My name is Josephine Renton and I live in the town of Broadstairs on the coast, which is an hour and a half's drive from the hospital. But, it's a beautiful drive through the forest and the woods and the scenery and I really loved it.
I had an awful pain in my thigh. I couldn't sort of stretch that leg back. And so I went to the doctor and he said, that's your hip, it's not your thigh. He said, do you feel it? He said your hip, you know. I said, no, I don't think it hurts but it wasn't too bad for at least six months. I could still walk. It was about a year later I went to the doctor again and I said, look, it's got worse. And this time he sent me to a specialist where I had an X-ray.
When I went to Benenden, I had an appointment to see Mr. Matthew Oliver. We had a very productive initial consultation. My X-rays had been forwarded to him and he explained them to me and he said, yes, you know, look at this and you can see how bad it is. I was very impressed that he explained the X-ray to me because as a layman, you really can't tell why things are bad. And so it needs repairing. He told me exactly what he was going to do and it sounded a bit drastic, but I thought, well, hundreds of thousands of people have this operation and they're all alright afterwards. So, although it sounded drastic, I wasn't really worried. In fact, I wasn't worried about the operation.
Matthew Oliver had talked me through it and I talked to various friends who had the operation and I came to the conclusion with very little to worry about. You know, the main thing I was worried about was the aftermath, how helpless I'd be. I mean, I'm a very independent person and I hate being helpless in any shape or form. But as a matter of fact, I really wasn't, that was cut to the minimum. And by the time I got home I was already independent in the essential things in life.
I was quite ambitious regarding the speed of my recovery. After two days, my crutches were collecting dust in the corner and I graduated to a walking stick. After another few days, no, I would say a week, when I was using the walking stick indoors and outdoors, I didn't use the walking stick indoors anymore. I just used it outdoors. I remember two weeks after my operation, I'm a churchgoer and I'm in the choir, and I remember two weeks afterwards I walked down the aisle in the church without a walking stick or without anything.
It's an absolutely lovely hospital. You really have the feeling, yes, I am a private patient. This is a private hospital. I found everybody very helpful and the general ambiance very pleasant. I really did.
