See You on the Other Side

Okay folks, this is it for the time being.

On Friday morning at 7am I shall be arriving at the hospital down the road where I shall be fitted with a new right hip joint.

I’ve been living with pain for so long now – I’m a bit fuzzy, but it was clear to me that something was seriously wrong at least three years ago – that it’s hard to imagine what life will be like without it. Getting a few good nights’ sleep will be a good start. Being able to walk around a wargames show again seems almost absurdly ambitious at the moment, but I’m certain that will be possible before long.

I’ve been told by the surgeon and nurses that recovery from what is, after all, a major procedure, albeit one that is extremely commonplace nowadays and which highly experienced surgeons can almost do with their eyes closed (though I hope not, of course!) is a highly personalised matter. Some people are back on their feet and gadding about in no time at all; for others, it can be a more prolonged process.

Step 1, of course – if you’ll pardon the pun – is recovering from the operation itself and the effects of the anaesthesia. There’s bound to be some pain after the drugs have worn off; I’m just hoping that all the practice I’ve had dealing with levels 8-10 of agony will have been useful training!

As I’ve mentioned in my Off the Cuff podcast, a major challenge is that the Loftwaffe is going to be off limits to me for a while (two to four weeks at least, realistically), so my normal levels of productivity are going to be heavily curtailed. For a self-employed person, such a situation fills me with more dread than the operation itself! I am, and for decades have been, my own harshest slave driver, so I’m going to have to plug myself into the Calm app at regular intervals and just find a way to let the situation wash over me.

I’ve got a lovely new MacBook Pro all set up and ready to go, but it has nothing like the screen real estate of my proper studio, so I’ll be doing the best I can to deal with anything that comes up. I’ll no doubt be able to keep pace with the chat channels here, and I’ll probably be doing a few posts and bits and bobs just to stop myself going mad! But what I can’t do is promise any kind of regularity whilst I focus, as I absolutely must, on my physical and mental recovery both from the procedure and the ordeal of the worsening condition over recent years, which definitely took its toll psychologically.

So, as the headline says, I’ll see you on the other side and thank you all for your tremendous support, as always. You folks really do represent the best of the spirit of wargaming.

Henry