I had managed rolling on to my side at some stage of Tuesday night, and at 8am the next morning was fast asleep with my back to the door. ‘Mr Sinclair, are you awake?’ well, that woke me up, but then I had to struggle and disentangle Sputnik from the sheets that had got caught up around it. I find my external fixation clamps to be appropriately gender neutral. Eventually I managed to turn to see who was bidding me the top of the morning, it was Owen, one of the Plastics registrars.

Owen had come to tell me that the plastics team would be here tomorrow morning to have a look at my wound, which is currently about 2 inches in diameter, and a bit over an inch and a half deep. Bits of broken bone are visible, as are sections of plate, and most disturbing, the threaded length of a screw. I say that this is disturbing because when I first saw it, due to its grayish colour, I thought it was some invasive, flesh eating worm. This wound is, to my eye, truly revolting, and I have been at pains to point out to my medical carers that this is not actually my leg. My leg is lovely, look at the right one: the practical joke one on the left with the scaffolding attached is actually a mirror image of that.

Owen deals in reality, and although he wasn’t going to be swayed by any of my denial rubbish, he had come with further news. The teams inspection on Thursday was to be followed by the graft on Friday. Well that’s what I’d come to St George for, and that was the best news I’d had since being told I could go home five weeks ago. I felt really happy, because the graft is important in so many ways.

It is, for my case, completely necessary for any healing to take place. The bone has no chance of knitting as long as the area is devoid of a blood supply. Ten weeks after the accident, they are still a fairly loose collection of lumps and fragments, although mostly connected by plates. The graft means that perhaps they will start to join up with each other, to become a structural whole again. The graft also means that the wound will be covered, that the great void there will be filled, and that perhaps some semblance of original form will be returned.

Owens visit was worth waking up for.

Half an hour later, Mustafa, one of the orthopedic registrars popped in. He had, he said, bad news. The background for this is that whenever I’ve been to theatre for a wound debridement and wash, they have taken swabs of the site to keep an eye on who’s in residence. Mustafa was here to tell me that there was indeed a new tenant, called pseudomanos. Ah! progress had been there to be touched, but the line had been redrawn, and I felt quite deflated.

He assured me, that depending on the strain, that it would not necessarily interrupt Fridays plans. He seemed to think that a couple of days of an antibiotic different to the one I’m already on would do the job. I texted ‘Greg’, old friend and doctor, who assured me that pseudomanos was indeed a ‘pussy’ bacteria that would be mopped up in no time at all.

I have to say though, throughout this whole ordeal, ‘Greg’ has been exceedingly positive. I think he may be a little bit Pollyanna.