OK SLUK fans, listen up. I’ve not been very well for a while and have gone into hospital today for quite a big and nasty spinal cord operation. As I type this I’m wearing my gown, surgical stockings and paper underpants as I’m waiting to be wheeled down to theatre.

The op means I’ll be in hospital for around a week, then I’ll be recovering at home flat on my back for at least a week. What it means for you lot, is that for the next two weeks I’ll be ‘on holiday’ (not quite the kind of holiday most of us enjoy though) so won’t be publishing anything new on here until I’m well enough. I promise as soon as I’m able to sit up again I’ll be back at work and bringing you some new features and news.

Hopefully, by late March I’ll be able to ride scooters again as well, just in time for the new rally season to kick off. In the meantime, feel free to buy stuff from the SLUK Shop (self-employed people don’t get sick pay so it all helps) everything will be sent out as normal.

You can also spend a bit of time looking through some of our old features and watching our videos. I’ll be back in the hot seat (hopefully a chair without battery power or wheels) at SLUK HQ as soon as possible.

Sorry, there are no prizes for guessing where the problem lies…
Gory detail

For those readers who like a bit more detail, the operation is called a thoracolumbar laminectomy and it’s to remove a cyst from inside the spinal cord. Obviously, this isn’t exactly straightforward and carries some big risks but it has to be done or I’ll be paralysed. My Neurosurgeon explained it to me in scooter boy terms, “We’ll open you up, peel off the back muscles, hack our way in through a vertebra, stick a knife in the cyst and remove as much of it as we can”. That all sounds easy enough… then he said “I’ll hopefully put a grommet in to allow any fluid to drain back into your spinal cord so it doesn’t fill up again. Although if the fluid is a bit oily (sounds like a seal may have gone) when we get in there I’ll scrap the grommet idea and it’ll just have to be done again in a few years when it grows back.

Honesty is usually the best policy, unless a surgeon says “There’s a chance I’ll cripple or kill you, but hopefully not.”

I’d like to thank you for reading this and will hopefully see you all soon…

Iggy

Send in your scooter stories

Obviously, we’ll be a bit short of material over the next few weeks but if any readers would like to send in their stories about scooter travels, bodges, tips, projects or anything else of interest it’ll help us with content until I’m back to normalish.

You can email to: editorial@scooterlab.uk

 

Update 17th Febrary 2022

I got through the operation without any major side effects and walked out of the hospital three days later (I can still walk and I’m not dead so that’s a bonus). After two weeks I was back at work and I’m slowly getting fitter every day.

I’ll be back riding scooters within the next two weeks 🙂

I hope to see you all on a rally or at an event soon.