I had three almost totally pain-free days. This was something close to a miracle, and it happened in a miraculously short space of time. I’d come home from work, aching as usual, stiff and miserable and fed up because I hurt, and I had my usual bath and Leo made curry for tea. It was lovely curry, full of tofu and vegetables and served with poppadums and lovely yellow rice. We ate our tea and when I stood up to go out for a cigarette I realised that I wasn’t hurting. I mean, there was a bit of an ache, but not the usual pain that makes me wince and manoevre my legs in strange ways. (Here’s an example of how crap that can be: this afternoon I had cramp in my calf and because my leg was so stiff and painful I couldn’t actually flex my muscles to alleviate the cramp, and had to ask my girlfriend to pick my leg up and waggle it about. Pah.)

But yes, I had a couple of good days at work, I managed to go shopping in town without it being a hideous chore and I walked to and from the supermarket – about 1/4 mile each way – and it was only on the way back that I started to struggle. The worst bit was that I don’t seem to have any lift in my thigh right now, so walking uphill involves a weird, loping, sloping kind of gait to make any progress.

The magical curry that we had contained turmeric and ginger and a whole host of other yummy spices. There is a possibility they contributed to my miracle cure, however short-lived it was. Research suggests that these spices do indeed have anti-inflammatory properties, which is good, because I almost constantly crave curry. My favourite is mutta paneer (curries peas and cheese for the uninitiated). Cutting out dairy means I can’t have it anymore, but I think I will attempt (or more likely ask Leo to attempt) to make something similar with tofu.

Anyway, I had three or so good days, when I whizzed about at work and managed to survive a whole shift without our lovely cleaner asking me if I was ok and trying to make me sit down. She’s incredibly caring but does sometimes make me feel like I’ve got something terminal rather than just a pain. Ongoing, and at times hideous pain, but pain that’s mostly treatable to an extent, rather than something that could potentially kill me.

I wonder if there’s a link between curry and relentless optimism, because if so I think I need some soon.

So I decided that, really, being low and miserable and sad is no way to make myself feel any better about anything. Leo – my lovely girlyfriend – spent yesterday on the ‘net researching stuff that would make me feel better. Anyway, apparently research shows that many of the symptoms of osteoarthritis (OA) can be controlled by diet. Naturally, I was dubious about this because you don’t have to be Gillian McKeith to know that healthy, pain-relieving diets very rarely include Dr Oetker’s very lovely spicy vegetarian pizzas or Cadbury’s Boasters.

And of course I was right. My new diet forbids me to eat wheat or potatoes or dairy or tomatoes or just about anything else nice or tasty or yummy that you could possibly think of. I’m not allowed red meat either, but being a vegetablarian that’s less of a loss, really. Anyway, I went to the healthfood store and bought quinoa and soya milk and tons of vegetables and so far we have devised two recipes that were actually very tasty. Last night’s was Green Supreme, basically a risotto-esque concoction with lots of green vegetables and toasted seeds, and it was yum. We did seem quite gaseous afterwards, though. In fact, I was so gaseous that Leo could hear me being gaseous in the bath whilst she was downstairs in the kitchen. Ahem.

I was under the impression that cutting out wheat and sugar and stuff reduced one’s propensity to flatulence, but apparently not. We’ve had a week off work this week, and we’ve been entertaining ourselves by watching tv programmes featuring people whose suffering is greater than ours. The Diet Doctors have been the best purveyors of such fun – these two middle-aged, middle class, shining and glossy professionals systematically annihilate the lifestyles of the fat and the sweaty in their shining and glossy clinic and then make them eat roots and berries to decongest their bunged up colons. Everyone loses weight, gains energy and loses all their unsightly skin conditions as quickly as you can say ‘colonic irrigation.’ So when I realised I was going to have to submit myself to the same kind of punsihing regime I thought I knew what to expect. Sadly, I think I am single-handedly responsible for a hole in the ozone layer over Aberystwyth and also probably to blame for this weekend’s glorious sunshine thanks to strangely localised global warming over my estate.

On the plus side, I have actually felt better today. I’ve been springier and bouncier and able to walk up the stairs placing one foot in front of the other, rather than doing one at a time. I even managed a few ascents without using the bannisters. Go me, eh? In fact, this afternoon I actually donned my pink cowboy hat and danced round the living room pretending to be Madonna on Live Earth yesterday. I have to admit I’ve watched her singing with Eugene and Serge from Gogol Bordello on YouTube about fifty million times today, largely because it was the funniest, most Eurovision-esque thing I’ve seen in years. Anyway, I’m sure you’re all bored of it by now, so instead, here’s a clip of Eugene Hutz singing the same song in the back of someone’s car. Whilst it’s going along. Genius stuff.

But yes, getting back to the point, dancing in the gypsy punk-stylee in one’s living room is not so good for one’s mobility, especially when said mobility is already impaired by degenerative diseases, so consequently I’ve been hobbling a bit this evening. But lovely Leo has promised me that she will give me a nice massage later, which she did last night. The muscles around my glutes and quads have been much looser and more relaxed today. In addition, I’ve been learning range-of-movement exercises from the magnificent expertvillage.com and Leo’s been picking up Swedish massage tips.

