This is my account of the ordeal I went through in 2018 on discovering I had a serious hip problem. Some of it is quite fun, some of it is horrible - but fun-ly written.

 
I had hoped to document my recovery  process, but opiates,  a tediously non-existent recovery, & a resulting sense of hatred got in the way, & I only wrote as far into the story as leaving the hospital ...but things got worse from there. Now  years, more surgery, & a titanium leg later, I enjoy life from a state of degrading impairment - hence my fabulous red cane.

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BUT FIRST, A BIT ABOUT ME

I have problems and that’s OK. The main one in this story, Acetabular Dysplasia, is commonly associated with inbred dogs. As far as I am aware, I'm not inbred, and I am a human, but the Year of the Dog was the same year I was surgically extracted from my mother. That's as close to a dog as I am, no more jokes about dogs, please.

I was physically healthy, though, instead of crying at birth like a normal baby, I examined my new environment, and to my dissatisfaction, realised I was in the wrong place. Then, swaddled very tightly, my corners were crushed as my square peg was pushed through a round hole.

I have always been ill-fitting -socially, culturally, everything-ly -- I was painfully aware of it. I don't mind so much now. I'm used to it. I like it. I am an artist. Artists are supposed to be strange. I'm finally being the way I'm supposed to be.

Growing up, nothing was interesting.

I would look at how happy these people were, with their things and their activities and their friends. I wanted those things and those activities and those friends, but these things and these activities and these friends are so boring!!

If ever I was doing anything, it was never by choice. I was perpetually forced along, in the queue, waiting for situations to finish. Waiting till I could eat food that was preferably white, and watch TV that was preferably ads. I was allowed to do these things, and encouraged to fatten just like my mother.

I was terrified of the dark so much that every night I would water my bed. I slept on a stack of rustling plastic under my sacrificial sheet, atop an organic yellow mattress that smelled like it wasn't fooling anyone. At 10 I switched to an opposing habit of going to the toilet. If anyone wanted to know where I was, she's in the toilet. Going to the toilet became my reason for living. Hello Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello! Hello!

I was terribly convinced that my parents would die while I was away at school. They were fine when I was at home, or at least  I didn't care when I was home, only while I was away, and I soon learnt that I could stay home or get picked up from school if I was sick. That meant I could get out of school at the moment I pondered parent death, just so long as I masqueraded it as sickness. The tears and distress that came naturally at the thought of my dead parents were an added bonus.

I only had to use my hypochondria powers half the time, the other half was conveniently genuine migraines that I suffered regularly since I was 4, or a host of other weird medical conditions like croup, mumps, shingles, self-correcting appendicitis? An entire handful of supernumerary teeth - extracted for social reasons, and mumps again.

I supplemented my diet abundantly with Paracetamol. It's not food, but it is white, and I ate in desperate quantities.

Though I was smart enough to figure out how to use illness to my advantage, there was something not quite right about how I learnt. It was only ever possible if I did it laterally. I definitely learnt things, but anything I was taught just disappeared....

She must be "creative".

For a while the teachers thought I was a dummy and put me in the "slow" class, but then they thought I was genius, and put me in the super-duper class. Eventually I was put back in regular class. I didn't fit anywhere, so being smooshed back into the mediocrity option was as good as it was going to get for me.

Now, at 35, with the recent discovery of Acetabular Dysplasia I can't help but associate it with the lack-lustre disaster of my childhood.

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WALKING

If I can walk there, I can walk back. This makes me feel safe. I will never be stranded anywhere, so long as I walked there. I don't need money, I don't need people, I just need myself, and I'm safe. I love walking. It's a pleasure, it's a mode of transport, it's a perfect form of exercise, I can smoke if I want, it's somewhat social -  I get to say "hello" to a passer-by" if I want to, or even stop and chat - and  leave whenever I want to because I was "going somewhere". It's the pinnacle of unconfined individual freedom.

I used to be able to walk for several glorious hours at a time, until one day I could no longer ignore a pain that followed. I would be all better the next day, but walking would spark it again, and it happened the next day sooner, and then sooner.

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I regressed from an active stride to a small limping shuffle within 2 months and was forced to cease my walks altogether. The activity was saved only for painful emergencies, and I became quietly scared that I would have no way to burn off my food - I refuse to be fat ever again.

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There was no problem, thank goodness, with using an elliptical trainer. There is no impact, and arm power can replace leg power if needed. I have not one, but two elliptical trainers in my tiny Hong Kong apartment. One for me, and one for my sweetie.

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My sweetie encouraged me to go see an Orthopaedist about it, because I'm grumpy and hard to tolerate when I don't get my walkies.

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...OK, and that was the last innuendo about dogs.

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ORTHOPAEDIST

I never went to an orthopaedist before. I didn't think I needed one - not really. I thought Orthopaedist visits were purely decadent, or for people with real problems - and, of course this is me, I don't have any real problem. I almost expected that I'd be able to Google my way to recovery.

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I obliged my sweetie and made an appointment, expecting to come home with a prescription for a couple of sessions of physiotherapy and a few obscure exercises.

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I was nervous about having a man handle my sacred nether-regional area so I chose an Orthopaedist who was also a woman. She was very nice, very focused, and very direct. I was still nervous, and quite tiny, inside her enormous central-city office, but she was large and in charge (figuratively - physically, she was just as small as me), and right off the bat, she asked me about problematic sexual positions, and in response I gave her my biggest, bestest blush.

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She reminded me of Michelle Yeoh.

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She wiggled my leg a bit, found my special sore spot, and offered me some lollies for the pain. I declined without considering. Yes, I was in a fair deal of pain, but knowing me, if I didn't have pain to keep me in check, I'd ruin my hip even more! The only time I reach for painkillers  is after a really good night out.

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With the drugs rejected, she prescribed me physio, I knew it, but surprised me with a referral for an MRI scan. I procrastinated my way out of the physio, but the scary and expensive sounding MRI had me curious enough to do it.

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This is getting very decadent now.

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THE MRI

I had absolutely no idea what to expect from an MRI experience, though I did know a few people who've had fistfuls of them. My curiosity had me asking, but even after many recounts, I still had no idea what to expect. It all seemed too abstract.

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I knew you couldn't have any metal, and I used that knowledge to get extremely nervous about my gold-pimped filling. My imagination had it ripped from my tooth, through my cheek, ping-ponging around the machine, havoc... shrapnel...the loss of a technician's eye...oops!

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I was told by quite a few people that the MRI apparatus was immaculately efficient for the job of inducing extreme claustrophobia. On the pre-procedure form, I had to check a yes /no box "Are you claustrophobic?" which I checked with a question mark. I was already terrified, but, like a trooper, I took off my bra, put on the pyjamas and went to my doom with my shoulders rounded, and my arms folded in front of me.

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It looked like a big front-loading washing machine - but only the front part. It was all facade, and the laundry had nowhere to go but be forsaken in a pile on the other side. I thought to myself "really?" and I heard Peggy Lee "Is that all there is?".

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Knowing the machine would be loud, I brought earplugs, and the technician laughed at me (just a little bit, in a nice way - she was nice). Of course they supply earplugs, I'm sure it's a legal requirement, but I brought my own specially shaped ones to cater to what I call my "small ear"- just another thing on the pile of invisible to all but me, unpleasant physical issues I have. Some might say that I am hyper-hyper sensitive, and I would agree. 

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I was also given a set of over-ear headphones - like ear muffs - with some super-nasty elevator music to listen to.

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The technician asked me about myself with her lovely voice, then she tucked me in with big cosy blankets & pillows & a restraining frame to prevent me from running away screaming.

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She read me a story

"...and whatever you do, don't move..."

then kissed me on the forehead & pushed a button that inserted my swaddled papoose into the sphincter of the doughnut, where I remained, unlike the laundry, for a wonderful 45 minutes of snooze.

I recommend MRIs. "two thumbs up!

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RESULTS:

After I said all those nice things about the MRI, I was shocked to learn that the MRI had some horrible things to say about me!

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It was going around telling everyone that I had a torn labrum (a torn what?)I don't even know what that is.

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And I was even more horrified to find that this whatchamacallit needed surgery.

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Hip surgery?!

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Keyhole-surgery, they call it. Expensive-keyhole- hip surgery. Hip surgery.

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I was scared, and nearly cried in front of Michelle Yeoh, but I sucked back the tears, and made an appointment to see a specialist surgeon, who - by the way - was a man, because for some reason, there were no women who did this surgery.

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OK, I'll let it slide, because this is no longer decadence. This had just become a real thing. Just give me someone that knows their shit. Please.

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MEANWHILE

With my appointment pending, I ran (or should I say limped) across a friend on the street. I told her of my plight and the dreaded hip surgery, but because she is the loveliest, most good and decent, charitable person in the world, she made me feel reassured as she told me of a man she just-so-happened to be taking care of, who'd recently had not one but two hips entirely replaced, by none other than my soon-to-be surgeon. The patient was coming along very well, and was feeling great, only suffering from having his bits-and-pieces seen as my friend helped him shower.

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I figured that if a middle aged man can do so well after a double hip replacement, then it makes sense that I, a 35 year old lass, had nothing to worry about with teeny tiny, small-fry keyhole surgery.

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Hooray!

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After parting with my friend I was comforted and embarrassed for being so scared, and also pleased that my surgeon-to-be is so skilled, that he can completely fillet his victims and leave them satisfied.

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MR. SURGEON

I felt much more at ease going into the surgeon's office after learning of his reputation. And with a reputation like that, I'm going to call him "Mr. Surgeon".

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I met him. He was very nice. Very thorough, very professional, very humane, and human, whilst also very "larger than life”. He's like a well-meaning, softly spoken, British version of Zeus - who looks like he might enjoy watching cricket on TV. How does that work?? I don't know.

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He had me lie on a table and picked up my legs, each one at a time. Individually, he rotated them through a bunch of different movements, one of which, on the offending side, told him exactly where the tear was, and I didn't appreciate it. Ow! Then had me walk up and down his spacious office where he noticed my limp. And out came the words

"Has anyone ever told you that you have a beautiful limp?"

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or more like

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"Has anyone ever told you that you have a limp?"

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No. No they haven't.

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I'd been walking around with this bloody thing for the past couple of months, and the only person who ever noticed was my sweetie. Why? Did people see it, but feel it wasn't their place to come up to me and say:

"Excuse me Ma'am, I couldn't help notice...and I wonder if you are aware of it yourself... that you have a limp."

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I wonder who would actually tell someone that a limp is present in their gait? I don't think that's what people would do! It's unnatural. Methinks humans would avoid this. In public, it would be just plain rude. Like telling someone that they have a wart. It's a social faux pas, and not anyone else's business. A limp is a private affair! - Yet out there for the world to see - and not comment on.

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After learning that all the activities normally causing this kind of injury were the very same things that I avoided like the plague (due to my profound allergy to sports), Mr. Surgeon suggested, with well concealed concern and fervour...

