All of us also wish you the very best and speedy recovery from your family here in "The Bed-loom"

Yours as always

Win from Kan

Love that picture Uncky Win ...... it warrants a caption competition.

"weee.... faster Dad, faster"

All of us also wish you the very best and speedy recovery from your family here in "The Bed-loom"

Yours as always

Win from Kan

Love that picture Uncky Win ...... it warrants a caption competition.

"weee.... faster Dad, faster"

One day son, all this will be yours!

So "Old Croc" how did it go? with the Op....

Kan Win

Anyone heard how OC is?

Waaaay past his op date, must be up and hopping by now.

Last online yesterday (in the Thailand Travel forum). He'll visit us here when he's ready...

'

G'day Crocs,

I've been thinking of you mate, it can't be easy doing all the exercises etc - but hang in there "Old Son" you'll get there in the end.

Cheers & Best Wishes

and

"Up There Cazaly'

Ken

I think there is about to be a post from the man himself.

Hi all. Thanks for the thoughts. I've been home a few days and am taking it easy and being well looked after by my little lady, Rose.

The op wasn't the best of experiences for several reasons:

My knee disintegrated on me a few weeks before the hip operation was due and threw in doubt if it could go ahead. Two days out, I had xrays and an MRI on the knee, and in the words of my surgeon "it's stuffed" and needs a reconstruction. He decided the hip had to be done first, and stuck a steroid injection in my kneecap to keep it going a bit longer and the operation went ahead on friday 23/5.

(Has anyone else noticed how hospitals are almost completely taken over by females? Apart from most of the surgeons and at the other end of the scale, the orderlies, the places are completely staffed by women. The first thing they do is humiliate you as much as possible, presumably, as a form of revenge for real or imagined acts of misogeny. They force you to strip naked behind a billowing curtain in a crowded processing area, and then eventually manage to "find" a dress for you to wear that is six sizes too small, impossible to put on without showing your bum to the world, and has a number of silly little straps on the side which totally fail to keep the thing together no matter which way you tie it! To complete the outfit they give you a pair of white, stretch, hip high stockings. Then, so regally attired, I was ushered to the operating theatre having completely lost any bravado I may have managed to acumulate to get me that far. Anyway I digress.)

My anesthetist had planned to give me an epidural to cut out pain and alleviate the need for stronger drugs to keep me asleep during the op. He spent an intedeterminent amount of time with me sitting, hunched over, (bum out) on the table while he tried to get the needle into my spine. He managed to hit every bone and nerve I have in the region with actually getting it into the right spot. He kept saying things like "I've never failed to get one in before" and "it's just a matter of time" as he probed away. My legs and back and various other parts were jumping around with electric type shocks as he went at it. Eventually, thankfully, he gave up and sent me to sleep the normal way. My back is a pincushion of bruises from his efforts.

I woke up, feeling like shit, with tubes into and out of my body in all sorts of places. (not the back) They give you a contoller with which you can send a bit of morphine into your drip to quell the pain. I used it sparingly, I thought, and the nurses kept commenting on how little the level of the drug was changing. Early Sunday morning, feeling pretty ordinary, I decided to give myself a shot and went searching for the controller in the bedclothes. I found the cord and pulled on it for a while until I found the end. However, it was the end that was supposed to be connected to the drip, not the controller! Being as quick witted as I am I managed to work out why I hadn't used any of the stuff. It hadn't been plugged in for the first 36 or so hours from my operation!

I was nauseous for the first 4-5 days and vomited frequently, until I found out that one of the pain killing drugs they were feeding me was the same one I had previously found to violently disagree with me. Things improved a little when I stopped taking them, until the gout kicked in. My foot, injured knee and thigh started to resemble a bad case of elephantitis and despite a number of different medications never really settled done again while I was in hospital.

Despite my leg resembling a goodyear blimp, the perky little physio girl wouldn't take a "sorry can't put my foot on the floor" or "It ain't going to happen" or even "piss off" as an answer and daily insisted I had to do various excercise with the leg and walk on crutches around the ward. She eventually went away and never came back.

I was in hospital for twelve days and am doing much better since going home. I'm doing the excercises, about a week behind when I should have been.

The good news, the whole thing cost nothing. Hospital, doctors, physio, xrays, bloodtests, etc are fully covered by my private health insurance. The only outlay was for newspapers and hire of crutches for home.

I'm improving daily, albeit slowed down by the knee, and will be back on line a bit more often if I can just convince Rose I'm not sending messages to my mai noi.

A rough time there OC. Glad to see you got something back out of private health - I've had top cover since day one and have only got a couple of pairs of specs to show for it. I think if I calculated the cost over the years (currently around 3.5k per year), I would cringe.

Good luck with the knee...

Can't wait for your to get back on the groove again croc. Recover soon and keep us posted.

Hip and hop still hurray here.

Can't wait for your to get back on the groove again croc. Recover soon and keep us posted.

Hip and hop still hurray here.

Thanks Legag. I'm becoming more aware all the time.

Legag - nice to hear from you again (I thought you must have been banned). Have you been 'in hiding'?

Hi Croc, great to see ya agin and to know ya op has bin a success.

Wish ya god speed in getting yaself up and running soon, despite the knee.

Cortizone saved me from knee surgery 40 years ago, no probs now.

Has ya lil lady bin brandishing the whip to get ya exercising?...... hehe

Hey, I am see 2 smashing gals every morning up at the hosp, like you say, just about all gals nowadays.

I no complain, even when they pull me nickers down...... ......wooooooo hooooooo.

Like you and your nurses actions, I "suffer" too............. LOL

BTW, have a peek in "AUSTRALIA" thread here in Bedlam...... good for a laff.