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The World of Illusion Knitting

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PICKING UP THREADS

This was written in
2007
so is now very dated

Things might have stayed like this had it not been for those genes! Dad died in 1974 – a serving policeman to the end. In a roundabout way it was his talent for ‘doing things’ that caused his death. On New Year’s Day, on his way out to work, he rushed back to collect an electric drill, to fix a notice-board, slipped on ice and seriously fractured his leg. He was already seriously ill and the fracture was just too much for his system to cope with. The illness he had was genetic and doctors were already telling me I was ill. I felt fine and for several years this deadly kidney disease was not showing the symptoms expected.

It started to become more obvious before my son was born and I was confined to bed. That wasn’t a problem for me. I have already said I can’t sit and do nothing but to stay in bed with lots of knitting to do made it more bearable than it would have been for many other people. I knitted a beautiful square 2 ply shawl because I couldn’t think of anything that might take longer to knit. When it was finished I knitted an equally pretty round 2 ply shawl for my friend whose baby was due just a couple of months later. I had already bought patterns so visitors were dispatched to buy wool. I knit sleeping bags, and hats, and coats, and anything else you can think of and when my son finally arrived on the scene he was so small everything was too big. He soon grew into them and, in case I forget to mention it later, he is now a very grown-up scientist with more energy and stamina than anyone I know, and no sign of the bad genes from me.

Knitting kept me sane over the next few years as I sat waiting at endless hospital appointments and treatment. Others fidgeted and complained but I could be happy with something in my hands. Arrival? Was this what it was all for? To keep me calm where others got agitated when I couldn’t normally be described as a placid patient person?

It wasn’t an arrival. The real journey hadn’t even started yet.

In 1986 I had a kidney transplant and, although there were serious complications at the start, I suddenly felt like I had never felt in my life. With a progressive illness you never notice changes from day to day. You don’t realise you feel ill – until a miracle happens and you feel better. I’m sure I feel younger now than I did 30 years ago. When someone asks my age I could happily tell them I am 25 and believe it. They wouldn’t but I could.

The first few weeks were difficult, for a variety of reasons. I had to be kept in sterile surroundings for a while and the only items allowed in the room were essentials that were made as sterile as possible. I had to have hospital nightwear, toothbrush, comb, etc. but, worse than all this, knitting was not allowed in the room. Due to the complications, which meant the situation fluctuated from one day to the next, I was popped in and out of quarantine several times. Eventually quarantine within the hospital was no longer needed.

This particular renal disease normally makes people very sleepy and after a transplant they revert to fairly normal hours of sleep. When I was ill I had slowed down but only to the point where I appeared to be a normal sleeper. As a child I had been a non-sleeper. I was eleven years old before I discovered that it was not normal to go to bed and be awake for another four hours. Sleeplessness never bothered me. I had never heard of insomnia and didn’t know I was abnormal. After the transplant I reverted to type and needed only about five hours sleep per night. I would sit chatting to the night–nurses and knitting.

As far as I remember, knitting caused no difficulties at this time but progressively, over the next few weeks, I  became aware that I had very little feeling in my fingers and where I had previously worked mostly by touch I was now having to look more often at what I was doing and I was making more mistakes. This was one of the side effects of the vital anti-rejection drugs. Perhaps my fingers are a bit better now than they were then. You learn to adapt to circumstances and it is very hard to remember an earlier time when things were different. This really is where the journey began. It would never have started if it had not been for such dramatic changes.

5. HANGING BY A THREAD