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That I have a quick and very casual, very nothing special x-ray...

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Immediately!

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In the room next door, where a radiologist was waiting...

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Perched like a spider.

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I was scared again. Not for fear of the health of my hip, how could it be any worse than it was? No, I was scared because an x-ray meant that I had to take off my jeans and put on shorts. For the average person this would have been fine, but for a lady like myself, who is not only image obsessed, but currently presented with the socially harmful combination of un-depilated legs, and a radiologist who is about to see her in shorts, I was at my most vulnerable.

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Of course the radiologist - who was really very nice, I have to say - had to arrange my legs into certain positions, and of course he is not blind and comes equipped with a sense of touch in his hands. He must have been terribly aware of my leg fur, and I feared he would later have a laugh, and tell all his friends after work, at the pub, about the lady with the hairiest legs in the world. Me.

The x-ray was over before it started, and I went out and waited for Mr. Surgeon in the waiting room with my sweetie, who thought everything had gone so smoothly in the first part of the appointment that he would remain there for the rest of the time- out in the waiting room with his logic/brains game on his phone. But when Mr Surgeon came back to fetch me, he insisted to me that he fetch my sweetie too. I replied to the surgeon quite soberly

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"Yikes!"

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And right there, standing in the waiting room, as my sweetie was collecting his shit together, I hear the words

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"Your bones are the wrong shape"

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And my mouth was open for the benefit of any present fly to saunter in and out at their leisure.

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We go in and look at my x-rays together. Never mind the bad news - I still had to blush at the knowledge that there were two men examining a picture of my pelvis which had the slightest whisper of definition to my genitalia.

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Trying to pretend that I knew what I was looking at, bone-shape, rather than lady parts, finally with Mr. Surgeon's help, I could see painfully clear, just how much my leg bones did little more than dangle from the side of my pelvis.

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This is wrong. A normal pelvis has nice deep holes in each side especially so that the bones can spread the torso weight evenly over the femur head. All my weight is spread (that's hardly the word) over a very small area. Instead of a nice big horizontal umbrella, my sockets are diagonally lateral. The soft tissue tears off, and the leg goes with it.

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 I have an inhospitable pelvis, and my legs are its wayward children.

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It was a very good thing that I found out about my condition at this time and no later. Mr. Surgeon appraised that I had within 6 months to 1 year before my hip would become arthritic and risk dislocation.

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So there I go, minding my own business, walking (limping) down the street, and I'm forced to hasten my pace for a traffic light or some such thing, and my entire leg breaks free from the shackles of my torso, and down I go, in public, on the street, in front of people, people who are looking at the spectacle of my leg flapping in the breeze, attached only to the rest of my body by skin and jeans. Thank goodness for jeans. That's what would have happened if I ignored the pain and didn't get it checked out.

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I certainly know what a small labrum tear feels like, and that's not very nice at all. A dislocated leg however... ideally that would prevent me from remaining conscious, but who can say, I might be awake and fully lucid and feeling every hideous sensation associated with freshly torn cartilage.

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To fix all that I would absolutely need to have a full-blown hip replacement.

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Instead, I am going to get to keep all my own bones (Yay) but they'll be chopped up and rearranged with screws and metal plates (Yikes). There was a good chance that my femur was also malformed- a condition that is frequently present with Acetabular Dysplasia, so a CT scan was arranged for the following week to check it out, and determine how significant my surgery was going to be, and how long my sentence of down-time.

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LATER THAT NIGHT

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My sweetie and I needed to chase that doctors visit with a few bottles of sobering wine, so we head to one of our favourite bars. There, after the excitement of the first proper sip is out of the way, we realise things are quiet and weird, then who comes along but one of our favourite friends, and I have the perverse thrill of giving the bad news.

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I did OK, I spoke objectively about it, though slightly timid, and that night ended with assurance, hugs and the insistence that after the surgery, I would be better than I'd ever been.

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The next day was something else, I read the report that the surgeon sent as I carefully nurse my hangover. I look at my x-rays, I look at descriptions of the surgery and depictions of the surgery, I see shell-shocking things on Google Image Search about the surgery, and by midday I had become a blithering explosion of tears and mucus because I am very squeamish.

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This is when time begins to pass slowly. This last month has been royally taking its sweet, royal, god appointed time (I'm not religious, I just thought that sounded fantastic - exactly as fantastical as god is!), and time is the slowest thing in the world, and anticipation is my biggest angst.

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FEARS

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Pain, boredom, waking up during surgery, not smoking, non-union of cut bones requiring further surgery and more pain and more waking up during surgery, more not smoking, getting fat with no way to expend calories, being a pest to my sweetie, getting a visit from my family, being visited by people who will see me fat from not expending calories, feeling helpless, not being able to go anywhere, not wanting to go anywhere whilst fat, agitation, boredom from not smoking, boredom from immobility, boredom from not being able to eat food, boredom from pain, pain, complications during surgery leading to less calorie expenditure, less mobility, more pain, falling over while I'm healing and breaking my femur pins, sending the severed bone out through my impaled thigh - requiring more surgery and more down time, leg amputation, deep vein thrombosis. It's funny, the fear of death is very far down the line, I don't fear death with this procedure, though it is on the list of complications - death is not the worst thing that could happen.

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THE CT

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There was another form I had to fill out before getting the CT scan, and though this is Hong Kong and the English language is everywhere, and the facility was in the most metropolitan part of the city, and even half of the technicians were British, they still managed to present the release form in an embarrassing form of English translations. “Konglish.

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After managing to interpret the form, I was escorted by a lady about 4 meters away to a dressing room where I was given a pair of shorts (and thankfully I had previously learnt my lesson and removed my fuzz beforehand), she also gave me slippers and a big fluffy robe that I was encouraged, strongly, to put on. I was then lead into the CT scanning room about 1 meter away, where I was asked to take off the robe and slippers. I wondered why I had to put them on.

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The technician was such a "lad". He spoke like a chap at a pub making small banter, and yet he never made eye contact- he hid behind his chit chat. Before scanning, he had to first find out where my hip was under all the blankets they'd piled on me, so he asked very seriously to feel for it, I said yes, and he poked out his finger and prodded me once in the hip like a shy teenage boy granted permission to touch a boobie for the first time. Then he ran away with his erection to the scanning booth.

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The CT scanner is like a poor man's MRI, as far as it goes experience-wise. It was all over fast and before I got up the lad stopped me and asked if I was wearing anything under the blankets. As I write this it sounds really perverted, but the poor guy was probably so scared of being a potential witness to indecency - that he could get in trouble for, so he wanted to absolutely make sure that he was not in the room as I arose from the scanning bed in my birthday suit and smile.

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He was funny.

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As I went to tackle the whole meter back to the dressing room, he stopped me again and handed me the robe insistently. I think CT scanning technicians are that special kind of prude where a girl in a pair of shorts, socks and a t-shirt is lawsuit-pending-ly erotic.

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THE VERDICT

The next appointment was straight away with Mr. Surgeon to decrypt the scan results and decide whether my leg needed chopping off. Big decision!

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He said the radiologist thought that the twist in my femur was normal, yet he disagreed.

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And my personal history corroborated that that funky twist of mine was already symptomatic when I was a real little girl.

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Around the time of primary school, I used to sit in what is affectionately known as the "W position". Just to be extra different, my style was way more pronounced, more like a "T" with my knees aimed straight out at opposing right angles. The only reason I stopped sitting like that was because I was peer-pressured out of it. The children in my class, cruel as they were, claimed that I took up too much room on the mat with my legs sticking out. Mind you, being the "fat kid" in the class, they would have argued that I took up too much space in general.

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Mr. Surgeon then showed me something that's supposed to line up with some other thing on the scans, and told me the method for figuring it out. I knew for sure that I was looking at pictures of  my Julienne sliced bones, but other than that, had no idea what I was supposed to see.

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If I was over 55 we would just leave the femur alone because that part takes ages and ages and ages to heal and will double my recovery time - at the very least. But!  Since I'm young and have another 50 years of life expectancy, we should do this, and be thorough, and I agree. I'm going to live for another 50 years! Up yours, death!

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We booked a date for surgery about a month from then. In that time we could sort out all the insurance crap, make preparations, make arrangements, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah.

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NERVOUS BREAKDOWN RESEARCH

By now I was feeling prepared to tackle surgery! I was cold and heartless about it, enough so, that I could examine my latest medical report, CT scans, and online medical papers about femoral versions. I learnt that the way my legs were twisted were exactly on par with an infants'. How interesting! I guess they just never matured - along with my infantile hips! It wouldn't be very adult of me to go on for another 50 years with immature hips and thighs! Haha! I chuckle to myself and feel really good about reading, and sometimes understanding, medical papers.

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What's this? One of the scans looked out of place - like it'd been warped or something. Hang on a minute...a minute. The radiologist said my leg twist was normal, but Mr Surgeon said it was way off... what the... that fucker! He changed the scan so that I'd need to have a bigger, more expensive surgery! One that he happens to specialise in! So he can squeeze money out of me! That Swearword!!!! I'm going to sue him! Swearword! He wants to cash in on me? I'm gonna cash in on him! I'm gonna sue him! Like a swearword adult!!

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I had to make sure to check the scans thoroughly to confirm my case. I was shaking and nervous, but I kept my cool. I painstakingly morphed the anomalous scan back into a consistent shape, and superimposed it onto the others.  Then I found the twist measuring technique in some medical papers and was, quite surprisingly, able to apply it to my scan. I did it! Oh.

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It was the same twist as in Mr Surgeon's reports. And, on all the medical papers I found, they said that this is an abnormal twist. I had just experienced rage and denial. Oooops. I felt ashamed, yet secretly proud of my hysterical research. I may be a layman, but I'm not to be had!!

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The next time I saw Mr Surgeon, I apologised for thinking of him as a crook. I thought it was better to let him know that I had considered him crooked, than to just keep it to myself, like normal people.

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PASSIVE AGGRESSION, FAMILY STYLE

One obstacle with having a humongously invasive surgery on your to do list is telling your family all about it. Well, that part is easy, but telling them in such a way that's not going to get them all freaked out enough to  book the next 12 hour plane ride to come and bother you with their love and good intentions - especially when you haven't seen your family in over 10 years. What a horrible reunion. Exactly the thing to raise ones stress levels with gusto.

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I'm the baby of the family, and I suspect that the family still consider me as such, because I'm the baby that got away. Like a runaway kid, I abandoned my home country and all the family inside it - at least that's what I think they think. I actually left because I wanted to be with my sweetie. Simple as that. And did I mention that my sweetie is quite literally old enough to be my father?

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No, not yet - surprise!

