Broken Leg Blues Part IV: Pimp My Zimmer

It's a small world, after all ...

Remembering Colleen Ruth Elsie Fourie

My friend Colleen Ruth Elsie Fourie died yesterday, following a car accident a few days earlier. I never met her, as she lived eight thousand miles away in Pretoria, but we were in the same online peer support group for a time where we shared our stories, and the shared experiences in those stories forged what felt like a close bond.

As well as sharing our healing, we connected creatively.  Like me, Colleen was a writer.  Unlike me, she was also a very gifted artist and we mooted the possibility of producing a booklet of illustrated poems some day - because we thought we had time.  In addition, she had a passion for animals, especially dogs, and in this, she outdid me again, having, I believe, seven at the last count.  And she would mourn even the snouted and Mozambican spitting cobras they killed - even when they were lurking on her verandah or in her garage.

Tragically, Colleen passed away as her daughter expects her first child, across the other side of the world in London.  What a warm, funny and creative grandmother she would have been.  What a loss for her family. 



Colleen had a dream of coming to Somerset or Devon and walking through bluebell woods.  I'm posting this poem from my recent collection - a lament for a mole I encountered at bluebell time in a place on Dartmoor called Heaven's Gate - for her. 


Mouldywarp

This is Heaven.

It says so on the five-barred gate

and among these lime and bronze leaved trees,

the tidal bluebells of late spring,

I can believe it.  Why, even the dung here’s

starred with iridescent beetles.

But you, O Mouldywarp, are dead

and sky-buried,

your enormous delicate hands

with their concert pianist fingers

sieving, shovelling only air. 

And it’s no solace

that you might feed another creature or the earth,

I want you living

and if not here, then digging a tunnel

from this harsh clarity to another,

and let that clarity be Mole Heaven

where layers of soil are dark and moist

and fat worms fall straight in your mouth

like startled manna.

© Deborah Harvey 2014 

Rest in peace, Colleen.  I hope your heaven is full of bluebells and happy dogs.  

Broken Leg Blues Part III: Dawn Of The Cyborg

When you're incapacitated, your horizons shrink. The after-effects of anaesthesia linger like a creepy kiss, and a four yard hop on crutches to the loo is akin to pogo-ing across the Sahara. These last two weeks I've listened to hail pebbledashing the skylights and stretched my withered hands towards the living flame gas fire.  The fact that I can't jaunt hasn't troubled me the way it would if I were mobile, and in my  head the prospect of an appointment at the local super hospital took on the proportions of a climb up Everest. 

But round it came and off I went with my trusty neighbour Nurse Cathy, while Son the Younger's lovely and obliging girlfriend acted as our chauffeur.  At Gate 12 Outpatients we gazed at the Departures Board for notification of our destination.  Young men on crutches bounded past, graceful as gazelles, and I hated them, though I was quite excited to see that one of my fellow patients was called Peggoty. (Yes, I probably do need to get out more.)

In the Plaster Room I had the first glimpse of the my right leg for two weeks, and it wasn't a pretty sight, being bruised and horribly swollen still. 

But unlike Royal Marine Commando Andy Grant, whose story I told Ellie, the orthopaedic practitioner, to much horrified guffawing*, the tattoo of Braques' bird on my right foot was unscathed ... 

... and the scar itself was healing really well, thanks to Nurse Cathy's recommendation that I take a multivitamin with minerals every day.

With a choice of red, blue, pink or white for my fibreglass cast, I decided to cast my vote three months early and went for red. 

Then it was off to be x-rayed.

Back in Trauma and Orthopaedics, a familiar figure studied my x-rays. 'You won't remember me,' I said, 'but I'll never forget your face because You. Set. My. Leg.'

He laughed. 'I do remember you,' he said. 'I had fun doing that one. I must say, it's good to see you looking so well.'

Hmmmm.

'Nine screws, though,' he added. 'That's an impressive break. But it's healing fine.'




All that was left was to request a DEXA scan in case I have osteoporosis and for Cathy to push me and my newly acquired zimmer frame home across the park in my wheelchair. Door to door, a little over an hour and a half. Thank you, Universe, for good friends and the NHS.  

*I think it's probably OK to be amused by the story of this man's tattoo because I've heard him talk about it on the radio and everyone - including him - was laughing about it. More importantly, he's gone on to prove it wrong in spectacular fashion. 

Walking The Chains, The Passenger Shed, Temple Meads

I went to see 'Walking the Chains'*, about the building of the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol (before I broke my leg).  Here's a review I've written about it for the local rag.  

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the 150^th anniversary celebrations of the opening of the Clifton Suspension Bridge had culminated with December’s firework extravaganza, but just over a month later, along comes this baggy and at times slightly exasperating celebration of our most famous landmark and the ‘little giant’ whose vision and drive brought it into being.

For the sentimentalist, the idea of staging ACH Smith’s play in the Passenger Shed at Temple Meads was inspired. More practically, the acoustics aren’t great and this meant it was occasionally difficult to hear what was going on.  Moreover, the way the action jumped back and forwards through time, with episodes such as the attempted suicide of Sarah Ann Henley (you know, the jilted Victorian woman whose voluminous skirts filled with air and parachuted her onto the muddy river bank) preceding the completion of the bridge, made me concerned that anyone unfamiliar with its lore and stories might be irredeemably confused.

