the Personal Pet as Therapy Dog has a bit of a thing for their dog rather than leaving the dogs to sort themselves out. Over the past year, I’ve realised that tutting simply isn’t enough to express how I feel when people park in disabled bays that don’t have signs up just because they know they are legally entitled to do so, or use the disabled shower at the gym even though they can see me waiting on one leg in a wet swimsuit, and who are invariably hostile when they finally emerge, as though I am somehow to blame for making them feel uncomfortable. As much as I wish there was a word for the deep sense of gloom I feel in those circumstances, I wish I could think of a word for the opposite of tut - for the rush of pleasure I experience as I drive past the thousands of purple crocuses and daffodils that line my route to work, or the relief I felt recently when the delightful young assistant at Gap delivered the fourth batch of jeans to me in the properly equipped disabled changing room and didn’t bat an eyelid when she found me sitting there with my detached leg in my hand.
February 11, 2011
“I’d like a machine where I can sit down, pedal a bit, watch daytime TV and end up with exercised quads and a flat stomach” perhaps wasn’t quite the answer the trainer was expecting when she asked me, this morning, what I wanted to get out of my gym sessions. As she took me round and talked me through the various contraptions, a voice in my head kept saying, “You know it’s never going to happen.” It felt like being on a particularly disastrous (first and only) date at a heaving, inexplicably popular, jazz club, being lectured on the virtues of augmented 7ths by someone who was clearly loving the dissonant sounds that were making my head want to explode.
January 31, 2011
Once again I (foolishly) found myself traipsing around London the day after taking receipt of my new leg. It was only sheer willpower (and fear of arrest) that stopped me from lying down in Tottenham Court Road and howling. After some adjustments and a few days, my leg feels just about bearable. “That’s what it feels like!” I told Sebastian as we watched Human Planet together. “Dead auks stuffed into the carcass of a seal then bashed with lumps of ice.” Now he knows. http://tinyurl.com/67gdtlc
January 24, 2011
Doing my quadriceps exercises while watching Mad Men seemed a very good idea until, forgetting I’d taken my prosthesis off, I got up to make a cup of tea. I can’t remember the last time Nurse Jackie found anything quite so funny. I blame Don Draper.
January 11, 2011
Two highlights in an otherwise gloomy January day: The first, a fitting for a new pin socket involving a silicone stump liner (which looks, rather disconcertingly, like a massive white condom) with a nifty spike at the end of it that clicks into the prosthetic leg. Trying to get the spike into the little hole brought back memories of many happy hours spent in front of The Golden Shot. The second highlight, a parcel containing a T shirt from the extraordinary Rosie Kilburn http://theknockoneffect.wordpress.com/ who gave me such helpful information when I wrote my Guardian blog article http://tinyurl.com/22nvvkq – a swop for the copy of The Cloths of Heaven I sent her. Sebastian, who is not a keen reader, is very clear who has done better out of this particular transaction.
January 3, 2011
My fitting for a new leg can’t come too soon. For the last couple of weeks, air has become trapped between the stump and the lining so that every step I take is accompanied by a disconcerting squelching noise. It’s not so bad if I’m out with Nurse Jackie. I just nod in his direction, roll my eyes and mouth “sprouts” at the rather surprised passers-by.
December 31, 2010
I had meant to use the Christmas break to do lots of the things I’ve been putting off – like writing my talk for a local Women’s Institute group on adapting The Cloths of Heaven for radio. Somehow, though, I have found myself spending hours in front of the TV or radio, weeping at the transformative power of DIY SOS, laughing fondly at Just William, or wondering whether Tony Archer will end up delivering Helen’s baby with as much aplomb as the butler did in Upstairs Downstairs. But there’s nothing like the fear of humiliation to focus the mind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0HgJIkSIXY . The TV won’t be going on again until the talk is written.
December 29, 2010
I made the mistake, this morning, of hopping onto the bathroom scales and managing to balance on one leg just long enough to see that the 7lbs I’d lost the moment my leg was amputated had mysteriously re-appeared despite the leg still being missing.
December 23, 2010
I had been hoping that the snow/economic downturn/the fact that Christmas came around far too quickly this year would result in no one sending Christmas cards but it seems that it is just me who hasn’t sent a single card. As I watched the rather charming production of A Christmas Carol at the Trafalgar Studios yesterday, I felt a twinge of regret but now it’s too late. If I had sent any cards, I would have scribbled a note in them saying that it’s been a bit of a year but not without its hilarious moments: Nurse Jackie (AKA Mr Chips) has just been informed that he will be teaching sex education to his classes of 13 year-olds next term.