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I still keep in communication with my family, but, just like sports, I am allergic to talking on the phone, so not that way. I never really trust what I'm hearing because there's no body language to tell me what people really mean. And yes, there are video calls which can tackle that problem, hands down, but I'm allergic to that too because they make me I feel ...'looked at'. Usually I would shoot my mum or sisters an email once in a long while, (not my dad,  who has rejected me for my sweetie's ability to challenge his roll of being my father) and that would be my equivalent of a family visit.

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I've got issues, and I am totally cool with them all. They're my babies.

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I decided to tell my sisters first and ask their opinion on how to tell the parents.

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Of course, I am immediately forced to politely decline my middle sister's insistence to come and visit me for two weeks - taking time off her job to take care of me. She is very lovely, and so generous, and her offer means so much to me - but I would rather die.

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No, no, no! No family visits, not NOW of all times!

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My sisters decided that together, they would wait a week, sit them down, and tell mum and dad with delicacy, but what actually happened was an immediate and large vomiting of information. There were carrots. There are always carrots. My middle sister just doesn't have the stomach for keeping secrets. Right away, she told me that she told mum and mum's waiting for me to contact her.

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I waited a day. And then another one. And then on the third day, as dawn appeared fresh and rosy-fingered, Telemachus emerged from his chamber like a god, and I get a tiny message from mum saying:

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"hello, no news to report here, how are you? La lala, I'm oblivious and know nothing"

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I think she wants me to tell her something-

Something she already knows.

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I wait a day. I tell her, and somehow her interpretation of my condition is that it is:

Self induced- because I walk every day and that's just wrong! And that it is nonexistent - especially because I was loved as a child- and that proves it. And no one else in the family has ever needed hip surgery!!

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No, my mum is not a nut, she had just been allowed to sit around with her imagination for the past few days, thinking of scenario after scenario, and then like my middle sister, I guess it's hereditary, there's a vomiting of information, and it's not especially reasonable, with all the carrots. It must be terrible to be a parent. Just look at what children do to them!

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MY DISGUSTING, PERVERTED FANTASY

Of course this is a relatively uncommon condition that I have. I wouldn't be caught dead with some "normal" affliction, but I also couldn't have something too mysterious. Like a bowl of porridge, my affliction had to be just right - specifically: threateningly normal, but "slightly strange". Mmm, delicious. So when I tell people what I've got, they tend to ask how I got it, and then I tell them my fantasy - whether they want to hear it or not - but in saying that, I have found that if you are talking to people and announce that you are about to tell them your fantasy- some people make a strange face, but nobody leaves, and everybody is leaning forward to listen, and listen well!

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There are a few ways a person can get Acetabular Dysplasia, and most of them begin in the womb. For example, if you're your mother's very first baby, she might not give you enough 'personal space', or same if you're a big baby, and then there's being born the wrong way, and having your soft bones squashed out of shape and never correcting as you grow. All in all, from what I deduce, it's a pre-born, or being born baby that gets a bit squashed.

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So, which one am I then? Let's see, I am definitely not a first baby, being the youngest of a string of womb-inhabitants. I was not a big baby, I think I was unfortunately quite averagely sized, and I did not "come out the wrong way" because I was extracted via caesarean, just like all of my siblings - you could say it's a family rite of passage... Gross.

Well....!When I was about 22, my mother had to have a hysterectomy, and as they were removing her womanly organs, they couldn't help but notice that there was something else in there too...It was a cyst...and it weighed 5 kilos...and it had been in there way back when I was!

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So my theory, if you haven't made something of it already, is that this cyst was my unborn twin, and as I was growing larger in the womb, so it was too, giving a "big baby" effect and making me squashed! And the weird thing about it (cause that's just not nearly weird enough right now) was that I always wanted to have another me! I even had my debut exhibition at a dealer art gallery full of hyper-realistic paintings of me as a conjoined twin! I called it "Egoschism". Clever!

I imagined that though I desperately wanted another "me", if ever I had one, I would have severe jealousy problems with (her)Me, so it was lucky that I didn't. I thought long and hard about it.

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PHYSIOTHERAPY IS WRONG

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Before the surgery, it's important to go through something called "pre-habilitation".

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I was under the impression that my visit to physio would prepare me for the post-surgery recovery time. I was going to be taught how to walk with crutches- EXCITING!!! And I could ask my random questions related to being impaired, e.g. what kind of chair/sofa should I get?

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I was in need of a new chair for my delicate, tissue healing time, and warned that I would need something soft, possibly reclining. The one I currently had was unforgiving, un-reclining, always needed additions and adjustments - it looked nice... but I hated it and, had done since I first laid eyes on it at years ago. I was encouraged to buy it because I am too fussy and said no to everything else.

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So, I meet the physio therapist. She seemed OK, though I felt a little like she was judging me, but that is very normal for me to think that. With most people I meet, I get an unshakable sense that they have made a spectrum of negative conclusions about my character, my clothes, the "way" I said something, my choice of words, everything. I got it from her as she walked me into the physio room, into her domain where she knew where things were, and what to do with all of it. She was the king.

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She asked me where I was sore and went on to say that she would be giving me exercises to correct it. I was a bit puzzled. I thought I'd get the chair thing out of the way, in case I forgot about it later, so I asked. She had a mild eureka moment when she suggested a hard dining chair.

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Huh? Umm...

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Just for the sake of it, I casually tossed in the remark that the pain I has was from a torn labrum, and I was due to have large-scale, skeleton changing surgery to correct it, and that I was under the impression that I was there to learn crutches and pre-surgery exercises and stuff, cause the surgery was in, like, three weeks - just saying...

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She then also looked a bit puzzled, gave me a pair of shorts to put on and disappeared for a very long time, about 10 minutes out of a 45 minute session. Yes, some ladies do take ages to get dressed, but for fear of being discovered in my knickers, I changed my jeans into shorts in a flash, then opened the curtain to signal that I was finished, and sat there waiting, and waiting, and waiting...listening to people in the other cubicles, thinking about how the waistband of the shorts was so tight that I must have had a severe case of muffin going on. Then I thought about how much more muffin I was going to get without my exercise, and how I was getting there already, and etc, etc....

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When she re-materialised, she had a piece of paper which she coveted with all her being, and it could only be taken from her cold, dead hands. She set it down carefully in her line of sight, and then did weird things with my hips, and showed me in the mirror how she had made them straight and aligned, because they were crooked before - she insisted. This was where I lost all faith in this lady. Admittedly, I didn't have much faith in her anyway, but that moment was the nail in the coffin. What she had done was like a trick that I remember from primary school, where you make one of your arms "longer" by rubbing your elbow. I forget exactly how to do it- primary school was nearly 3 decades ago! But I remember performing this wizardry myself.

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She showed me how to do a bunch of exercises which were described on the piece of paper, one of which was absolute agony, and there was a huge 'clunk' and a crunch/pop in my hip, it made me cry behind my eyes, so I had to say something about it. She put her finger in my face, close enough to smell, and showed me how it also pops. I am not feeling confident with this lady.

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So it's over, and before she leaves me to change, she asks if I have already been given a copy of her coveted document. I'm thankful that she did ask, because I hadn't. I say no, and I can see she is now feeling challenged, and quite torn on the inside by my reply. But, like a good citizen, she hands her copy to me - though reluctantly, really reluctantly. This was her precious! And then she told me not to waste paper, because she knew that I was thinking about taking the paper home, covering it in glue, setting fire to it and using it to light my cigarette while I laugh like a big weirdo. I promised I wouldn't, and she just disappeared! Poof! No goodbye. And I had to discover my own way out.

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PEER MODEL

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Back when the surgery was freshly booked, I was offered a peer model, someone who had been through the whole shebang that I could ask detailed questions about what it's like. Mr Surgeon could tell me what he's going do to me all he wants, but having never been done unto himself, he's nearly as oblivious as I am as to what it's actually like. This is where Claire comes in.

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After our e-introduction, I tried to maintain our conversation as text based, what with my 'phone thing', but because Claire comes from a generation that doesn't revolve around text messaging, we worked out a system where I would paste a letter it into a message, then she would reply with audio, like leaving a message on an answering machine. How harmonious, the best of both worlds.

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She sounded like a contender for The Loveliest People of the World pageant.

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It was so nice to hear her voice, while it made me a little embarrassed that I was too chicken to reciprocate.

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Of course I harmlessly spied on her by means of checking her social network pages, and found that she hadn't really documented her condition. There was only one very interesting photo of a biohazard bag of surgical bolts and pins. These get extracted at the very last phase of the long and gruelling process. A trophy for winning the war over poor skeletal development. Up yours nature! Claire wins! Seeing this picture made me feel so happy for her, and so optimistic for myself. I want to meet her some day, and show off my own bag of shrapnel. And we can compare whose is bigger.

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I asked her my questions, a lot of them were about feelings - Aw, ladies and feelings, eh!

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But actually, the biggest concerns I have about the surgery is how I'm going to feel. Bored, uncomfortable, undignified, frustrated, sore, scared, helpless, etc.

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I felt very safe to tell her whenever I had a delicate moment, when I couldn't help but leak from my eyes, and she gave me little bits of encouragement and love, enough to take the edge off.

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I had decided to let myself cry as much as I wanted, like a therapy, like ice cream after a tonsillectomy. Except, on one unsuspecting morning, I asked Claire about visible leftovers from surgery and she was kind enough to share, in all their war-time glory, photos of her post-surgery wounds.

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I wanted to see. I asked to see... And I saw...And then I got ready to go to a birthday party...

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"Hey Boys and Girls! It's time for a little ditty! Sing along if you know the words!

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I'm going to a party and my face is turning grey - level of discomfort on the rise.

I'm going to deal with all this stuff the antisocial way - shut my mouth and just internalise.

Coupled with carsickness from the drive around the bay - blood and guts keep flashing in my eyes.

I saw a big incision only earlier today - I asked for it but still I was surprised.

"Everybody now!"

Please don't look at me, I've got some crying on my face - feeling like I'm going to throw up - yee ha!

Thinking about gore to fix my hip that is displaced - I hope I haven't ruined my makeup

I'm OK with tears, except not really in this case - drinking champagne in a birthday cup

Going into shock while I am in a public place  - because my pelvis didn't develop...

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No more singing now. Once the champagne and friends kick in, everything is fine, and after a few days of phasing in and out of shellshock, I stop wincing at the idea of incisions, and being incised and seeing my own innards.

Claire did show me another picture. It was her scar as it was at that moment. Real-time-live scar! It actually looked pretty cool, but the best part of that picture was that it was taken after she'd been for a run. Running! It seems so far away to me right now ... but if she can run it means I'll be able to run! And though I never liked running in the first place - if you can run, you can walk!

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PHYSIO 2.0

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After deciding quite firmly that I could not go back to that last lady, though I'm sure that she's a lovely person and we probably just got off on the wrong foot, I had to insist on being childish and refuse to see her again. I had to find another physio, and I did! Only a 5 -10 minute limp from my house!

