The night is over and the crutches leaning against the wall remind me that “work” begins today.

A phone call from grandson ( on his way to school to talk about endangered polar bears in a school assembly) has cheered me up as has an email during the night from a young couple who have just announced their engagement. I like to think that a recent trip to The Gables sealed the deal!!!

Although I am not at my best, I was musing through the night on the incredible advances in modern medicine. Simple BP, temperature and heart rate monitored by a mobile bedside contraption which didn’t exist when I trained 40 years ago. Even the post op routine for hip replacement has changed and the ridiculous nurses caps and black stockings have disappeared.

Above all I feel so privileged to be in a room of my own lying on clean sheets with pain relief. Contrast that with footage from hospitals in Yemen and Syria and the absence of hospital facilities in so many parts of the world. I am truly grateful. Grateful too that, unlike by maternal Grandma Anne, I did not have to live with chronic, crippling pain for 30 years before receiving two hip replacements. She worked full time and in the evenings she sat in her chair and knitted and crocheted. She never complained. However “yucky ” I might feel right now, I am truly lucky. And thank you for all your lovely emails which “pinged” on my bedside table through the long night.