Back in Business!!

One day, I walked from my cottage up to the village, a quarter of a mile away,chatted to various people as I walked around, did a bit of shopping and then walked home again. It was one of those completely unremarkable days - a day like many others.The next day, I woke up in the morning, tried to get out of bed and found that I couldn't walk. I was paralysed from the waist down. An ambulance took me to hospital. The doctors there did not know what was wrong with me so they sent me on to another hospital where there were specialists in spinal issues, and there they did a MRI scan. It turns out that a tiny fragment of tissue from a spinal disc, which had slippd out of place way back in the 1970s and had been floating around inside my spinal column ever since, had landed on a certain nerve. It is a nerve called the cauda equina (Latin for 'horse's tail' because it is that shape) and it governs a bunch of things, including walking. In view of my age (nearly 90) and the fact that I suffer from heart failure, the surgeons considered it too risky to operate, so they sent me to a rehabilitation hospital to see how much mobility I could regain. When I went in there, I could not walk a single step. But many weeks later, thanks to the skill and patience of a wonderful team of physiotherapists and nursing staff, I gradually learned to walk again. It took a long time, but eventually,once I could walk fifty metres with a walking frame, they let me come home, and a physiotherapist from the local community team took over and helped me graduate from the frame to just a walking stick. Now, all these many months later, I can walk up the hill again. So far, I can get almost half way to the village. My aim is to be able to walk right up to the village and back by the end of next month. This episode, and all those weeks in hospital have given me a lot of time to think. And I thought about this very neglected blog of mine. A long time ago, I announced my intention to revive it, but for one reason or another this never really happened. But now it is going to. Especially as I am now 90 years old. And if I possibly can, I want to live to a hundred.And I want to chronicle that process. So now, since it is a beautiful, sunny day, I am going to sit in my favourite spot on the front porch and make a list of the things I want to talk about in future posts.