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I really like my new physiotherapist. She's little and cute, and is quick and nimble like a little lizard - a cute one. A gecko.

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She makes an awful lot of agreeing, understanding, and acknowledging noises. Uh huh, OK, mm-him, right, yep, OK, good, yes, mm-him. She is extremely positive, and a bit distracting while I'm trying to talk. I can see that her main focus is to not dislocate my hip, and I know this because she tells me how we shouldn't do this cause it might dislocate the hip, or if you go too far then it might dislocate the hip, etc. She comments a lot on a wide variety of reasons why it's best to not overdo things because... you guessed it - it might dislocate the hip. I appreciate that! I absolutely don't want to dislocate my hip! She's great.

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After teaching me some very (extremely) gentle and non-dislocating exercises, she taught me how to use crutches!! Cool! It is a bit sore on the hands, and kind of tricky to

intuitively remember which side goes up and down steps first, but there is a way to remember it, and it kind of slightly bothered me in an eeny-weeny way, that the method for crutches is not a secular mnemonic.

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Apparently:  the good go to heaven and the bad go to hell.

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Could it not have been: Thumbs up is good! Thumbs down is bad! Up good! Down bad?

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There are many, more simple ways to remember this, but somehow, Christianity managed to wangle its way into crutches.

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REJECTION

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The worst thing that can happen when you're facing a massive surgery, after having dealt with the grief and stress of the situation, is to turn around and find that your insurance company has rejected your claim on all expenses so far, refuse to pay for the surgery, and henceforth anything to do with or resulting from the condition in the future.

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As Acetabular Dysplasia is an exponentially degrading condition, I'm fucked. Pardon the swearword, but I feel that this is the time to use it. Today, it is the perfect word.

As of now, I don't know if I am going to have my scheduled surgery in 2 weeks. Mr. Surgeon had offered to intervene in such a situation, so if he chooses to interrupt his holiday which he is currently enjoying, and manages to fight the technicalities with my insurance company on my behalf, there might still be a chance...

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The technicality in question is the use of the word "developmental", as in ‘Developmental Dysplasia of the Hip'. And in my case 'Developmental- not congenital'

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My insurance rejection letter stated that "This policy specifically excludes development, learning difficulties, speech disorders and behavioural problems and this is stated on page 17 of the plan agreement."

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Surely enough, it did, but the lengths at which pettiness was achieved by my insurer was by taking this word "developmental" from my condition, and clumping it ever so technically with social development clearly associated with raising children.

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Meanwhile, because of this word, my hip gristle will continue to be shredded by my own weight, my pelvis and femur will exhaust and develop (there's that word again) Osteoarthritis, and my leg will fall off at the drop of a hat. I'll have to become sedentary to keep the pain down and develop (again) health problems from immobility. And on top of that, because my insurer now knows that I'm in a perpetual state of degradation, they can justify charging me more, and they can say no to absolutely any request to do with my increasing ailments. Ka-ching!!

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I bet the insurance clerk felt quite proud to catch this loophole, and probably got a bonus for it too. Kudos to you, Clerk. This is absolutely disgusting.

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If Mr. Surgeon can't make them see reason, be decent, and pay up, then the bill is all on us, and this operation is EXPENSIVE. We'll have to postpone it for at least several worsening months to save up for it. And I'll have to be in a ward instead of a private room. 6 days with other patients. With a communal bathroom, hearing them snore, smelling their smells, being stared at by them and their guests, being disturbed and having to be constantly on guard. Awkward silences and awkward conversations, never having privacy. I take my alone time terribly seriously.

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One of the dangers is if some other financial situation were to arise with all this going on.

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And the disgusting irony will be when it comes time to pay our annual insurance!! For 10+ years, they have made many, many, many thousands of dollars from me. I have never once made a claim, and my policy charges extra for some reason because I am an artist. Whaaaa?! Apparently painting and taking photographs is a really high-risk profession.

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CONTESTING

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On the highest technicality, the insurance company could very well win their argument - depending on how unethical, and how good their lawyers were. It is written. It is binding. We can't do Shhhhhhugar (I didn't say shit!!).

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We have to tell Mr Surgeon. From the very beginning, he asked which company I was with, and on learning he flinched, himself having had a bad experience with them, of all companies.

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I like to think that it was a combination of his immense empathy, and blood-lustful desire for revenge, that he offered if we had any problems, he would roll up his sleeves and throw a few lightning bolts their way, on my behalf.

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Inappropriately, the timing had me interrupt Mr Surgeon's annual holiday, but surely enough, he came through with a letter which was, to the untrained eye, a little soft, but under closer inspection, quite shaming toward the insurers, pointing out that their argument was a neurological one, whereas mine was musculoskeletal.

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After learning of the rejection, he insisted to me that it was more likely due to inadequacy and ignorance rather than malevolence, but who knows- only them!

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Meanwhile, my sweetie, being always prepared, in the most pessimistic sense, always and only prepared to get the worst news, started to look into how the hell we can pay for this surgery ourselves. He was convinced the insurance wouldn't budge, and it would take way more than 6 months to save up, and that's not including daily living expenses! Doing the maths, with my hip having about 6 months before expiration - if I got the surgery in time, and then immediately some shit (fu*%k I said shit) happened that required money immediately, we would be f#!%ked and I'd be recovering with my sweetie out on the street.

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It basically meant that I have to do as little as possible to agitate this quickly degenerative condition of mine = more boredom. We have to budget ourselves out the proverbial whazoo. On the bright side though, I didn’t have to quit my meagre handful of cigarettes a day yet...Woo hoo!

INTERVENTION

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With time running thoroughly out and no word from Scrooge & Miser Insurance LTD, my sweetie and I decide we really have to go and talk alternative options with Mr Surgeon. Actually it was all my sweetie's idea. Sadly, I still had hope.

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I was getting so shamefully desperate from the injustice of the situation that I successfully cried in public, as discreetly as I could, wearing my dark sunglasses at night time and passing as a Primadonna who's too cool for night vision.

I couldn't believe the words sobbing out of my mouth, begging with my sweetie that while he was being more realistic, if he could please  just let me cling to my hope until the surgery date passes till I accept closure, rather than now.

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Hope. Hahaha! I knew it was garbage when I was saying it, which heightened my state of embarrassment to ethereal levels.

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The next day my boil was lanced (figure of speech) and I had an amazing sense of relief (description of emotion), not because the insurance said they would give me money (comparison), but because Mr Surgeon told us in our meeting, in his gentle, cricket-watching voice, that he expected them to give in and pay up, and he ever-so tactfully slid the surgery date back 2 weeks to take the pressure off. And as the cherry on the cake, he offered to speak to them on my behalf. Sigh. It was lovely. I envy his children.

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Sure enough I received news from an insurance executive! That's an upgrade from an interning clerk! She asked me to provide the name of the doctor who was most aware of my entire life's medical history, who knows my state at every stage inside and out, my deepest fears and desires, what I ate for breakfast 14 years ago, everything etc.

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What to do, what to do.

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The problem with being a never-gets-sick person is when it comes time to show your medical history to your insurance company.

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The last time I saw a doctor regularly was when I was a hypochondriac child (I was a really bored child), and since adult life, I haven't had the need of a physician. Yeah, I had a guy who gave me the odd seasonal Paracetamol, and the occasional antibiotic, but what would he know about me, he's more like a personalised dispenser than a physician.

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Under instruction, I declared that it was Zeus Almighty Mr Surgeon, who was my physician, who has known me for two whole months, who actually paid attention to me the most out of any doctor I've known.

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The final touch on my reply to the insurance executive was in stating that I authorise Mr Surgeon to communicate with them in all matters regarding my condition. I don't know if he had the opportunity, but whatever was done, it worked.

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Days later (it always took at least half a week to hear back from insurance) I have a reply, CCed to a long list of people, me, my sweetie, Mr Surgeon, his nurses, his admin, and the hospital.

"We the insurance company think the surgery is appropriate."

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Hooray!

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DEGRADATION

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I impress myself at just how weak I have become. I am doing all of these gentle, non-offensive, non-dislocating, old lady exercises and I'm shaking! I don't understand - these exercises are not even hard!

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I see only now that it's a bad thing to focus solely on walking for daily exercise, because if you can't walk for some reason or another, then there's all your exercise gone, and you muscles go with it! Poof!

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I’ve been doing some Pilates lately, and it's kind of fun! But in a boring way...and I'm always straining myself somehow, on my good side.

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What I'm not so fond of is the stretching. I can feel my body really wants to aim toward a foetal position - although my hip is quite insistent that it doesn't like to have my knees up too far.

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I notice that while I'm walking I find myself leaning forward, so that my hip doesn't need to stretch so much as my right leg goes back. I've noticed how my stride is smaller too. I have to make little, frail, old lady steps.

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I have always taken the muscles on my back and backside for granted regarding their stretch aptitude. I'm the only woman in the world who can zip up her own dress in one movement, and genuinely never need assistance putting sunscreen on (my scapular are of the floating variety! which is kind of dangerous when you have an atrophied rhomboid major muscle, and then you decide to carry 12 kilos of water in your backpack) and if I keep my knees straight, I can comfortably cover the entire soles of my feet with the palms of my hands. No problem. I’m weird.

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Anyway, my muscle stretchiness/lack of stretchiness is causing me to fold in the middle and never extend back out. I think it's a fear based reaction. Not emotional fear, but a bodily fear - like snatching your hand away from a flame. I think this is called instinct. In that case, my instinct is being unreasonable - encouraging my muscles to seize just to avoid a little pain, just a little pinch in an area that feels weird, and wrong, like it's sick with the flu. I'm serious, most of the time my hip feels like it has a bad case of flu, like it's full of snot, and it has an ashy throat, and it aches but it doesn't know where, and all the other flu symptoms. Acetabular Dysplasia has effectively personified my hip and given it influenza.

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THE PROCEDURE: WHAT'S ON THE MENU

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I'll have two 15cm slices, please. One down the side of the bum, and the other in the bikini area. And I'll take that with an extra large portion of anaesthesia too, please. Thank you.

The pelvis will be cut in 3 places like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, and then rotated a notch and repositioned with a handful of pins and bolts and screws and chisels that you’d think anyone can get at their local hardware store.

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The femur will also be dismembered and rotated to more of a Charlie Chaplin style position, before being hammer and nailed back together again with a plank.

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What's REALLY gross is how they're going to massage my sciatic nerve and stretch it out and release all the tension so that it's all relaxed and staying out of the way rather than sticking around, being nosey and collaterally getting cut along with the bone. No thanks, let's just get that nerve a nice, distracting massage, and a drink, and keep telling it "look over there!"

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"What? Where? Where??!"

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If it were to pop up to say hello in the cutting process, I would never be able to use my leg again...! Massage please!

