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Sport 36: Winter 2008

[section]

There are really three journeys—
the journey you expect to go on
the journey you actually go on
and the journey that makes the story. 1

I can remember a few days after the operation, a package arriving. It was an A4 white envelope. It was bulky and had no postage stamp on it.

During the morning process of washing and toileting I eyed it up on my bedside locker. Gifts were important in hospital. Once the doctors' rounds and meal-ordering had finished I managed to reach it. It was heavy. I ripped it open. It contained another wrapping. I ripped that open. Oh—it was my hip. My old titanium hip, and its plastic cup. Out of the two items it was the cup that looked the worse for wear—or rather the worse for its recent extraction. They cement the cup into the pelvis and this separated one still held chips of cement. The hip itself was sleek and cool to touch.

I hadn't been expecting my hip. I'd forgotten that I'd asked for it. Now, here it was. Enough.

*

I had christened this year 'the year of the body'. Maybe it was a way of trying to be in control. In reality, a large number of years in my life had been 'the year of the body'. Childhood arthritis dictated that.

My first hip replacement was when I was 17, the next when I was 20. The left hip lasted 10 years, a good 10 years, but then routine x-rays showed the femur was 'egg shell thin'. Egg-shell thin. Could fracture at any time. The voice of the surgeon echoed around my head page 95at night. He took the left hip out and put a new, longer model in. He said both hips needed to be replaced. The left was worse, but the right was well on the way. Then he changed his mind.

I waited.

Every annual check-up I held my breath on the way into the hospital, and exhaled on my way out. Late in 2000 he said, it's time.

*

How to prepare for an operation:

1.Play a few rounds of cards—Strip Jack Naked.
2.Let go of all nuances, modesties.
3.Become familiar with ceilings from an uncomfortable lying position.
4.Study the motion of wheels—their glide and shake up and down lino floors.
5.Look to the birds, which fly for no apparent reason.

*

When I got to the hospital on July 16, I felt I'd done all I could to prepare. I'd drunk the carrot juice, reduced the calories, done the exercises, turned down work, taken leave from committees, tidied my desk, changed my answerphone message and tried to get my computer to reply to emails in my absence.

You've got the 'A' team, my surgeon says as he walks into the room, indicating himself and his colleague. He has told me recovery from this operation should be a lot quicker than the last—possibly only two weeks in hospital. He gets out the black felt pen and draws an arrow on my thigh pointing hip-ward.

The anaesthetist appears. I hear you're difficult to put under, he says. I wouldn't know, I say, I'm usually out to it.

I've got myself to the hospital and I figure the rest is up to them.