I wait all night for the alarm to go off, checking the time at one, three-thirty, and five before the delirious dreams give up and I pop my eyes open.
It’s 6:15 a.m.
Winter greets me through the jet-black slice between the curtains, the mist of condensation broken by a lazy lone drip on its way to pool at the bottom of the window frame. An annual reminder of the immortal damp of old English cottages. Faint markings of a smiley face from a past finger drawing glisten on the glass. A gift from my daughter.
I lie still under the warmth of the covers, my head nestled in the feather crater of the pillow. One palm sits flat and firm across my pounding heart as the radiators gurgle and clunk with promises to warm our glaciated bones.
My husband blinks, heavy and slow in the navy darkness. Shadows of his sleepy smile climb into the creases of his cheeks. I attempt to return the gesture. He rubs his face awake and stumbles to the shower.
I check my phone. Bright light pierces the room. No new messages. The kids will be awake, clambering into bed between their grandparents as theyread picture books together. Yesterday we said our goodbyes. Their rosy faces glowed in the back of Mum’s car as they waved their mittened hands at me, oblivious that their sleepover set off my internal countdown.
My finger hovers over the voicemail button. Last month the call came the night before. I knew who it was before I answered. As the nurse spoke, I stared, unblinking, at the Christmas tree. Its white lights reflected in the slow twirling baubles until they blurred into a mass of green and silver. ‘We no longer have a bed for you.’ A barrage of explanations followed. Winter and black ice equalled broken hips and fractures. All took priority over my elective surgery.
Elective. A strange choice of words. It’s up to me, not the surgeon. Me. How do I decide how much is too much pain? Whether my life is impacted? If I can keep going?
For years, the answer to all these questions had been ‘yes’. Yes, it’s too much pain. Yes, my life is impacted. But yes. I can keep going.
Arthritic bones do not equal life or death. There is no sudden trauma that needs fixing. For me, it means a steady downhill slope of cartilage degradation in a hip that arrived incomplete. It’s pain creeping in uninvited and making itself comfortable like an unwanted house guest stealing your favourite armchair.
As the weeks, months, and years passed, carrying me from my teenage years to adulthood, it set up residence between a marriage, two pregnancies and my babies. It grew stronger, infecting new parts of my body. Delivered a walking stick, sometimes two, and left me without hands to hold my children’s. It suggested I leave my career, relocate my life. Introduced me to anxiety and held me prisoner in my home. It shot agonising spasms that collapsed my body without warning. It stranded me at the playground sobbing into the phone to be rescued by my husband. As I waited, I held tight to my toddler—terrified she would up and run.
But the answer to the surgeon’s question remained. Yes, I could keep going.
Until, aged 36, a mother to a three-year-old and a one-year-old with my husband as my carer, I couldn’t.
Leaning on my stick, I push up from our bed, aware that my instinct is to put more weight on my right side. My ‘good’ side. I shuffle to the bathroom and shower in the supplied hospital medicated wash. The instructions warn of risks separate from the shattered femurs and joint dislocations of the surgical ones. Bacterial risks. It’s like lathering in disinfectant.
The radio witters away as we drive through the village darkness towards our destination. Sixteen kilometres. Twenty minutes.
The bright lights of sporadic passing cars appear through the fog clouds hovering across the dual carriageway. An upstairs light flicks on in a roadside house. The world wakes.
When we arrive, it’s trying to rain and below zero, but that’s not why I’m shaking.
I’m directed to a white bed with layers of tight-fitting sheets and a bulbous pillow that crackles. I perch on the edge, convinced that if I lie down someone will tell me to get up. To stop making a fuss. Tears flow, unexpected and silent.
The surgeon apologises for cancelling last month as he draws a giant arrow on my left leg. The guiding line for his scalpel. He tells me if a trauma arrives before I’m anaesthetised, I’ll be sent home. I tell myself I can’t go through this again. But I know if I have to, I can.
I walk to theatre with my nurse and husband, the silence broken by her cheerful chatter and the rubber screech of his shoes. My socked feet rustle in their blue covers, the elastic gripping my ankles.
Nine-twenty. I want to stop the clock. Cling to all I’ve ever known. Soon there will be no way to return what they are about to carve off. My mangled piece of bone—this part of me, my history, who I am, shorn off with a power saw. Disposed of in a bin. Gone.
At the theatre entrance, I face my husband. Our eyes lock. I read the fear in his, above his smile. He envelops me, says he loves me. So much.
Nine-twenty-eight. The same time my youngest was born.
With a push through the double doors, I cross the threshold and take my allocated position on the bed. Surrender is inevitable. The team of bustling experts call me by my name, repeating it with soft voices and kind smiles at the end of every sentence.
I’m ready.
The gurney rolls under the bright lights and bright whites.
I’m ready.
The surgeon clamps me into position.
I’m ready.
The anaesthetist counts down. ‘Ten, nine, eight, seven.’
My eyes lose focus.
‘Six, five, four…’
Emma Rennison is a British-Australian author and mother of two children diagnosed with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia. She lives with the same rare bone condition, has one bionic hip and writes about her family’s experiences of disability, as well as works of fiction. She is a Writeability Fellow and is working on her first novel. You can find her at www.emmarennison.com