Hi everyone
Here we are on the cusp of yet another New Year and, since I've had some contact from actual/potential TARVA patients, I thought I should update my blog with a reflective/forward-looking post.
The god Janus looks both backwards and forwards, and that is an appropriate metaphor for this post to my blog. In some ways, this will be quite a reflective post.
Two years ago, I was crippled with end-stage osteoarthritis in my left ankle. Not only had I stopped those things I enjoyed (golf, walking with my wife, gardening), but the condition had affected every single element of my daily life (not least my need to pour so many pain-killers down my throat).
Then, I discovered TARVA.
It's not that I had not explored potential solutions to my problem, it's simply that TARVA both brought it into sharp focus, and gave me a potential solution to my dilemma.
To cut a very long story (see my earlier posts to this blog) short, with the help and encouragement of Mr. Goldberg and his team at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, I agreed to participate in their national trial which is examining the relative merits, particularly in terms of patient outcomes, of the two available surgical procedures for managing end-stage ankle osteoarthritis; those options are either fusion of the ankle, or ankle replacement.
As this was/is a randomised trial, it was the computer which selected whether I would have a fusion or a replacement.
In my case, the computer said "replacement", so that's what Mr. Goldberg and his brilliant surgical team did in June last year.
However, and for anyone contemplating this type of procedure, and although I'm a total rationalist, if you see one of my earlier posts you will see that, at the 11th hour, and the 59th minute, when I was being wheeled down to surgery, I had this sudden, transitory, and yet almost primeval urge to throw myself off the trolley and abandon the surgery.
Thank goodness I didn't!
My life has been transformed by my operation, and I don't say that lightly.
All the things I couldn't do before my operation, I can now do.
I now have no restrictions on my movement, flexibility etc. - without becoming too dramatic, I am renewed.
So, again, my message to anyone who has diagnosed ankle arthritis, is - through your GP - to contact the TARVA trial (see the website), and consider participating in their trial - if you do so, not only will you likely have a good outcome as an individual, but you will also be contributing to a body of knowledge which will help our Health Service decide not only which is the best clinical outcome for patients, but also what makes the most economic sense.
This is written on 31st December, so Happy New Year to anyone reading this post, and I wish all potential ankle patients good luck with your procedures, and I wish to record a special thanks to Mr. Goldberg and his wider team at RNOH not only for pioneering this valuable study, but also, from a very personal point of view, of having deployed their immense technical/surgical skills in ensuring that, today, no-one other than me and my wife know which was my dicky ankle!! Thank you all so much.