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Gross. I am really grossed out by the visual image of my disgusting sciatic nerve being manipulated. I even feel grossed out when I come across a nerve in the chicken leg I'm eating!

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Lucky I'm going to be asleep. I don't want to see that. I really don't want to witness ANY of it! Oh I feel sick.

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One side effect of having this ever-so-special massage is a big numb spot on the side of the thigh for a long, long, long, long time. In the worst case scenario: I could have an entirely dead-feeling leg for up to a whole year.

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I WONDER...

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Of course, I asked already "will I be able to wear underwear after the operation?" and apparently I will. Score! I had to ask, because ...it's my nether regions!!! No matter what butchery is bestowed upon them, they like to feel at their prudish best, safe in a pair of underpants.

NOT A REPLACEMENT

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A freakishly high amount of people have been likening this procedure to a hip replacement and they are mistaken!

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A hip replacement is a walk in the park as it is a simple out with the old and in with the new. The function is identical, the downtime is quick, and walking is instant, and there's only one incision.

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Compared to my ordeal, a hip replacement is nothing. Haha!

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I am to be filleted! Entire pieces dismembered and put back in strange places, and though I'll keep all my own bones, they'll behave differently and gravity will disperse from the hip down in a way that my original shape never anticipated.

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My recovery time will be a minimum of 3 months, and closer to 6 - that's still the minimum. And though I'll be able to walk, somewhat, on a stylish pair of crutches, my leg will not be able to support my full weight till the bone has absolutely grown in and solidified, and constantly at the risk of breaking and popping out through the flesh to say hello.

BEING CARRIED:

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I was always the kid who was bigger than everyone else, and when I say bigger, I mean fatter, though I wasn't nearly as fat as some of the larger sized children are today. When I was a kid, Fat wasn't as popular as it is today.

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A very large woe for a fat child is knowing that you will never ever be picked up and carried. Not by parents, and not even by a proud group of friends all working together. No one in the whole wide world is strong enough to pick that kid up, let alone do it with grace and ease, and as a little girl (though a very fat little girl), the grace and ease and romance and whimsy was all too important for me, and I bitter-sweetly put this notion on a shelf to get dusty, and I cried on the inside.

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Fast forward a couple of decades later and my sweetie and I are with a friend talking about the logistics of getting me up 8 flights of stairs for a rooftop party with lots of alcohol- and it goes without saying that the coming down of 8 flights of stairs is a huge part of this plan too. Whether it was just an overly ambitious idea or not, my friend suggested carrying me up either by herself or with help. I was exhilarated! And scared! If I can set my "worry-wart" nature aside and imagine that it won't be painful or unsafe...

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As an adult, I am absolutely a candidate for being carried! This is possible!! I'm so happy!!

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... but no, I can't do it. 8 flights up and down- with a critically dismember-able hip, and booze! No.

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I have enough of a thrill just knowing that it's not that far from a fantasy, and with my poor and failing skeleton, I can be transported via carrying, in many varieties of way!

Such as:

SPANNER IN THE WORKS

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They did it before, and they can do it again.

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It's 4 days till my surgery and I'm strangely excited! Now here's the twist! A message from insurance creeps into my mail box saying, in the happiest of tones, that my expenses will be paid from a congenital abnormalities benefit.

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Hang on a minute...

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Their initial rejection of my claim was because it was described as developmental. Isn't congenital precisely the opposite? That's an about turn if ever I saw one!

OK, so they're going to pay me with that - sure, but they are going to pay, so what do I care?

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OK, but wait, wait - There's a crafty trick to this benefit.

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 If you hold it up to the light and look very closely, you can see that there's hardly any money in it, at all!

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Wow!

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AND it comes with its very own lifetime threshold!

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So that once that little stipend is gone, you and all your other congenital abnormalities can be left in peace, unhindered by insurance coverage. AMAZING!

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The amount of money proposed would be barely enough to cover the cheapest, most back-water, most dodgy, mafia-run, circus surgery, performed by chimps, and then I would have to pay the rest, subsequent checkups, and further surgeries, and all that.

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That's not great. My sweetie and I have to think about this hard, and not be hasty.

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 Two days later, another message appears, in the merriest of ways:

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Aw, it says that Scrooge and Miser are being pestered by the hospital to shell out the cold hard cash! It’s all up to me to stop this schoolyard bullying from going on by saying yay or nay.

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What have we here? They are pressing me for time - Nobody presses me! I hate being hurried!! I turn green and rip off my clothes, and everything slows down so much that we postpone the surgery ourselves. It's OK to have a spanner in the works when you're the one who put it there.

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This was not the benefit I wanted at all, and I send a reply, reminding them that all my medical records have huge words stamped across them:

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"Developmental, NOT congenital"

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THE ULTIMATUM

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Dear Ms D
As you have decided to be a potentially threatening, smart-arse, pain-in-the-bum pest, we've had our medical team diagnose your condition with words and papers and articles that suit us,  as being exactly the opposite  of what your physician has described, and as you are in dire need of this surgery, we will allow you to choose whether to accept our measly, token payment as coverage - out of the goodness of our hearts, or, should you remain loyal to your physician, then in that case, please allow us to offer you nothing at all.

I trust you will find this all crystal clear.

Sincerely,

Fuck You

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...OK...???

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With no idea how to go about this one, I ask Mr Surgeon yet again to help, cause what is there to say to that? Do they really have a case? Do we have a case? Can they re-diagnose me? Questions, questions!!

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I think there is hope - but there's that word again.

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It's just a big mess. Everything is up in the air, and we have no choice but to wait for it all to come down again before we can see where we are.

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It is at this point where I am actually starting to feel guilty to ask Mr Surgeon's help again, even though he frankly and generously offered. At the end of the day, it's not his job to deal with my insurance company, and he's got his own shit to worry about, like cutting other people up, and his kids, for whom I envy so.

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*I'm purposely making it easy for all you psychoanalytic enthusiasts to figure out my father complex.

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I have started to look for other insurance companies, cause unless these guys come through as being decent, I'm going to boycott and badmouth that company till every cow that has ever lived comes home.

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SUGGESTED ALTERNATIVES

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Some very well meaning acquaintances have all the cures to my ails:

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"You should use the public system instead, that way you don't have to worry about insurance and it's pretty much free and all you have to do is wait for 3 years!”

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"Try my Chinese herbal doctor. My stroppy teenage boy had a really bad posture and the doctor gave him a special massage and some special herbs, and told him not to slouch so much, and now his posture is all fixed. He can fix your hip too! It's cheap! You can afford it with your insurance!"

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"You should forget surgery and spend all your insurance on physio sessions several times a week and we can strengthen your hip muscles to hold your legs inside the pelvis. Cause you know you it is possible to maintain Acetabular Dysplasia as a chronic condition, unless you have damage already, and I guess that's why you're feeling pain...but let me look at your x-rays just in case! "

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SOCIAL OSTRACISM 

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There is a scene in a movie that I don't particularly like. I don't like the movie. I also don't like the scene in the movie for all of its gore. In this scene, a man gets a nip from a shark and there's no medical aid, and everyone is sad for him, he just lays there getting septic and screaming in pain for ages and ages, by which time, his problem becomes old news and he's just a nuisance so he is abandoned.

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There is only so much time before people stop pitying and encouraging you to make it through the bad hand that life mercilessly gave you. They stop dabbing you on the forehead with a cool cloth, they stop tilting their head whilst gazing empathically into your eyes as you tell them how you're doing, they stop sending fun and friendly messages, they stop telling you jokes, problem solving about how to get you up and down stairs, and sending you invitations cause you're probably going to decline anyway, and soon they cease social contact of any kind, and you fade out of existence. I have become boring.

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I have friends who were so supportive when they found out about my condition. They would always ask how I was, how was the pain, how's the insurance situation, how was everything, and I think I made the mistake of always answering these questions.

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In their eyes, I was always going on about my limp and my pain and how far I can't walk, even though they were always bringing it up. I guess they didn't know what else to say to me. I didn't realise that I should have changed the subject to something more interesting, I mean, yeah my body is ridiculously malformed and my life is riding on what happens with this situation right now. It is astoundingly life changing for me, so I can't say that I don't find my condition interesting, but who wants to talk about that all the time? When you're out having an afternoon beverage in the sun? I don't want to be the wet blanket. I like novel conversations! Trivia! Hypothetical stories! Lively banter! Counter attacks! Discourse!!

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I think that they think ...that my hip is the only thing I want to talk about...so they're staying away now...because they don't want to talk about that. They think I'm that screaming, shark-bitten guy from that movie and it makes them bored and uncomfortable. It makes them feel like they're bad people! But they're not bad people - no! They're just oblivious people who don't know how to maintain a conversation about a topic that they're not interested in but think they have to be! People are capable of this and they actually do it. I will welcome them back when I make them less awkward.

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JUST DO IT

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It's only been a couple of months, but Acetabular Dysplasia is so degrading on life quality, me and my sweetie decide to just do it. Physically and socially I can do less and less and less. Waiting and prolonging for whatever reason is only making things worse. We can fight with the insurance later, meanwhile taking their token money and we'll have to find the rest ourselves.

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The date is booked. Next week.

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I wonder if Mr Surgeon is going to see me naked.

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SOCIAL MASTURBATION

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There is a breed of people who are proud of their tattoos and devise gratuitous methods of getting attention for them.

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They are the people who seek out and approach other people with tattoos, and on approaching the Target, they point out the Target’s tattoo and tell them that they think it’s cool. Oh! How nice. Thank you!

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Then they point out their own tattoo, so that the Target, prompted, must then return the favour by telling the Offender that they think their tattoo is also cool, then the dam breaks and the Offender floods the conversation with trivia about themselves which the Target doesn't give a shit about, the Offender feels validated.

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Neither tattooed person really likes the others tattoo. It was all a one sided ruse, and the Offender effectively socially-masturbated on the Target Now the Target has to make efforts to clean the giz off and get out of the "conversation".

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Social-masturbation is everywhere, and I am quite amazed at just how shameless the scenarios can be. It is especially existent in the topic of bodily ailments, to the extent that even when the ailment isn't a person's own, then they'll use someone else's. For example:

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1 "what happened to you?"

2 "I had hip surgery"

1 "oh! Someone I once knew had a hip replacement and blah blahblah and they were fine"

2 "oh."

1 "yeah... I broke my arm when I was little, and my parents got divorced and I had a cast and blah blahblah"

2 "oh, I'm sorry"

1 "yeah, it's fine now and my parents are OK, my sister's going to Europe.

2 "great."

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It goes on like that and happens in most places where there are people around, even very nice and well meaning people. Even non-dick people. The nicest most non-dick person in the world can do it obliviously too. They just don't realise they're doing it. It's a part of life.

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I notice that my crutches and wheelchair have acted magnetically towards social masturbators. If you want total strangers to come up to you and go on and on about themselves, go for a walk with crutches and you'll come home with a bunch of different life stories.