December 20, 2010
I saw It’s a Wonderful Life for the first time yesterday and as I came out of the cinema (once I’d pulled myself together) I mused that, like George Bailey, I am blessed with the most wonderfully supportive friends and family. But not only that – I’ve also been blessed with a 21st Century guardian angel in the form of an “experienced” amputee I’ve never met and with whom I’ve only ever communicated by e-mail. Our correspondence, which grew from a simple enquiry about copyright of an article I’d written, has been a lifeline to me, particularly at my bleakest moments. There is something extraordinarily comforting about wise words from someone who knows exactly what my diagnosis, amputation and rehabilitation has been like. So, if there are wings to be had this Christmas, may that bell ring for you, Di.
December 11, 2010
I find scans strangely relaxing; I have even been lulled to sleep by the clunking and grinding of the magnets in the MRI machine. But the before and after is anything but relaxing. There is an interesting piece of research to be done measuring stress levels and exacerbations of symptoms in the days leading up to investigative scans and during the wait for results. If I were one of the research participants, the spike on my stress readout would have been particularly impressive at my last bone scan when the radiographer took it upon herself to announce, in passing, that the hotspots she saw on my residual limb “could be metastatic changes or nothing to worry about at all.” (This was despite my very definitely not asking for any information or even making eye contact with her.) The stress readout would have looked very busy during the ten days it took for my consultant to get back to me to clarify the situation and even busier between his musing that there may be other suspicious areas in my back and clavicle and his changing his mind. I feel hugely relieved that my care has reverted to the hospital where I’d been treated before the amputation. What I really want is unconditional reassurance that I will live to a very healthy one-legged old age but, for now, I’ll make do with a thoughtful oncologist who patiently explains the pros and cons of surveillance, who rings with results when he says he is going to and, even in the absence of a categorical “all clear” somehow manages to make me feel reasonably optimistic.
November 30, 2010
I have been musing on my amputee comedy and wondering, if I were to finish it, whether it would stand any chance of being commissioned or whether it would be considered too tasteless by far: On a desert island, Long John Silver is the self-appointed king of amputees. He, Silas Wegg (from Our Mutual Friend) and Captain Ahab (from Moby Dick) cohabit uneasily with Sarah Berhardt, Douglas Bader and Major General Daniel Sickles (who lost his leg during the Battle of Gettysburg and later donated it to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC.)
They spend their days trading ever more outrageous and competitive tales of leglessness. Tension increases as Silver, Wegg and Ahab, unfettered by their fictitiousness, threaten to outperform the historically constrained Bernhardt, Bader and Sickles. They are united by their irritation at the voices that appear to be coming from the shells that litter the beach. It appears that in another time and very different place, someone else is losing their leg…
November 19, 2010
November 11, 2010
I am thinking of signing up with Amputees in Action – an agency that specialises in providing amputee extras to the film industry. In my mind, I am already in Hollywood, bravely enduring the loss of my left leg, while Mark Ruffalo battles through the jungle/pileup/towering inferno to carry me off into the sunset…
November 1, 2010
There have been a number of changes in personnel at my health care facility – none of them very convenient. First Matron Anna handed in her notice and went off to university, and now Nurse Jackie tells me he has a new job teaching in a secondary school starting with immediate effect. I should never have given him the time off over the summer to do his return to teaching course. Only Alfie, my personal Pet As Therapy dog is offering any continuity of care.
October 26, 2010
I have, at last, braved the swimming pool. I swam in Mallorca this summer but it was the knowledge that I would never see the slightly unsettled Germans and Spaniards again that gave me the courage to bare my stump, plunge in and then haul myself out and back to the sun lounger like a very determined, rather elderly, walrus. That, and the clear blue skies and temperatures in the 90s. I’ve been less eager to get up in the dark and go back to early morning swimming at the sports centre. I finally did a trial run, accompanied by my sister-in-law for moral and physical support, and somewhat to my disappointment, found it pretty manageable. I have no more excuse to stay in bed the extra hour. The combination of crutches and wet floor can be scary, and when I hop from the bench to the locker I feel like the de-legged knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. But when I’m in the water, it’s like I’m once more complete.
October 18, 2010
Looking back on it, going straight from taking possession of my new leg to a weekend play-writing masterclass in central London was not such a great idea. Every uneven paving stone, every revolving door, every banister-free flight of stairs felt like a challenge too far. My mind kept wandering from how to structure a scene and create a character to how I could possibly take my leg off and crawl out of the room without anyone noticing. I returned, sorer and wiser, to the rehab centre for some adjustments where my prosthetist was kind enough not to say I told you so.
