Six Weeks On...

New year, new x-ray.

‘You look fab, you’re really proactive about your health - you’re my kind of girl,’ says the nurse practitioner sympathetically. ‘But, you’re not going to bounce back the way you used to and you’ve had a serious injury.’ I’m not vain and I’m not looking for the Elixir of Youth, but since I left A&E without a follow up appointment, I would like to know why, after all these weeks, my ribs are still making an audible clicking noise. 

It’s six weeks today since I found myself in the back of an ambulance feeling very scared and broken. The superficial damage to my face has healed. It took four weeks for the feeling in my upper teeth and the roof of my mouth to begin to return, although two of my front teeth still only have partial sensation. (The dental work starts this week.) There are patches of numbness in my face and top lip. My ribs are uncomfortable rather than painful (although sneezing is agony) and it seems that if I want an explanation for the clicking noise, I’ll have to keep chasing a very stretched health authority. 

As I sat in the ambulance, I kept telling myself I was lucky; I didn’t have a life-threatening illness and my injuries could have been far worse. Nevertheless the last six weeks have made me very introspective, probably because I’ve never been this badly injured before, so I’m very grateful for all the messages I’ve received, the acts of kindness that arrive like shafts of sunlight and for bright spots of good news.

Ruth, the beautiful top and your instructions to wrap myself in a gift of love made me sob like a baby when I’d been holding my emotions in!

'Love' sweatshirt by Black & Beech

Just before Christmas, when I was feeling particularly low and lost, I received the brilliant news that ‘Running Kind’ has been awarded a Bronze ‘Honourable Mention’ in the 2019 Author Shout Reader Ready Awards. (More about this to come!)

Novelist, journalist and teacher of creative writing, Margaret James kindly invited me to talk to her about what I wish I'd known at the beginning of my career for Writing Magazine. You can read about it in the February issue which is out now.

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And last week, I sat in the Open University Library waiting anxiously whilst my husband Tom was being questioned about his thesis over in the Music Department. It’s been a long haul - as you can read here - so when Tom found me afterwards and couldn’t speak, I was a bit worried about the outcome until he was able to indicate with a nod that he’d passed. Well done and many congratulations, Dr Tom, we’re so proud of you!

Tom with his supervisor Robert Samuels