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LAST DAY ON LEGS

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As I loitered outside the Starbucks, finishing my coffee and smoking one of my last cigarettes, I see a lady who I've seen around before quite a lot. Just a normal town-folk lady, but something is different about her - she's walking normally on her legs! All this time before I had only ever seen her with a crutch!

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Not that I'm normally that kind of person, but I couldn't resist going up to her, after 3 years of just swapping civic smiles on the street, I had to talk to her and find out about her crutch - or rather lack thereof. Maybe her condition was the same as mine! Maybe we are kindred spirits! Maybe she's my best friend that I never met yet!!

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Obviously, the day before surgery, I'm in a desperate kind of way. I figure I may as well do everything that I'd normally be too shy to do. It's my last day on earth and everything ... I might die tomorrow.

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Here goes...!

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I did it. I talked to her. She was so friendly and lovely! And no, her condition was not the same as mine at all - of course not! It would be way too conspicuous for more than one person in this small-town village to have the same rare condition as me!

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I wouldn't dream of having the same thing as someone else!

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Anyway, we swapped stories and I learnt that she had a lifetime of knee trouble and had just completed the total restoration of her second knee - hence she was off the crutch and there was no more work to be done. I was so proud for her! One day I'm going to have my entire hip structure re-modulated, and over and done with for good, too! One day I'm going to be right where she is! In that wonderful place where there is no more surgery ahead to scare the proverbial crap out!

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Wow!

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...One thing I noticed though (uh-oh, here we go)... is that even though people can be so caring and generous with their empathy, and freely give their precious time to talk to people who approach them, people are still very quick to pull the blanket when it comes to swapping battle scars.

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Just quietly, I think she was trying to tell me that her knee replacement was so much worse than the mangling that my entire hip area was about to go through... so of course, I'd be fine. Everyone who gets their hips done is fine. And so much easier and safer than the knees. You’ll be fine.

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Did we just get into a pissing competition?

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How would she know I'd be fine?

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Why is everybody telling me I'll be fine? Do they know the future or something? I'm going to get butchered and rearranged! I could lose my leg or have it flopping around from a chopped nerve! Or get deep vein thrombosis and chronic pain for the rest of my life! I could die trying to fix my malformed hips and thighs, and I have no choice because they're going to pop out and roll down the street otherwise! It could happen on the way to hospital! I could wake up during surgery! Right when they're massaging the disgusting sciatic nerve!!! Oh my gosh. Vomit.

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Oh no!

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Look what I have done! Oh the shame, I think I was just that lady's tattoo Offender! Oh no!  I went out of my way to go up to her with the hopes of talking about myself! And because we talked about ourselves equally and we only had one blanket between us, it turned into a cock-blocking tug of war! My inadvertent plan to socially masturbate on that poor lady was foiled, for after a lifetime of knee surgeries, she had become a pro at maintaining her blanket status.

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I'll let her keep her precious blanket...this time... just you wait, nice lady with newly perfect knees.

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I scowl and shake my fist.

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Oh, I'm such a horrible person!

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SURGERY MORNING CARTOONS

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I can't eat or drink anything, and last night’s last cigarette would be the last I have till my new bone structure is fully formed. Sheesh. That's 6 months away. No point in putting makeup on, and nothing to pack cause we spent last night in a hotel close by the hospital. There's nothing to do but wait around and get nervous.

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Pondering.

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Why do I still have my period? Am I bleeding because I'm scared? That's what people do, right? Blood = scared.

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My sweetie is with me and he is so amazing. I keep thinking about how it's going to be so much harder for him than it will be for me - at every stage. All I have to do is have things done to me, but he will have to do everything. He'll have to wait, and worry, and keep himself busy, and then be there for me and take care of me, and put up with me... I hope I never ever take him for granted, even for a second.

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In the taxi to the hospital, I'm so nervous, so I've decided to deal with it like a vegetable. The weather is super misty and the hospital is at the top of the highest peak in Hong Kong. With birds of prey circling, and thunder and lightning! It's almost unreal. When did this get so fictitious? Yes!  It's just a story. I'll just watch like it's a story. I'm watching a movie. Going up through the thickened mist to the castle at the top of the hill where ominous things happen - and people die!

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Let's watch!

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My sweetie keeps checking on me, asking if I'm OK. Oh, he's interrupting the movie, and making things real again. I squeeze his hand and keep watching.

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THE HOSPITAL

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We're here. The air is spread so heavy with water, it's gel-like and prevents me from seeing exactly where we are. Wherever it is, it's really high up above the clouds - but still in the mist?? There's a door, and inside it there's just as much elevator music as there is mist outside.

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Welcome to THE HOSPITAL! Lightning! Thunder!

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I'm given a bunch of forms to complete, and in the stack I find yet another insult from the insurance company telling the hospital that they'll pay even less than the spare change that they promised to pay for me.

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It's really hard to watch the movie now, and I'm starting to get grumpy. My sweetie takes over, and I'm admitted. Thunder! Lightning!

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We take a lift upstairs to a very sterile nurses station with much less elevator music, none actually, where I'm asked more questions, tagged with a bracelet and instructed to follow a nurse to my room.

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I'm not doing too badly, if I say so myself. Don't get me wrong, I'm scared shitless, but I'm not making a scene! Hooray! That’s the main thing.

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Here is the room.

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Here is my bed.

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Here is where I will be left to die.

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THE WWII BUNKER

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My entire space is no bigger than the bed and there are 6 other beds in this room with only one bathroom all the way down the other end. There's nowhere for me to put my things. There is nowhere to put my sweetie. Not even somewhere for him to sit with me. I can smell other people's food. Other people's breath. Other people's clean underwear! And I can hear them breathe. And hear their thoughts! There is no privacy, and the walls aren't walls, rather, sickly, time-yellowed sheer curtains, apart from one window that overlooks a part of the hospital that no one should see. Lightning! Thunder!

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There are also a lot of construction noises coming from behind a temporary wall. Builders, armed with hammers and buzz saws, have decided to start building a new hospital wing next door.

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What is this place! I am amazed that people said such good things about this hospital - the very same people who mislead me to believe that the gentle MRI was a mortal threat.

This place is like a post WWII hospital in a partially obliterated European village! How could my upper-middle-class insurance plan only cover me for this!? This is a hospital?? This is a morgue!! This is the saddest morgue in the world!!And it’s about time it's under construction - World War Two was ages ago!!

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I don't like this movie. My sweetie notices my explosion of tears and takes me for a walk, back out to the nurses' station to try to calm my nervous breakdown. I'm in shock and I'm crying. Who could survive in this place? I am really not worried about the surgery, I promise you! I am deathly scared about being HERE full stop. ...Whether I'm chopped up or not!! I want to go home.

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Lightning! Thunder!

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MY HERO

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After a while of crying into a cup of black coffee at the nurses' station, I learn that my sweetie has arranged for me to flee this ghastly ward and all of its sick and constructive noises. We will max out my "congenital benefit” lifetime limit, and pay a bit out of our pocket and I will go to a shared private room. Oh thank you!! But now that I'm not crying anymore, I feel like a bit of a primadonna...

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But I just couldn’t be...Thunder! Lightning! ...in that place...

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We go downstairs, and already I'm very satisfied. We've come forward 60 years to a much less war-torn part of the hospital.

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Here is my room, with a nice big bathroom. Here is my bed, and here is a nice comfortable chair for my sweetie to sit by me during the visiting hours. And someone is in the other bed, but who cares! This is a good environment. Oh thank you! My sweetie just saved my life. How is this the same hospital??

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I meet the anaesthetist. Let us call him "Mr Doctor” He lets me choose between having an epidural and catheter, or rough it by getting me and my fresh wounds to and fro the toilet after my mega hardcore surgery for the first 24 hours.

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Catheter please!

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DRESSING FOR THE THEATRE

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Following instructions, I shower and put on the supplied - I kid you not - fishnet underpants. Sexy. There's also a beautiful blue gown, with a flap that covers the bottom! And a robe, and also a shower cap - but that's for later.

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Why isn't my period gone? What should I do with my tampon? Should I take it out and bleed on everything? Should I leave it in?

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A male nurse comes to escort me and my sweetie to The Theatre! Fancy!! I feel it is my duty to tell him about my corsage. My Tampon corsage, and it's not pinned on my gown - if you know what I mean. He knows! I'm not particularly proud of it, actually I'm quite embarrassed to have my period going into surgery!

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The tampon is apparently fine, it can stay, and after we all stop blushing, the nurse leads us down to death row.

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Shoot! We forgot the x-rays back in the room! My sweetie - always to the rescue, lunges to go back for them, but I cling hard to his arm and he understands. The nurse also understands and goes instead. The activity will give him something to distract from the tampon debacle.

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DEATH ROW

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It's like an enormous empty fridge, this hallway. I'm cold. I'm holding onto this big arm so tightly. It's attached to my sweetie, and he's right here. There he is. As tight as I hold onto him, I feel like we're separated, like I'm in a plastic bag. He's here. There he is. I can see him. I'm watching. I'm being brave. The hardest part is being brave. Everything else is easy. Everything else is just saying yes. All I have to do is be here.

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Turn the corner into the waiting room. Here's a nurse with more forms to sign. Here's Mr Surgeon! He marks my leg and tells me I look beautiful in my blue shower cap. I bet he says that to all the girls, and then he's gone. Then my sweetie is gone, and all there is left is the shuffle of sterile clothing as I follow in the wake of a nurse, further into the fridge. I'm cold. I'm alone. There's no food in here.

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Claire said that she cried when she got to the operating theatre. I don't want to cry. It's just a movie. Just look at the corner of the screen.

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Here's Mr Doctor. I know him. He's giving me the blandest chitchat as I get onto the operating table. There are more nurses. They put pre-warmed blankets on me which I really appreciate! I'm so cold! But the room feels so cold that the heat from the blankets disappears immediately. They even stuff a hairdryer under the blankets at my feet. It doesn't warm me up very much, but it's something. I'm definitely in a fridge. I'm thinking about how on earth the doctors and nurses can do their jobs without shivering and saying "brrrrr!” with mittens under their latex gloves.

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I guess they will be warming their hands over the hearth of my open hip.

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Mr Doctor puts a tube in the back of my hand. That was fine. I'm too busy being cold, and trying to objectify my surroundings, and not take anything personally to be bothered by a big plastic tube in my hand. The more distractions the merrier! But now it's epidural time. I'm lying on my side and I feel the small sting and then a very concerning sense of pressure. I'm so cold that it's making me tired.

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As we wait for the epidural to kick in, the anaesthetist is going on and on and on about who gives a fuck. I hope I never get stuck with this guy at a party. He has the dullest chitchat ever. It is a real imposition that I have to listen to him. Can't he just let this thing kick in quietly? He just goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and

and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

 And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

And on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and

WAKE UP

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People bustle around my bed, applauding, smiling. There is confetti in the air, and I'm being laden with bouquets.

