Hip pain was starting to affect things I enjoyed doing. Photo / 123RF
Kevin Page is a teller of tall tales with a firm belief that laughter helps avoid frown lines. Page has been a journalist for many years and has been writing a column since 2017.
OPINION
Our careful navigation of a semi-retired life befitting our age thus far has been well and truly thrown into disarray this week.
And it’s all thanks to a little “thing” inside my hip.
The Thing, as I have taken to calling it, was first spotted some years ago on a routine internal exploration of my various nooks and crannies.
I’d had some pain in the hip and it was starting to affect things I enjoyed doing. Of course, it didn’t help getting run down by a car a few years back either so we decided to act with caution and get a scan done.
Back then, The Thing was relatively small and so we – myself and the other members of the expedition – made a note to take a better look next time we happened to be in the area.
Consequently, this past week we were and we did. Now I sort of wish we hadn’t.
It seems The Thing has grown to the extent surgical intervention is now the most likely option. There is also some concern it might need to be sooner rather than later.
I’m letting the medicos have a chat between themselves to find the answer to that part of the conundrum.
And I say surgery is most likely, rather than definite, because we haven’t flipped the “go” switch yet.
This is because the recovery from said surgery poses some quite awkward challenges for My Beloved and I, especially in our current situation.
But before I start prattling on about all that, let me take you back to where it all began.
Like many blokes, I was particularly active in my younger days and thrashed my body to a reasonable extent. When my contact-sport days ended I moved on to things like tennis and golf. A lot of the latter, if the truth be known, with associated plentiful alcoholic consumption.
Thus, I put a bit of beef on which made for some weakening in the joints. So I sort of thrashed my body in another way if you like.
Throw into the mix my employment, mainly a sedentary job for 40-plus years which meant areas of the temple, er I mean my body, which should have been getting a workout to reduce the risk of stiffening up and arthritis were instead on a steady decline the other way.
Lastly, as my doctor mates put it, it was the luck of the draw. First thing I’d won since that frozen chicken in a raffle at the school fete in 1972.
Oh, and he said I was just getting old. The swine. Just when I was thinking this semi-retirement life on the road in our caravan was starting to feel quite comfortable and I definitely wasn’t feeling at all elderly.
There you have it. Bad hip. I most likely need a replacement. Possibly soon. Six to eight weeks recovery. No driving, bending, lifting or other things that might cause post-operative issues.
OK. So how do we do it? That’s where it starts to get difficult. Try and stay focused while I explain.
It’s a bit like one of those quiz questions. You know what I mean: John has 57 apples. He eats five and puts 10% of the remainder on the 5.43pm bus to Auckland which uses 23.4 gallons of diesel per 100km. How many had not gone rotten by the time the bus had reached Wellington?
So.
Mrs P and I live in a caravan. For the past few months we’ve essentially been able to wake up and decide where we want to go.
Trouble is, getting there requires me to drive. Sometimes long distances. I have to bend to get the caravan hitched up. I have to lift all sorts of stuff, including George the three-legged 12-year-old 13.6kg dog.
Maybe Mrs P could take over those duties, I hear you say.
Unfortunately not.
Regular followers of my weekly warblings will recall My Beloved suffers a rather debilitating illness which prevents her from engaging in such physical endeavours and means her role in our caravan adventure is confined to culinary exploits and op shopping.
There’s also the fact the caravan is probably not the best place to recuperate.
While it is rather long and a bit fancy, it is cramped compared to your average home. Plus you have to go upstairs to get into it, if you know what I mean, and a lot of duties inside like making beds and putting things away require a significant amount of bending, twisting and lifting.
Naturally, I suggested to Mrs P we should simply not make the beds or put anything away as per Single Bloke Code Item 7A. You may have heard the deafening silence from where you are.
You’ll just have to imagine the withering look that went with it.
So that’s most likely the caravan out of the equation.
And no, we can’t go back to our house. We have people in there on a fixed-term tenancy.
Maybe we could go stay with family.
Nope.
The Boomerang Child and Builder Boy are on their own caravan adventure. No 1 Son is living in England for a year. No 2 Son is in Australia and No 1 Daughter’s house is undergoing major renovations which are expected to take some time.
Alright. What about friends?
Possibly. Though, amazingly now we’ve thought about it, most of our friends have houses with stairs. Those that don’t have cats and probably couldn’t accommodate George.
Plus there’s also the fact staying with someone for six to eight weeks – which has been offered and for which we are truly appreciative – would, I’m sure, put a bit of a strain on the relationship.
As an almost last resort, we are looking into some housesitting options. Preferably somewhere with no stairs or cats. I’d like somewhere with the full Sky TV Sports package but Mrs P says I won’t have time for watching telly.
She plans to get me up walking and getting back to full fitness so we can get back in the caravan and back on the road as quickly as possible.
Right now we are parked up in a nice reserve by a beach considering our options. There’s a picnic table just metres from the water’s edge and we’ve found ourselves sitting there discussing The Thing and associated conundrum most afternoons.
Just the other day after Mrs P had reassured me everything would sort itself out and she’d make me a cheese sandwich – I told you she was the perfect woman – I couldn’t contain myself and planted a big pash on her.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit I/we got caught up in the moment and it sort of went on a bit longer than decorum recommends. I’m sure you know what I mean.
When we surfaced for air we found a young girl, maybe three years old standing there watching us.
As if needing a hip replacement wasn’t bad enough, her comment to her mother nearby made me cringe.
“Mummy,” she said. “What are those old people doing?”
The 19-year-old was found in a remote area in the hills of Upper Hutt.