But for all that, it’s a gutsy show, and with performers from theatre company Show of Strength, Circomedia and the Suspended Voices Choir – a cast which seemed to be of the clay of Bristol itself – you’d have to have a heart of Avon Gorge limestone not to be captivated by its exuberance.  

Perusing the list of financial supporters in the programme, I spotted a shocking omission. Sometimes it seems that Bristol has again been split in two, this time by a council that parachutes in expertise from elsewhere to promote our city’s status as Green Capital while ignoring the local talent of its citizens, and blows thousands on the nonsense of fake grass and trees in Park Street, a stone’s throw from Brandon Hill.  (Hardly very green.)  Meanwhile, Show of Strength, along with b-Creative, Bristol Ensemble and Poetry Can, have lost all their modest council funding. It took Brunel, an incomer, to bridge the great divide 150 years ago.  Now we have another, and maybe it’s time our Mayor reconsidered how best to support the arts, and the interests of those Bristolians who practise them.  

*'Walking the Chains' refers to the practice of 'interviewing' prospective maintenance workers on the bridge by making them walk its great supporting chains (without a safety-harness) to see if they had a head for heights. All other skills could be learnt.  

Ted's Sympathetic Bad Leg

Limpathy from Ted.  Though this morning he blew it by pinching my place on the Settee of Suffering.

The Empathetic Dog

Dru came round my house last Thursday lunchtime to do one or two jobs, followed by Tina the electrician who wired in the smoke alarms so that the 11 year old extension on my house could finally be signed off.  The easiest thing to do was to send my border collie, Ted - a rather over-enthusiastic DIY-er - to my parents' house for the afternoon to keep him out of the way my Dad company. (Got to be circumspect; Ted might be reading this.) 

So Ted had no way of knowing that at about half four I stepped off the doorstep onto thin air (instead of my ankle joint) and broke my leg.  Except that at some point during the afternoon, he started to limp.

This is not an isolated incident where Ted is concerned. I took him to the vet some months ago because he was hobbling so badly.  I'd convinced myself he had dysplasia, so she gave him a once-over, moving each joint firmly but very gently.  'He's fine,' she said after a couple of minutes. 'He could just be imitating you because your arthritis is bad. That'll be £50, please.'

I don't know how to transfer videos from Facebook to here or do any fancy downloading stuff, but here's a link to a video Dru posted this morning of Ted at his empathetic (hammiest) best. (You might have to right click on it to open it in a new tab.)

And here's the poor beautiful best of dogs resting his imaginary gammy paw on a cushion.

Broken Leg Blues Part II: Cider With Whoosie

Nil by mouth – three of the most dispiriting words in the English Language.  ‘And no sucking the sponge either!’ scolded the nurse as she handed me a little cup of pink liquid so that I could moisten my lips, simultaneously moving the water jug out of my (very limited) reach.  

The hours slipped by like coarse-grained sandpaper.  I’d had the presence of mind to stuff the nearest book to hand – ‘Cider With Rosie’ – into my bag as I left home the day before, but given that I felt as if I’d downed half the contents of the title, I did some desultory Facebooking instead, wondering idly what this month’s mobile bill was going to be like and how my other ankle was going to like being hopped on when it was bruised and swollen in its own right.

(Yep, part of that bruise is a tattoo.)

Then I was prepped ready to go to theatre, not because anyone had any idea when my operation was scheduled but because ‘they have a habit of just turning up’.  Rather more excitingly, ‘my’ anaesthetist materialised to go through some paperwork with me.  ‘I’m your anaesthetist,’ he said.  This, apparently, was A Sign.  

And lo, blue-overalls appeared with a trolley and off we went to theatre.  ‘Anything you want to ask me?’ asked a different anaesthetist to the one who’d been up to the ward.  ‘I’ve got arthritis and they told me not to bring my special pillows down because I might never see them again,’ I babbled, ‘and I’m really scared of coming round on my back with my head turned to one side.  I can't move my head unless I use my hands and it feels like I’m paralysed and it’s really scary.’  ‘Ah, torticollis cervical spondylosis’ he said, reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t let your head fall off.’  And I knew I’d be fine because he knew exactly what I was talking about even if I didn’t have a clue. The operation would probably be OK too. 

And it was. A bit of desultory moaning about the parking situation at the hospital between surgeon and anaesthetist (I live in the Residents’ Controlled Parking Zone) and the next thing I knew someone was calling my name and my head was miraculously still attached to my neck and facing forward with no apparent support.  

Then I was back on the ward and my partner and son turned up and we did the Guardian Quick Crossword and I ate the food they brought me and puked up in a bed pan.

Frosty the Snowman comes out in sympathy

And I did a lot of thinking about how I’d barely jaunted and barely written a word the last few weeks, what with Christmas and having to get the house ready to sell, and how I had been on such a roll last weekend that I’d contemplated swinging a sickie from work so as not to lose momentum, and how I’d decided I couldn’t possibly bunk off because I’m rubbish at lying and the universe would punish me, and how it had punished me anyway just for thinking about pretending to be ill by ensuring that I would be off for the next six weeks but completely incapable of doing all the things I need to do to get the house on the market.  And how I’d have to delegate more rather than do, and how I would probably end up writing some poems after all.