Today, on my little blog, I get to tell a tale, so jump off the wagon here if you can't stand it and you don't have the space or buckle up if you do because I'm going ramble for a little while here, hoping I reached the destination.
This year, it will be 9 years since I saw the orthopaedic surgeon in Derby who told me that I would never run again, and I drove half an hour in the wrong direction because I couldn't see the road sign through my tears.
I was a mess, and then Tim died, and then it washed away all the stuff about running because there were other things to worry about, but it never really washed away.
I investigated what to do next and whether I should have the surgery that was offered, which was experimental, and I didn't. I trusted biology and nature to see me through, together with my friends and family, riding my bike in long and ridiculous things to prove that I was still an 'athlete', that I hadn't let myself down, but I would never run again.
No more could I play 'Daddy ball' in the garden with Callum, no longer could we play pretend rugby down the field that we had done so close to that time, no longer could I participate in football training only shouting from the sidelines even one session on astroturf would gripe like anything, it would swell, it was rubbish, and then it began to bend. It's called the Valgus, but to my kids, it's called 'banana leg'.
And so this progressed over almost 9 years, but it wasn't a problem so much because, on a day-to-day basis, it didn't really get in the way, I could still pretend I was an athlete even though I was getting fatter around the middle, even though I was looking more and more like a middle-aged man, even though my thyroid wasn't working, even though various parts of me were starting to get a little bit worse.
Last Christmas, it was pretty bad, and on about the 21st or 22nd of December, I was out with my wonderful wife Alison and some friends, and we were walking through the village, going to the pub we love to go to, and I was basically dragging my left leg behind me up the road.
It's important to know that Alison is a conservative physician. She is a wonderful healthcare practitioner with 30 years of experience dealing with the worst possible scenarios, but she does it with the least intervention possible; she particularly applies that philosophy to herself, having navigated many health scares of her own naturally and with just living the good life and she said to me, "It's time you saw someone again". When Alison says that it is time, and so I did.
I had done my research; I had followed my friend and finance advisor, Kevin Holleron, through the trials and tribulations of a former professional footballer who was really badly injured at 19 and who has had many knee surgeries.
He found Professor Justin Cobb at the Cleveland Clinic in London, and he was operated on last year with great success.
More about Justin Cobb in the Cleveland Clinic blog, which will follow this, but he's a conservative knee surgeon, not your classic orthopaedic surgeon.
I saw him for a consultation on the 31st of January this year, and in the middle of that consultation, he said, "How much are you running?". I replied by telling him that I couldn't run 10 steps, and he quickly said, "Oh, you'll be running again," and skirted on through the rest of the consultation.
Again, I had to stop him with tears in my eyes and ask him to explain, but he basically told me I could have running (at least in some form) back with a partial unicompartmental knee replacement procedure, which I would have carried out last Tuesday.
As I dictate this blog, I'm still in the post-surgery euphoria phase (It's Wednesday afternoon, and I'm waiting for the taxi driver to pick me up to take me from near Buckingham Palace back to my house in Nottinghamshire.
I'm still in that phase where I'm glad that I didn't die or have a stroke under general anaesthetic, I'm still at that phase where I'm glad that I didn't lose too much blood, I'm still at that phase which I am 'ahead of schedule' having gone for a 20-minute walk last night at midnight with a zimmer frame around the orthopaedic part of the Cleveland Clinic, followed by up early today, onto crutches, up and down the stairs in the shower, etc, ready to leave 12 or 14 hours ahead of schedule but that will pass, and I will go into what is the reality of having a partial knee replacement.
There will be an extraordinary and difficult rehab here that I'll have to stick to; there's a stone in weight to come off, which should have been off before I had the procedure itself, that needs to come off now; there's a journey back to walking, and then back to running between the lamp posts or the equivalent and then maybe, just maybe a park run.
This in and of itself is tiny and insignificant. There are several people within the family of `The Campbell Clinic who have endured much worse than this recently, some of these people on several occasions with different diagnoses, and I am fully aware of that, but this is happening to me, and I am the centre of my universe, whether I like it or not.
What it will do, though, is it will reframe things for me entirely, and as I sit here in my hospital room, talking into my computer, I completely understand that.
There is a different version of me, one which travelled down a different road 9 years ago when he wasn't diagnosed with this; I want to access that person again, bring them back to life, resuscitate them and send them on their way. It will mean making changes to things and giving some things up; I'm all good for that; I am all down for that. I am down for the phoenix rising from the flames.
I'm not suggesting I'm going return to Ironman triathlon; I think the likelihood of that is, well, tiny (cue the Dumb and Dumberer quote, "So you're telling me there's a chance"), but there is a place beyond this where a better version of me exists, and today, on Wednesday the 30th of April, as I prepare myself to exit the Cleveland Clinic, it is as that person, it is as someone changed, a little bit different, I hope a little bit better, I hope a little bit more humble, I hope a little bit less arrogant, Hope a little bit more grateful, I think, I hope, here I go.
Blog Post Number - 4156
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