Gosh, I’m spoilt. Later on I’ll have another hot bath, with some salt in. I was hoping to have Epsom Salts, but my friend who was buying them for me forgot what they were called and ended up asking the pharmacist for ’some salts that begin with an E, for someone with some kind of ailment.’ She returned from the supermarket with a box of Eno’s Liver Salts, which – handily enough – are a remedy for flatulence, so everything turned out happily in the end!

There’s something highly alarming about being at a hospital appointment and being told, “I’m sorry, but there’s really nothing more we can do for you…”

Luckily, this was only a physiotherapy appointment, but even so, the physio was the only help I was getting, and I liked my physio lady, Shan – she was very sweet and good humoured about me telling her that i was only ever totally pain-free when vodka was involved.

But no, I am beyond the help of the physio. Apparently, the range of movement is so poor now that in some directions I now score a big fat MINUS. On the plus side, however, she had a word with the High Priest of Orthopaedic Physiotherapy and he is recommending that she asks my GP to refer me to Gobowen,which is the hospital which treated me as a child. How long the waiting list for an appointment there is, I don’t know. I know here it’s about 26 weeks, and I had another 22 to go. What I do know is that it’s deteriorating very quickly, and the physio agreed. I can stand for about ten minutes maximum, and that’s without actually weightbearing on my left side. I can walk about 1/4 of a mile before the pain becomes so excruciating that I yelp involuntarily. I wake constantly in the night.

I’m going to look into getting a better mattress. When we moved house in March, my folks bought me a new bed, which came with an allegedly ‘firm’ mattress. What is firm about the mattress are the springs which protrude painfully and horribly. I think my ‘new’ mattress, out of financial necessity, will have to be second-hand, so I’ll have to try very hard not to think about other people’s enuresis and death-bed scenarios and concentrate on me being more comfortable.

I woke up crying in the night. I realised that at this rate I will not be able to walk for much longer. It was my birthday three months ago – I went out in 4″ heels and danced like a fool. Now the thought of walking across the kitchen to put the kettle on is terrifying.

I am trying to be brave, but I don’t like this one bit.

o8.10h and I’ve been at work for over an hour. In theory I was meant to get up at 05.45h so I could have the hot bath that helps me to move first thing but I was having this really good dream where I was in the pub with my best friend and my god-daughter and I was proudly wearing a nurse’s uniform which was an adult-sized version of those thin, scratchy ones you get for kids. With me I had another uniform, in a suit bag; I was pointing out the long sleeve and covered buttons to my friend and saying, ‘This one’s for when I’m Sister!’

You may laugh, but bizarrely enough I do actually have a job interview for the post of Ward Sister tomorrow. Those of you who are familiar with the Carry On  films will have an idea of how my brain is imagining my potential promotion: Lots of ‘Ooh, Matron!’ moments, plenty of scrapes involving hiding lost goats in the sluice and escapees running wild in the community with axes. Well, hopefully not the last one. Things like that look very bad in The Daily Mail.

So yes, job interview. I decided not to tick the ‘do you have a disability?’ box when I did the online application, because if I take enough pain killers and just grit my teeth, I’m fine. I’m fairly certain the drugs don’t affect my judgement, which renders me safe to be dishing them out to other people. There’s an old operating theatre stool in our clinical room which I sit on behind the hatch when I dispense the patient’s medication. It makes me a bit short, but it helps. I suspect at some point very soon I’m going to have to see the Occupational Health people and get some kind of risk assessment done on my ability to work et cetera. Boring but necessary, I suppose.

Difficult, always difficult to know what to put in the first post in your new blog. Do you launch straight into the meaty stuff and hope that people will get the gist? Or do you hold back for a bit until you know people are reading, and save them the hastle of rooting through your archives? Is it presumptious to even assume for a minute that anybody would bother reading at all?

 Whichever: if you’re here because you’re backtracking and want to start at the beginning, then Hello – this is as far back as it goes. If you’re here because you’re here now, and you’re waiting for the exciting stuff, then hold tight – I’ll be writing as often as I have the time and the inclination. If you’re here because you’re a complete stranger and you happened on me and my hip and my blog by accident then Hello to you too; it’s always good to meet new people.

For the record, I’m at work as I write tonight. I work on an adult mental health ward in a smallish seaside town in Wales. I was in horrendous pain this morning but I made the executive decision to double-dose on my Diclofenac because that’s the only way I get any actual pain relief, and that only lasts about three hours. One tablet’s meant to last for eight. It’s a bit crap, to say the least. I was trying to explain to my son earlier how it feels, and the best I could come up with was, it’s like when someone gives you a dead arm, you know, when they punch you really hard right in that little dent just below the shoulder? Well it’s like that, two seconds after the school bully’s thumped you, only in my hip. If you look at my thigh (of which I’ll probably spare you the treat), you can see where it is because there’s a reddish ring that marks the spot, with a sprig of purple veins as a garnish. The whole thing has my original surgery scar running diagonally through it. And yeah, it hurts, lots.