Cath Sheard Art

Blog

  • Facing a fear

    I’m pretty good at honest conversations these days, and facing stuff. I admit to my addictive nature, and talk about the impacts. There are still things I put to the back of my mind though.

    Today I voiced a nagging fear. I’ve walked oddly for 9 years, mainly with the aid of a walking stick. Now I have two new knees, and am starting to walk without crutches some of the time. Will I walk normally once my knee has fully healed? Do I know how or is the muscle memory gone?

    I was under a neurologist’s care for a while. I have some obvious problems, but we couldn’t get to the bottom of it as my “I need new knees” walk made diagnosis difficult. We talked about whether I’d had a stroke when I was put on life support, or have MS. I’ve got a decent sized lesion next to my spine, but we don’t think it does anything. In the end, we decided to wait until my knee replacements were done, as a diagnosis isn’t necessarily useful.

    In the next few weeks I’ll need to face it. I might walk totally normally, and it’s so simple. I might need some physio to learn to walk properly, and it’s a bit more work but totally ok. Or I might still walk badly and need to connect up with the neurologist again, and deal with … something …

    Whatever the outcome, I’ll cope with it. Having voiced my worry is a really good start.

  • It’s a miracle

    The damage to my knees was severe according to the radiologist and surgeon. I’ve had significant osteo arthritis in my knees since at least 2012, the year I had a car accident which damaged them further. As a result of the bones eroding, my legs were very bowed. It was so bad my surgeon was concerned he might not get either knee totally straight.

    It’s just over two weeks since my second total knee replacement. There’s still a lot of swelling and bruises but these before and after photos tell the story…

  • If I’m not crafting…

    If I’m not doing any art or craft you know things are rough! This knee replacement is way more painful than the first. Although less painful to walk on than my right knee was, the left was the more damaged of the two. The level of bruising and swelling suggests getting it all straight was a brutal process.

    I was sent home with just Panadol for pain relief and, after days of mucking round, I’ll finally get something stronger tomorrow. Hopefully life will feel better.

    At the moment I only sleep for a couple of hours before waking up in pain then, when I move to get comfortable it turns to agony for a few minutes. There’s a lot of middle-of-the-night tears.

    It’s not the new knee that hurts. It’s my hip, which is having to realign itself, and my thigh as I haven’t used that muscle for 9 years, walking from the hip instead. Basically I’ve got dreadful bursitis.

    Anyway, by tomorrow afternoon I hope I’ll be able to sit for more than an hour at a time. I need to spend some time at my art desk and art out all the feelings. In the meantime I’ve tried to keep up with my exercises despite the pain, even sending my poor sister photographic evidence!

  • And it’s done – new knee

    I finally had my second total knee replacement last Thursday, and I am incredibly grateful. The anaesthetist decided he wanted to do a general, not a spinal block, for various reasons. He was right – I’m definitely not good surgery material. His decision probably avoided life support again…

    The surgery went well, and I was up that afternoon. The surgeon was happy for me to go home after 2 nights but I chose to stay 3 because we’re 90 minutes away if things go wrong. I was able to get a 90 percent bend day one, which he said he hadn’t seen before. Day 2 the physio said I had in the top 10% of movement. So we should be looking at an excellent result.

    As with the last one, my hip is causing me a lot of pain and keeping me awake at night. I think it’s just that I’m standing so differently. As Sandra said, I’m taller already! She’s been a star, looking after me but not fussing. If she hears a crash, she doesn’t come running, she checks on the swearing level and yells out to ask if I’m ok. Very sensible.

    The initial bruising is coming out quickly, which is a good sign. Obviously the deeper bruises will come out for weeks. Yesterday and today Sandra has dropped me off at Te Mahana and I’ve spent a couple of hours with Tony; it’s good to do a few laps of their halls. Onward and upward, in a few months the pain will be a distant memory.

  • Imperfect and scarred

    My friend Penny and I have been working on a collaborative project, sending works back and forth, adding layers of words, tissue, paint and so on. These aren’t about making pretty art. They’re about documenting stuff that’s deep, and occasionally dark, that we share.

    I commented to her tonight that “we are utterly imperfect and that’s totally ok. There is both beauty and survival in our scars.”. Our scars are physical and emotional, surface and deep.

    I have a lot of physical scars; there’s a giant one and around a dozen small ones on my stomach alone. A couple of weird – but thankfully faded – ones on the side of my neck from a central IV line. A big one on my right leg from a total knee replacement and, later this coming week, there will be a matching one on the left knee.

    It’s the same with the emotional scars … some are small and faded, others deep and persistently livid. I’ve talked about the cause of some on this blog, others there’s only one or two people who know the story. And there’s a couple of scars I can’t ever verbalise – but I have shared most of it, in writing, and in tears.

    Scarred inside and out. And that’s okay. The scars are part of me, just as my art is part of me. Like me, my art isn’t about pretty. It’s not made to match people’s furniture or look cute in a cafe. It’s about telling my story in paint when I can’t find the words and, some of the time, shining light on dark things and bringing a sense of lightness to them.