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Look, it's Mr Surgeon! He's holding my foot! I call out to him

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"Congratulations!"

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He wants to know what my foot feels like. Someone stuffs a microphone in my face, into which I slur

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"it feels normal normal normal normal normal"

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The crowd cheers, and next to me, I see my sweetie!

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"Oh, it's you! I was just writing you a note!"I exclaim

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The bed is bumping all around and we're in another room, but all I can see, apart from the ceiling, are the plastic rails that keep me from falling out of bed.

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Something about flowers

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Something about the room.

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MY ROOM

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My sweetie was really eager for me to notice the room. It took me much longer than he would have hoped, even after he told me frankly. The cogs in my head were trying so hard to turn with all the residual unconsciousness in the way, until...Ding!

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"Hey! This isn't the room we were in before...? This is a private room! "

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My sweetie can stay with me! People's sweeties are allowed to stay with them in private rooms in this hospital. There's a fold out sofa in the corner - which is way, way over there, because the room is so huge! This room is about the same size as the WWII bunker upstairs with all those patients crammed in.

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What am I doing in here though? Did my sweetie empty our bank account just to put me here? Oh no!

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Apparently what happened was that the hospital construction on the WWII level is making so much racket that the head nurse insisted that I use this room which was, on top of being further away from the mega loud construction noises, private, and huge, and had an enormous view of the bad weather outside. Not that I was able to get out of bed to see it. Ka-ching!

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While I was being dismembered for 5 hours, my sweetie, with time to kill, decided to kill it by braving the horrible weather and going all the way down the hill to the city to get me flowers. In the rain! He got me the most enormous bunch! And when I was coming around in the room, I could smell them, and it was lovely, and my sweetie asked if I liked the flowers, and I did! But I couldn't see them cause of that damn plastic rail to prevent me from rolling out of bed! I was in the room for a few days before we realised that we could dismantle this obstructing rail, so I only got to see the flowers when they were just starting to wilt. Who cares, I love them!

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DOES NOT COMPUTE

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I had been well in informed (nearly over informed) of the formula of the surgery.

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I knew that my leg would be cut off and reattached 20 degrees to the right, and my that foot would tell me forever more it was 2:o:clock.That's what I knew before.

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After the surgery, I just could not understand why my foot was walleyed. The time was set all wrong, and time and time and time again, I would reset it, wind it back with the big hand on 12 - there. Stay. And it fell to the side again!

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This is not very comfortable. It is very uncomfortable. My foot keeps flopping over.

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I asked for a stack of pillows to be propped against the outside of my foot for discouragement- but it was so insistent! I don't understand. It was so terribly uncomfortable and if only I could prop it enough, it would stop being so unbearable and it will be lunch time, or midnight, I don't care which, just pick one of those- What is going on!?

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I don't remember the night. I remember squirming a lot.

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The day after surgery, it was time for my first physio session - already. Wow.

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I was still a vegetable, lying there "deck chair" style on my contortionist bed. Contrary to what I had been assured in a prior question and answer session with Mr Surgeon, I found myself without underwear under my beautiful gown. I'll let that slide because I'm on drugs. All I was wearing down there was a bag of pee at the end of a tube. I wonder what happened to my period. My box-wine bladder was suspended at the foot of the bed for easy serving, and there was enough for everyone.

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My teeny tiny and very peppy physiotherapist first had me move my un-operated leg, without disturbing my urine, as far out to the side as I could, and back, five times, easy enough. Then the same on my operated side.

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'A' for effort.

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It was so hard that I had to cry out. I think I moved about 5cm?  Only twice, or 3 times max. I was crying. Then we had a rest. The hardest exercise was first because the physio lady knew I would get really tired really fast. This lady is so lovely! She had a Shakespearian name, and was eensy weensy, and perfectly formed, and ultra-nimble. Oh! Now that I'm happy again, next exercise!

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I had to bend my knee up towards me, as far as possible, sliding my sole over the bed. Good side first, then bad side. I don't remember how I did 'achievement-wise', but I probably got an A for effort again, and then a happy rest- lalala, she's so lovely!

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Next I was to roll my foot in a circular movement. So far so good for the good side, but so far so not much on the bad. Then we all realised that I couldn't move my foot. Oops.

I got an A++++++ for effort, but my grand and open circle gesture was little more than a waggle. A tired dog's happy tail.

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It is very strange to have an appendage working properly all your life, and suddenly it ignores you, begrudgingly. No amount of chocolates and flowers can say you're sorry.

Dropsy? Drop foot? There is a name for my lameness, and this impediment is one of many on the long list of potential complications, I think I mentioned it earlier. My very major nerves were not entirely satisfied with their relaxing, mid-gore massage and they became upset and now I can't feel or control my foot.

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X-RAY

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Hang on a minute, the physio was in the afternoon, the morning was my x-ray!

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I didn't even have to get up! I lay there, and was fed grapes as my-- I don't want to call them slaves -- as my lovely nurses carried my sedan through the marketplace, with chickens scattering, and merchants glancing up from their phones to stare at that lady in the bed- I wonder what she's here for- and I just smile and wave back, all cosy in bed with my snugly sheets, and my plastic rails. I keep thinking that every door we go through will knock the side of the bed, and I was always anticipating the cringe of being jolted. I really didn't want to be jolted. No, that would be the worst thing in the world. Instead the whole trip was amazingly smooth, and white, with these lovely, lovely nurses.

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I am parked next to an x-ray table in a room that looks like a very large - what I would imagine the inside of an air conditioner looks like. I wonder what they actually look like. There are a lot of people around me, a lot of hands on me. The hands feel very careful. These people are so nice.

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I am picked up somehow. My sheets support me like a hammock, but the hands are still there supporting me too. They need to put me onto a blue plastic tray, and in a big effort, we go on three- maybe. I cry out and it is so

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horrible.

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And then I'm OK. I'm on the table now. I just lie there and everyone leaves the room hurriedly, slams the door, then the door bursts open and they all hurry back in to see if I'm OK. Yeah, I'm great!

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I remember having a lot of banter with the radiologists- I made jokes and they laughed, and I laughed. I must have been so cute. The radiologist who was wearing a leaded floral kitchen apron with frills, and oven mitts, "Kiss the Cook", asked if I could help him to hold a big baking tray up next to me. Sure- team work! Yes! I can be helpful!

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I don't remember getting back on the bed or getting back to the room.

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DRUGS!

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I was very high. I was so high that all I wanted to do was sit still and do nothing. Look at the room - and no particular part of it either. Just do nothing - until there was someone around to talk to, and then I would blab and blab and blab, and laugh, and everything was lovely and so many things were humorous, and everybody was so nice and I wanted to thank everyone profusely and be best friends with all of them.

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If it was brought to my attention that I had maybe become a little bit too talkative, then I would correct myself and sit there quietly like a good little girl, smiling, and very, very quietly sending little high and happy messages to my phone contacts.

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The drugs also made me very teary. Sometimes I would think about all the things the nurses had done just for me, never mind that it was part their normal job for which they were being paid, and that I was bringing a lot of money to the hospital just by being there, no. All I saw were people caring for me, and being nice to me. Lovely, genuine, gentle people. It was enough to overwhelm me, and I lost a lot of fluids through my eyes.

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It was the same with my sweetie. I would sit there, vegetative in bed, watching him do his work on the laptop, tilting my head and thinking about how he was always there for me, and how much he loved me, and I'd freak him out once in a while with my glassy-eyes when he would glance over to find me staring at him in awe (which would always give him a little fright and he'd leap a little bit out of his chair and bump his head on the ceiling - a little bit)and nursing the lump on his head, he'd ask me what I was looking at, and remind me not to stare at him while he was working cause he had to concentrate, and he doesn't like being stared at, and he'd remind me that he'd told me that before, and I couldn't help it cause I was so in love, and on top of it I was on all these drugs, and then I'd start crying because he's so amazing, and I couldn't help it, and then he'd get all worried because he'd think I was crying from pain, but really it wasn't like that, and lots of emotions and tears, etc, etc.

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PAIN!

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Aside from the emotions, I had to assess my pain levels frequently. I was always insisting that I wasn't in pain, rather, I described the sensation as being "extreeeemly uncomfortable" or that I was "extreeeemely achy". I couldn't emphasise enough just how extreme the "extreeeemely" was.

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My poor sweetie kept insisting that what I was describing was in actual fact PAIN, but no, I don't think so. I can handle this, albeit very unpleasantly.

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He also explained to me that if the feeling was enough to make me cry, and cry out when I cried, then it was most definitely pain. OK then. After checking the definition of "Pain" and "Ache", I had no choice but to agree with him. When in doubt - trust the dictionary. The dictionary will tell you how you feel.

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How was I able to tolerate this pain so well? Could it be all these drugs I'm taking? I am such a hard-arse!

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"Oh it's nothing, just a flesh wound, and another flesh wound, and my hip broken in 4 places - it smarts a little, but it's fine". I am a rock!

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Somehow I realised that the whole time I'd been in there, I was wearing something called a "Chryo Cuff". It was like a very unflattering and bulky, blue girdle that slowly inhaled and exhaled iced water.  It needed more attention than I did, always calling room-service for fresh ice. I guess it was there, wrapped around my hip, for the swelling. Nobody told me to keep wearing it, but I didn't want to take it off for fear of seeing my incisions. I wasn't ready for that yet. And it just made sense to keep the area iced. No arguments.

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UNPLUGGED

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I don't know how much time had passed, but apparently it was time to warrant getting unplugged from the epidural machine. Hooray!

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The drip was removed from my hand -which was great, because it kept catching on everything - and the nylon cord in my spine was disconnected from the unit- but not from me, for some reason...

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There was a meter of it left uncomfortably free to dangle out of my back and make it very unpleasant to squirm in my bed - and because I was so extreeeemely uncomfortable, I needed to squirm a lot. If I didn't, I would die.

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When I eventually complained about the epidural leftovers, Mr Doctor - insulted - decided I needed to be taught a lesson. Not only did he order the removal of the epidural catheter, but he spitefully arranged that my pee bag be removed as well.

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He did not say any of this to me. Like a coward, he sent a nurse in to deliver the news immediately after he left.

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I had not agreed to this. I asked the nurse to check, because Mr Doctor was just here and he did not say anything about it, and I cannot get out of bed to go to the toilet yet. My poor nurse obligingly wasted his precious nurse time by going back to this unfeeling man and "checking".

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How can Mr Doctor come into my room, at every single one of my meal times and deliver such an extensive collection of all the world's most bland conversation, and not only with poor storytelling fashion, but, delivered exclusively to My sweetie, so that I must make the effort to lean over and listen in - like a spy with a glass between my ear and the wall- How can he go on and on and not tell me anything?

