Last stages at the Clinique Ster

A week or so ago they told me I'd be going home around 2 April, maybe sooner.  Now I know it will be 31 March  - hooray!  The knee is OK,and I can straighten the leg completely with only a little pain, and on 26 March the bend was up to 135°, and most of the pain is on the therapist's table, or in bed where I still find it difficult to get comfortable.  In any case, I know well that I'll have to continue work and exercise for some time after I leave and I am making sure I have a clear idea how much to do daily and what.  Despite concentrated sessions with new exercises almost daily, you don't immediately get a picture of what a daily routine should be.

As I near the end of my time in the Clinic I have reflected on the pros and cons.  Easier to dwell on the shortcomings, and although I have not spent a lot of time moaning there are things that really have fallen short, notably the food.  Despite all the expertise in treatment, spending day and night in one place really makes you aware of the daily regulars, food and sleep.  Neither has been very good here, though now I know how to dismantle my bed so that I don't have a board to bang my feet on I think I have solved the sleeping problem as far as an insomniac like me can.  I feel a bit foolish that it took me so long.  In fact, my first overnight at home I slept 7 hours, 2 hours more than almost any night in 3 weeks of hospital or clinic.  Now I manage 6 hours a night, in bits.

The food, I learnt from friends who had been here before, was supposed to be good, with choices and variety.  In hospital they were careful to say that the menus rotated on a 9-week cycle, but here we are lucky if there was a 2-week rotation.  Some things seem to turn up every week, there is no choice and the quality is medicre.  Sometimes the meat is of good quality - I recall delicious duck breast and a nice steak and chips meal, but on other occasions you had unimaginative collations of leftovers, with a lot of pasta.  There is a very variable input over the week of fresh fruit or vegetables.  One day there's a nice fresh starter of grated carrot or celeriac but it's followed by a couple with nothing fresh at all and vegetables with the main courses were often overcooked.  the preparation and service were incredibly slow, so food was often luke-warm when it arrived.  I was often grateful to go out for a meal or to have some of Mary's lovely meals at home or en pique-nique here.

The main reason to question the live-in option for rééducation though is the long hours you spend holed up in a very boring environment.  Even without overlong wakeful nights, there is a lot of time between physio sessions, and even apart from the food meal times are long.  The clinic brochure makes a lot of the moments of détente and amitié, but if you are not specially sociable with people you don't know you are stuck with them - fixed table placements so the only changes are when one person leaves and a new one arrives.  Of course, you can be helpful to new people who feel confused when they first arrive, as indeed people were helpful to me at the beginning.  I was delighted this morning to see one of my table companions walking with a frame when last night she said she felt she'd never get there.  In fact veryone makes quite visible progress here.  But my personal antipathy to boarding school life makes all that hard to feel good about, despite my natural social worker instincts!

So now I look forward to returning home next week, and I'll do a last round-up before I leave.  Meanwhile, home for a weekend and some wine tasting!