Mr W popped by to check I was ok and let me know that everything had gone smoothly and he said he was happy for me to leave the hospital later that morning. The physio arrived a little later with a set of crutches for me and said they had to give me a quick lesson. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and pushed myself up on my crutches. I hobbled about 10 yards to the edge of the ward and looked down to see that blood was gushing out of the bottom of the cast on my leg. I flagged it up in quite a concerned and stressed voice to the nurse. That’s fancy speak for screaming “NURSE, MY FOOT IS BLEEDING”. She looked down and confirmed it was bleeding with a vague “oh yeah” which was presumably nurse speak for “Man up!” She grabbed a bandage and simply wrapped it round my foot as many times as she could with the length of it and just started mopping up the blood on the floor. She was clearly less concerned than me so I carried on with my crutches lesson.

Crutches for beginners course firmly nailed and I was off. Kathy came to collect me and I manoeuvred myself gingerly into the car. I was in a bit more pain now than the night before as the anaesthetic had clearly worn off. Any bumps in the road made me let out an involuntary yelp of discomfort but we got back home in one piece. I set up camp on the sofa, with my foot raised on a foot stool and started the long and boring process of recovering.

I was inundated with cards, texts, visitors and calls and a number of really thoughtful people sent me books and DVD box sets to help while away the recovery time. My mother-in-law gave me an ipod loaded up with some really interesting radio programmes and discussions. My mate Henry gave me my first onesie, which was great for lounging around in. I was very well looked after and the support was very much appreciated. A few people were noticeable by their lack of contact which got to me at the time but is really not an issue for me now. It was a funny situation though as on the one hand some people’s lack of contact really upset and bothered me, yet on the other hand some people were contacting me every day which started to really bug me. People couldn’t win. I guess I’m just turning into a grumpy old man!

The next week was very boring but not as uncomfortable as I had expected. I was able to hobble down the stairs in the morning to set up camp on the sofa and I only moved to go to the toilet or hobble back up to bed at the end of the day. The lack of activity wasn’t the result of any pain I was in as I really had very little discomfort. I was told it was really important to keep movement to an absolute minimum to give the skin graft on my foot the best chance of “taking”. If the skin graft went as planned then I would be up and about in a matter of weeks. If it didn’t take then it would be up to 6 months before the wound closed itself naturally and I really didn’t fancy having to deal with that. A week after the operation I was back in front of Mr W to see how the wounds were getting on. My thigh where the skin graft had been taken from was fine. There was a rectangle of pink skin about 10cm long and 8 cm wide where they had shaved off the thin layer of skin to do the graft. My groin was fine where they had made a cut of about 6cm to take a few nodes out. The main concern and intrigue was around my foot and if the skin graft had taken. I was put on the bed by Mr W’s nurse and she cut the cast off my leg. It hadn’t been as much of an inconvenience as I had feared but it was still a relief to have it taken off. The thing was covered in blood on the inside, some of which had dried onto my skin but it came off without major problems. The dressing around the foot was left for Mr W to take off as his nurse said; “If the skin graft comes off when I take the dressing off then Mr W will be really upset.” I took this to mean that he had a much more skilled hand in carrying out the process. I was wrong. The nurse continued; “If the graft comes off with the dressing when Mr W takes it off then it’s his fault so he can’t shout at me!”