October 2, 2010
I have had thoughts, post amputation, that I’m pretty sure I’ve never had before. Thoughts of Gok Wan, for instance. Wandering through John Lewis between work meetings this week, I suddenly felt an overwhelming longing that he’d appear and sweep me out of my despondency and into the perfect prosthetic-friendly outfit (without me having to get naked or be watched by millions.) But he didn’t materialise and so I gave up and ended up in the cafe where I think I managed to take my leg off and change my stump socks without anyone noticing. Shopping just isn’t what it used to be.
September 11, 2010
Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief model may resonate with people who have lost limbs. But none of the descriptors: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance seem to accord with how I am feeling exactly five months post amputation. I think I missed out the first three stages and now I’m teetering around massive irritation. Having decided to try to manage my phantom limb sensation without drugs, I’m left with a fizzing and tingling in my missing leg that is literally driving me to distraction. Someone without a blue badge has parked in the disabled space outside our house and, three days later, shows no sign of turning up to move it. The council can do nothing as they have yet to erect the sign making it “official”. I can’t find an outfit to wear to a black tie 50th birthday party that works with an American Tan clad calf that looks like it once belonged to Miss Trunchbull or a well-nourished Ukrainian shot-putter. And to cap it all, my style consultant has handed in her notice and is going away to university. Nurse Jackie and the rest of the team are keeping a low profile.
September 1, 2010
My new leg has slowly but surely wheedled its way into my affections. It was touch and go initially. For the first week, putting it on and attempting to cross a room was so incredibly uncomfortable that I seriously considered not bothering with a prosthetic at all. But then Sebastian pointed out the hypocrisy of my going on and on and on that he had to learn to touch-type during the holidays; that starting anything from scratch was tedious; that there was no gain without pain; that we can’t always spend all our time doing things we enjoy and that he’d be thankful in the end. If I wasn’t going to bother to learn to walk properly, he wouldn’t do his typing. And so he’s on 19 wpm and I’m on a prosthetic leg and one walking stick. By the time he makes 30 wpm, I’ll be walking hands free without a limp.
August 15, 2010
After four post-holiday practice sessions at the rehabilitation centre, with support and advice from my wonderful prosthetist, wound nurse and physiotherapist, and helpful comments from passing amputees, I have been allowed to take my new leg home. It reminds me, oddly, of the first day alone at home with a newborn baby. I gaze at it as it rests, propped up against my chair, with a mixture of exhilaration and trepidation. There’s no way back; the leg is here to stay. The joy of having it is tempered by weariness and apprehension as I go from expert, speedy crutch-hopper to beginner, tentative, prosthetic-leg-walker. Matron Anna, the first-born, says she knows how Stumpy must be feeling. No one’s interested in him, or even his beautifully healed scar, any more. It’s all lovely leg, amazing leg, incredible leg now. Not that she’s still bitter, or anything.
July 31, 2010
I’ve always hated the bit that goes before a holiday – taking Alfie off to Dog Camp, moving someone in to keep an eye on the house and the fish, packing, driving to the airport, getting into the plane, reminding myself (to no avail) that I’m statistically more likely to be killed on the way to the airport than while cruising at 30,000 feet in a metal tube, but this year it all feels much more of a challenge. Nurse Jackie and Sebastian have set off for the Inca Trail and the wonders of Machu Picchu – something that never really appealed to me even when I was in possession of two legs – leaving me and Anna to our low-activity week in Mallorca. I realise that so much of my equanimity is linked to the familiar: I’ve perfected an obstacle-free route to my office; I know which of my friends have steps leading up to their front doors; I can get my cup of tea from the kitchen into the garden without incurring third degree burns. Moving into the unfamiliar feels very daunting. I’ve enlisted Matron Anna to help me pack, I’ve booked valet parking at the airport, ordered assistance at the terminal and hired a wheelchair at the hotel (more to stop my mother worrying than to get about.) Beyond that, there isn’t much more I can do except hope for the best. It’s going to be odd being amongst people who will only know me as an amputee. I’m not sure whether I’ll brave the swimming pool with a bare stump, if crutches will work on sand, or if I’ll make it into the sea. But on the plus side, my wound has miraculously healed, it’s 90 degrees F in Palma and I know the Spanish for two beers and a plate of calamari.
