BACK TO THE ISSUE...

...of scar tissue.
I ended the last post with the accident which led to the scarring on my left hand, which also left my ring finger and index finger all but immobile for a couple of years, putting the tin hat on any aspirations I might have had as a guitarist. I also broke my left wrist in a similar accident: I was 17 and pissed, staggering along a dark Derbyshire Lane, when I needed a slash. I vaulted over a wall, suddenly remembering that there was a sizeable drop on t'other side, at least 10 feet... the wrist cracked right across the radius and took a long time to heal - had to be broken again to reset it twice. It still gives me pain to this day, but all these scars are as nothing compared to The Big One, The Daddy, the scar which says to all others "you're nobbut a scratch", the scar which runs in a straight line from just above my solar plexus to deep down in my groin, swerving very slightly to avoid the navel. This is the scar I got in 1994, after I'd been stabbed in the back. The knife, apparently, went all the way through and came out at the front, but this was not realised until they sewed me up, whereupon I swelled up like a balloon when the internal bleeding had no way of escape. I spent 3 days in the Intensive Care Unit of Leicester Royal Infirmary, and a further 11 days on a post-surgical ward going through all sorts of agonies, the worst of which was having 56 stitches removed from various locations - the scars in my back, one on my thigh, a hole where a drain had been plugged into my stomach, and of course the scar which puts all others in the shade. Remarkably, I did not lose the damaged kidney and made a full and complete recovery, thanks to all the medical staff at the aforementioned hospital.
However, the abdominal scar tissue causes problems of its own, and this has been added to by having my gall bladder removed in 2001, which left a scar tracing the end of the right side of my ribacage, and most recently the bilateral hernia operation, which has left my todger looking a bit like Jack Nicholson at the end of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Any more and I will probably consist of more scar tissue than not.