January 2020 Update

Garry McGivern’s January 2020 update. Short update this month, as much of my time has been spent travelling backwards and forwards to the clinic for light therapy. I’ve also seen my surgeon, and I rescued an old lady from the beach!

Clinics and Health

It’s been another month of hospital visits! Mainly for light therapy, which, thankfully, is coming to an end! And I’m now down to only two sessions a week.

I’ve also seen my surgeon, who is confident of my second stage hip replacement taking place in March, fingers crossed! Although I’m not holding my breath! (Best try and stay healthy!)

On the hip front, a very bizarre, but good thing seems to have happened! Overnight I seem to be able to walk relatively well without the aid of a crutch and somewhat limp free! I still need the crutch to walk any distance, but I can feel that I’m not putting as much weight on it as I have been!

Spurned on by my ability to walk a lot more freely, I try and walk a couple of miles each day, gradually increasing the distance walked without a crutch, which isn’t very far, but it is an improvement! Although if I take Indya out in her pram, I can walk for miles, relatively limp free!

Garry to the Rescue

Cycling along the seafront, which I don’t tend to do so much in the winter, usually because you can’t! The prom is covered in stones. But on this day I decided to go down and see how bad it was.

It was late afternoon, and as I was cycling along on one of the little parts that were stone free, I heard somebody calling out. As I looked in the direction of the shouting, I could see an old lady on her hands and knees!

“Are you okay?” I called out

“No, I can’t get up” she replied

“Oh dear, I’m not sure I’m the best person to help, but I’ll come down and see what I can do” was my reply. I parked my bike up against the railings and walked down the stones to where the lady was crouched. As I walked down, I was wondering how I could get her up, there was no way I would have been able to pick her up!

“Have you been drinking?” I asked, trying to make light of the lady’s predicament!

“No, I was walking the dogs and managed to trip over one of them! I’ve been here for half an hour, and just can’t get up, my wrist hurts too much!

The Rescue

As I was talking to the lady, another lady who was walking her dog came along, and between us, we managed to get her to her feet. We walked her to her car and she assured us that she was fine to drive and would be okay.

Knowing that she lived around the corner from me, I decided to follow her home. Which wasn’t a problem, she drove so slowly! In fact, she was so slow I had trouble staying upright on my bike!

Once home she once again reassured me that she would be okay, and said she would get her daughter to take her to the hospital to get checked out.

After a day or two, I went around to check on her and found out that she’d fractured her wrist, chipped a bone on her elbow and had cuts and bruises to her knees!

Other News

Having to be at home a lot this month I’ve been doing a lot of cooking and have gotten into Asian cuisine, particularly dishes that remind me of my travels.

I’ve also been busy sorting out videos from my European bicycle tour which have started to come out on YouTube and can be viewed from 18.30 (GMT) every Sunday.

 

Hopefully with not having so many appointments and the weather improving (we hope!) I’ll be able to get out and about more next month.