Monthly Update From Garry McGivern
Garry McGivern’s April 2025 monthly update. It’s been a good month on the cycling front, albeit a little painful at times. But then I seem to be in pain no matter what I do. Not all the time, and I can’t work out what causes my pain to start. Some days, I’m okay cycling, but then on another day I’m not. It’s the same if I take a day off. One day, my pain is good; another day, it’s not. It’s so frustrating. And to make things worse, I’m not totally convinced all my pain is coming from my hip. I think the prolapsed disc on the right-hand side of my right may have slipped a little more!
Still, on the health front, I had my pre-operative assessment a couple of weeks ago for my hip aspiration. (To see if my pain is from an infection or it’s just because my hip has failed again.) It all seems a bit of a waste of time to me, the pre-op, that is. It’s supposed to check and make sure you’re fit enough for surgery, which is fine. Except it lasts for 18 weeks. Well, anything can happen in that time and the one thing that they don’t like is open wounds. I can cut myself by just getting out of bed. And I already have several cuts. Hopefully, they’ll have healed by the time I get called into hospital. The nurse made me laugh when she said I wasn’t allowed to cycle home after the aspiration. My reputation precedes me.
That Was A Waste Of Time
I also spoke to my neurosurgeon about my neck. Well, that was a waste of time. As soon as I said they were investigating my hip, he didn’t want to know and couldn’t get off the phone quick enough. Despite me saying that I think some of my pain might be because of my disc, he just said it probably is a mixture of both. And that was it, 2 minutes and 19 seconds, and he probably charged the NHS £300 for that.
That’s enough about my health, let’s talk about the weather! It’s absolutely gorgeous at the moment. Ideal weather for going away somewhere on the bike, which hopefully, I will do again before I go into hospital. Although it will probably only be locally again. I’m uninsurable now; I’m under investigation from the hospital. Easter was good fun, with my daughter and her husband cooking dinner on Easter Sunday. (I know it should be me who does it, but I struggle with standing for too long.) The annual Easter Egg hunt was held around my house, where I got called an old man by Indya! She’s not wrong and seems to be growing up too quickly.
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