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 Because he is a sexist prick and women do not require talking to.

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 Because she is little more than a mail-order-bride.

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I don't like him.

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EMERGENCY TOILET TRAINING

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The catheter was gone, thanks to Mr Doctor. I don't like that guy. I was supposed to use a bedpan if I needed to go, seeing as I couldn't get out of bed, and I heard that I'd be shown how to use it when I needed it. Why wait? Tell me how. No? OK. That’s fine, I'm on drugs. Yeah.

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I started to get pretty needy for a pee later that night so I buzz the nurse. She was really confused as to why was my catheter removed if I couldn't get out of bed? And after asking which doctor ordered it, she laughed. Hm.

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The bed pan was a painful and humiliating experience. It reminded me of wetting my bed, as I had done so many times as a kid, and I was at great risk of wetting the bed again! The bedpan hurt so much against my new structure that the nurse had to turn it back to front, which made it more likely to spill. I filled it, alright. I'd been holding that piss for hours and hours. The worst part was witnessing the nurse wiping my bits when I'd done. I'm glad that's over, but that's just the beginning.

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I had been told that the drugs I was on would prevent my intestines from working properly, and was encouraged to drink plenty of prune juice. Something about soluble, indigestible fibre that would drain out my guts with fluid rather than muscle action. I was encouraged to drink a lot of water to provide this fibre its fluid, which was partly why I had to pee so much. Drink, drink, drink, pee, pee, pee, and then uh oh --

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We had to call the nurse again, and not for the bedpan, this time required a bathroom, and hurry. With the help of 2 nurses and my sweetie, I was delicately placed into a commode chair and wheeled to the bathroom where I was suspended over the throne. Finally, my rightful place.

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Thank goodness I was allowed some privacy for the worst non-apocalyptic explosion that bathroom ever saw. It was horrible, and I was so weak and distressed from being moved, and shaking, and drugged, and humiliated that I would be unable to clean up after myself. And prune juice smells disgusting after it has passed through the body. It was still in the form of prune juice too. I refused to drink prune juice any more. Not if it’s gonna be like that.

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It was terrible.

"WALKING"

My lovely physiotherapist brought me a present!! Ooh! A walking frame - Today I was going to walk. She was going to teach me how to get to the toilet for the first time - but I was WAAAAAY ahead of her there.

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She showed me how strong the frame was, and she lifted herself up and dangled on it for a while- like a monkey on a jungle gym.

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I was very nervous, and very excited. I sat on the edge of the bed and she put slippers on my feet and placed the walking frame in front of me, and with she and my sweetie either side of me, they helped me stand up, supporting all my weight, and then she asked me to stand up by myself. They stayed close. They removed their support and I fell right through the floor, into the abyss.

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What a sensation, like that roller coaster feeling when your stomach is in your chest. They caught me, though I was still standing up, and then I think it was quite easy to move on to taking steps. I don't remember, but after that session, I felt better about drinking more fluids again. I still needed to be escorted to the bathroom, but at least I could go to the bathroom!

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SHOWER

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I was starting to not enjoy wearing a hospital gown and was really looking forward to wearing one the pretty dresses I had brought with me, but I needed to have a proper clean first, so after being told by a lovely nurse that it was ok for me to take a shower with my sweetie and my waterproof dressings, we went for a wash, and it turned out to be one of the most traumatic experiences since my prune juice was extracted.

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I stood in the shower, clinging to the rails for my life, as I was delicately de-greased by my sweetie. Somehow it was too much exertion for me to stand up and be lathered and rinsed for 5 minutes. On our way out of the bathroom, I was hysterical and in shock, my hands pink from gripping the rails so hard, and a new physiotherapist was coming in.

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She was carrying crutches, which I was supposed to learn how to use, but she decided I wasn't ready, what with all the laboured and breathless sobbing. She judged my sweetie suspicious, and probably thought he had just assaulted me in the bathroom. Like a dirty, old man perv.

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I forget what the exercises were that day. Most of the time was spent calming down. No crutches.

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Later that afternoon, the physio therapist came back with Mr Doctor and I was told off for standing up in the shower.

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Nobody told me that I was supposed to be showered, seated in the same commode chair that I used to deface the toilet.

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Well then where was my commode chair anyway? No one had arranged one for me! 

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I felt a little sabotaged to have been put, unknowingly, in such a dangerous situation (not that my sweetie would have let me fall) that resulted in immense distress, a delay in learning to walk with crutches, and then a telling off for good measure.

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FOOD

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Every day I had pretty much the same thing.

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For breakfast I had coffee, and coffee, and apple juice (not prune juice, thank you very much), and congee, and congee.

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And for dinner I would have congee, and congee, and congee, and congee!!I LOVE fish congee.

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I would always bother the server to give me a teaspoon instead of a regular spoon, and they never quite understood, and ended up giving me extra spoons, or an extra set of cutlery. And then they didn't understand why I wanted to keep the spoon from my coffee. I also had a little trouble making sure I got my 1 sachet of salt and 5 or 6 or more sachets of pepper.

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YUM- FISH CONGEE WITH A TINY SPOON AND TOO MUCH PEPPER IS SO GOOD! I did not want anything else.

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SWELLING

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I had been forewarned that I would have hideous, elephant-man-like swelling that would fall down the length of my leg to my foot. My leg was going to become a mighty tree trunk of inflammation, and I was encouraged to bring very loose-fitting shoes to the hospital because of this unquestionable side effect, but because my entire career as a human being revolved around my nature of always being different, my swelling had nothing to do with my feet, or my lower leg, or my knee or even the lower thigh. My swelling was most hysterically feminine, located and pertly staying put at my upper thigh, hip, and buttock. I filled out nicely.

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My poor sweetie had problems with this because it provoked a very primal effect in him which conflicted with his chivalresque attempt at leaving my womanliness in peace - as you would- to someone who has undergone a major double surgery... And then he imploded.

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CRUTCHES

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The first physiotherapist came back to teach me crutches. I got to go for a walk outside my room, and she held the back of my dress as a sensor to tell her if I was going to fall, she on one side, my sweetie on the other. We walk slowly toward the nurses' station, and I see the cleaning lady who stops mopping to give me a smile and big thumbs up, then a nurse approaches, and instead of passing by, he joined the party, slowly- at my pace, and then another nurse did the same! I had an entourage! A very slow and silent conga line, well, a conga clump. All these people around me, walking at my speed, keeping me safe, being here for me. These people are so lovely. I was so pleased with myself, and I felt so cared for, and I was in awe.

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MR SURGEON'S VISIT

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Later that afternoon, I got a visit from the man, himself! I was very happy to see him! He had flown to China straight after he washed my blood off his hands from my surgery, and had only just arrived back. In the meantime, I was visited once or twice a day from Mr Doctor- which I never appreciated. He only ever talked to my sweetie, and always just boring trivia chit chat, while my congee got cold. Why does he always show up right when I get my food??

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Mr Surgeon, Mr Doctor, and a little Miss Nurse all stood at the foot, my sweetie at the side, and me on the top, lounging casually, nonchalantly, generously on my bed clutching my lung-functioning icepack on my hip. Plenty of smiles.

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He said some things- I forget, but whatever it was it made sense. Then he asked me if I had anything I wanted to ask him, and I said yes and got out my big notebook, turned to a page with a list of questions and concerns that I had been saving up for such an occasion, and the first thing on the agenda was What is going on with my foot? At this point I saw Mr Surgeon look at Mr Doctor during a pause, and then Mr Doctor desperately defending himself. He didn't report this potentially serious issue to Mr Surgeon before, because he didn't know anything about it- possibly because he never spoke to me, or the physiotherapists, or nurses, and only ever addressed the concept of me by tossing out a "she's fine, she's young" to my sweetie as he barged in to interrupt my meals, before continuing where he left off, with his saga of dull and common trivia.

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Mr Surgeon approached the bed, asked my foot do its best dance for him, and then he picked it up and fondled it. It was all very strange. Three men standing around me in bed, and the one who is not my sweetie is manhandling my foot and asking me how it feels, with his direct eye contact. What is going on here??? This must be why they bring in a female nurse.

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DISCHARGE DISASTER

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On the morning of the fifth day, I was given my last pain medication at 10, discharged at 12, but had to wait for Mr Doctor till 2 to get my take home prescription.

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Mr Doctor insisted that the medication would be much cheaper, and therefore I should purchase it from any pharmacy, instead of getting it from the hospital. Just make a stop on the way home. It would be fine.

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I said goodbye to all my wonderful nurses, and within 2 minutes in the taxi, I started to feel very uncomfortable. My painkillers were wearing off, and my right-angular seated position, plus bumpy ride were wearing on. I needed drugs.

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 We stopped at a pharmacy, but they didn't have them. The next pharmacy was the same, and the next and the next, and after stopping at 6 pharmacies with nothing, I was suffering so badly that we drove all the way back to the hospital - where we knew they had my pills. I would pay anything for them.

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By the time we got there, I had been in great pain for about 45 minutes.

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We handed over my prescription, and I waited in the lobby while a nurse tried to get it filled for me.

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The administrators sympathetically let me put my feet up on the coffee table, as I could no longer tolerate sitting with bent hips and knees.

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There was a problem with the prescription.

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Because I was no longer admitted as a patient at the hospital, it could not be filled until I saw the doctor that sent me on this goose chase.

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Of course, he could not be reached.

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I waited in the lobby for hours. The pain was unfathomable.

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People stared at me like a road accident, wondering what happened.

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No one was allowed to give me anything for the pain because of paperwork and procedures.

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The nurses, with what power they had, offered me a bed to wait in, in the critical care unit, only because it was vacant at that moment.

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They offered me a wheelchair to take me up, but I could not sit in it without crying out. I had to walk with a walking frame. It was the longest walk ever. Such a spectacle. I was crying so hard, and walking so slowly with my small entourage. Like a morbid parade. The longest walk ever.

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By the time I got to critical care, I was a wreck. The bed was the sweetest drop of water in an unending desert. I waited there another couple of hours, before finally the doctor showed up. I don't like this man.

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I got my pills and was high within 15 minutes. I kept crying because I was so grateful for the nurses. They saved my life by giving me that bed. They gave me something soft to put my butchered body on.

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I was very nervous about getting home in another taxi. It was a one hour drive.  We booked a larger taxi and I was reclined as much as possible. Hanging  by my tired arms the arms from the seatbelt to try to counteract the bumps on the road. Halfway through the journey, we hit a traffic jam and the ride took twice as long. I became very uncomfortable again.

I was exhausted on arrival at my front door. I had forgotten about 3 steps. My painkillers were maxed out, again. We are so close. We are so tired.

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A girl insisted on helping me up the stairs. She wouldn't take no for an answer. Just 3 normal stairs, imposed by the aid of my exhausted sweetie and a sweet girl who was doing a good deed. The worst pain I ever felt in my life. Welcome home.