Look away now...

But what did they do to me between "That's the heroin, then..." and "Where am I?"? The truth is, I'm not sure. "What did they do to me whilst I was asleep?" became my obsession. Sounds a bit like some B Grade porn movie, but I can assure you it was more painful than even that. Here's the simple truth.

First, heel pin. But why, hero, we thought you had broken your leg? Well, for the sheer brutality that followed Doc Proc needed to fix my heel to the operating table; a pin each side of the heel and attached to the table, so that my knee was flexed and the foot flat. What the hell did he think I was going to do, run away?

Then, "Scalpel". Oh my God, I was in my own episode of ER. Those of a squeamish disposition, look away now. That'll be Bob the Punch then. In fact, he's probably collapsed by now; he lost his bottle completely back in the ring in Eastbourne all those years ago. Never been the same since. In fact, rumour has it Mick the Dive Ross could even see him off now. Sporting hero to zero in the flash of an eye. Tragic.

Anyway, Doc Proc made the cut. Just over the left knee cap, about 4 or 5 inches long. How did he know it was the left one? Good question, loyal reader. By ingenious trick learned in medical school. Before the operation he had come to see me, to tell me what he was going to do. At that point, of course, I had full length plaster cast on left leg. What was his first question? "Which leg are we going to operate on?". No kidding. I laughed and murmered something like "Yeah, funny", but he didn't smile, he just said "The left?". Now I was afraid, very afraid. And as if the plaster cast was not enough of a clue he took out a huge black (oh my God, I didn't realise I was going to star in this porn/snuff movie) marker pen. Then he drew an arrow on my left foot. The wonders of modern science, eh? It's all very well, but given that I still can't bend the bloody leg and am not allowed to get it wet, I still have that arrow staring up at me like some grim reminder of horrors past.

Well, he did get the right leg. I mean the left leg. Thank God for medical genius. So, he cut the knee open and then made a hole in the top of the tibia. That's the big one that attaches the knee bone to the ankle bone. Feel it now, the shin bone to you and me. Not the fibula, that's the little one next to it. Now, did you know that the tibia is in fact hollow? Maybe you did. Well, it's not hollow like, say, an Easter egg, or a scaffold pole. It's got stuff like marrow and blood and, well, goo inside it (still with me, hang in there, we've only just started). The plan was for Doc Proc to put an 18 inch (God, I'm tall) pin down the middle of the bone and fix it with 2 screws. So, he had to tunnel a hole through the goo, so to speak.

Doc Proc used a sort of drill to gently (or so he assured me) tunnel out a 12 millimetre diameter hole through the goo. That's quite a lot in my view, just over one whole centimetre if my maths is right. Once that's done, all he needs to do is slide the pin down from the knee to the ankle. Easy, eh? Well, yes, easy at first. The trouble comes when the pin gets to within about 3 ot 4 inches of the ankle. The bone is bowed slightly, so it sort of has to go round a bend. Know the bloody feeling. So what does Doc Proc, he of the Pentel marker, do?

Gets a mallet of course. No kidding. Now I understand why I needed (a) a lot of heroin and (b) a pin in my heel. He belted the top of the pin until it was all the way through to the ankle. Have you ever seen that Stephen King film, the one where a mad woman (Kathy Bates) finds the famous author (James Caan, I think?) after he has had a car crash and keeps him hostage, because she is his "greatest fan"? Malice, I think it's called. The bit where she 'hobbles' him by whacking his already broken ankle with a sledgehammer. Get the picture...

Then, as if he hadn't had enough fun already, Doc Proc drills 2 holes through the bone. One under the knee and one above the ankle. He threads a screw through each, which passes through the pin and, hey presto, all done! A few stitches, then down the pub for Doc Proc and into recovery for your hero.

Recovery, hey? Hmmmm. More of that later.

PS: Just had the Matriarch to stay this weekend. Bless, she and sister looked after your hero royally. Well, in fact they just fought over who could hold daughter number 2. She loves the blog. Didn't know I could write. Reminds me of her famous comment on that very clever, eloquent friend of her's, Roger Coombes. "Dahling, that lovely man Roger, he's soooo araldite."