I had my operation on 4 july last year, they broke all the bones in my ankle and removed some, they then screwed the ankle joint together again using 2 x 70mm screws, one was screwed upwards from the heel, while the other was screwed downwards from the top of the foot.
They did all this while I was awake, them gave me a epurdrual and a spine block to numb the pain.
The pain came 2 days later when the spine block wore off, I was now on morphine, but this only surpressed the pain.
Also on day 2 they changed my plasters from a plaster of paris one to a glass fibre one, after the 2 of them had finshed my pain was now hovering at the 8 out of 10 mark, as soon as they left 2 phisios came in a got me out of bed to walk.
My pain level now went off the scale, but I gritted m teeth, closed my eyes and walked across the room, after this little trick they went away and the doctors gave me poop loads of morphine to knock me out.
2 Days later they got me climbing stairs.
1 week later I cleaned my first window.
What does this show apart from being a prat, if needed I can work even though I am in extreme pain.
The surgeon told me that it will take at least 1 year to recover and then another 3 years to get to 100% fitness, I was also instructed not to work at all in this 1st year.
Over the last 14 months I have recovered and what I could only do 12 months ago, I can now do more.
So yes there was a time I could only stand for 45 minutes before I needed to sit down, I have now upto a couple of hours.
But there has also been times when I have had to work though the pain barrier and exceed these times.
But there are after effects when I do, normally it envoles a lot of pain and the non ablity to walk later on in the day and even the next day.
So for instance 14 months after my operation on friday I cleaned the carpets in 3 apartment blocks, I started at 3pm and finshed at 7pm, the result apart from clean carpets was that I could not walk by 10pm, and I was not fit enough to leave my house until 1pm the next day, so yesterday I worked for another 4 hours doing 2 1st cleans on windows and carpet clean on 2 bedrooms and 1 livingroom.
The effect this time is I now have no feeling in my leg, but I will still be out to work tommorow.
Of course this will inprove over time, just like I have improved from45 minutes to 4 hours now.
of course you don't look at that, when someone says something then those figures can never change, so if someone is earning £100 per day from window cleaning, then they can never increase this figure to £200 or £300, if someone is a sole trader, they can never employ mainly for the fact that they are not earning enough to pay a wage.
So what I am trying to say is, life moves on and things change, and if needed I will push past what I normally can do.
and as you have never met me, you don't really know me.