Early 2025
This is not another full surgery post. That story already exists elsewhere on this site. This is the bridge between the long archive and the present-day recovery.
By the time the archive reaches this point, the thread is clear.
Health stopped being background noise.
It became the story.
First came the trinity: type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Then came the weight loss, fasting, low-carbohydrate eating and the HGV licence. Then came the hip. Arthritis. Pain. The stick by the door. The worry about work. The question of whether I could keep driving trucks for a living.
That sequence has already been written in detail here.
#2 - Ailments covered the fear, the weight, the diabetes, the blood pressure, the hip replacement and the sense that everything had started pressing in at once.
#4 - The Pre-op Protocol covered the attempt to prepare properly. Keto. Fasting. Movement. Glucose tracking. Blood pressure. Not as self-improvement theatre, but as practical preparation for surgery.
#5 - Flares covered the final stretch before the operation. The pain spike. The X-rays. The sense of being close to the line but not quite over it.
#7 - Six Six covered the operation itself. The spinal block. Sedation. Recovery. Rhona and Karta arriving. Those first strange steps into the post-op world.
#8 - All Change covered what came after. The realisation that truck driving was not helping my body, and that something had to shift.
#9 - The Remission Hypothesis picked up the later health thread: diabetes, weight, medication and the possibility of turning the ship around again.
So this post does not need to repeat all of that.
It only needs to mark the threshold.
For years, I wrote about wanting to change. I wrote about weight, work, money, social media, fatherhood, depression, debt, purpose, driving, walking, moving house, ageing and trying to become a steadier man.
Some of it was useful.
Some of it was repetition.
Some of it was me circling the same fear from different angles.
But the hip surgery changed the tone.
It was no longer about planning a better version of myself from a safe distance. It was about lying on a hospital trolley and trusting other people to cut out the damaged part and put something better in its place.
That is a different kind of reset.
Not romantic.
Not tidy.
Not imaginary.
Real.
There was fear, of course. Plenty of it. Fear of the operation. Fear of anaesthesia. Fear of recovery. Fear of being useless. Fear of becoming a burden. Fear of not being able to work in the same way again.
But there was also relief.
The waiting would end.
The damaged joint would go.
The pain would be gone.
The next part would begin.
Looking back through these ninety archived pieces, I can see the same questions appearing again and again.
What matters?
What can be let go?
How do I look after Rhona and Karta?
How do I stay useful?
How do I stop wasting time?
How do I live more quietly, with less noise and more attention?
The surgery did not answer all of that.
But it forced the questions into the open.
That is why this feels like the right place to pause.
The archive has caught up with the present.
The long loop from old blogs, failed plans, work changes, health scares, and family life has reached the operating theatre door and stepped through it.
What comes next belongs to recovery.
Not just recovery from surgery.
Recovery of attention.
Recovery of health.
Recovery of work that fits.
Recovery of time.
Recovery of the quieter life I have been trying to describe for years.
So this is not the end.
It is just a marker.
A line between the old pain and whatever comes after.
Until next time,
adieu.