Meet Michael

It is curious how a complete stranger can suddenly take centre stage in your life; the way in which someone you’ve never met before becomes one of the most important people you know. It’s been like that with Michael.

Maybe it was wishful thinking or just plain ignorance which made me think it wouldn’t take long to learn how to walk again. I had returned to Uganda with a sheet of ‘Foot and Ankle Exercises’ from the hospital. ‘Sitting Toe Raise’, Ankle Circles’, ‘Gastroc Stretch’ and ‘Standing Unilateral Heel Rise’ looked easy enough in theory although the sheet did lack any details about how often the exercises should be done.

But a week after taking the cast off my leg I still didn’t recognise the thing at the end of my body as my foot or ankle, and I could only lift the ball of my foot about a nanometre from the floor using the ‘Sitting Heel Raise’.

Progress was painfully slow, literally, and even new exercises from the internet, ‘Plantar Flexion’, ‘Dorsi Flexion’, ‘Inversion’ and ‘Eversion’ didn’t really improve things. What I needed, but had never been told I needed, was a physiotherapist. Enter Michael!

Physiotherapists are like gold dust in Uganda. We had been told there was a qualified ‘physio’ at Arua hospital, but couldn’t get hold of any reliable information about how to contact him. Just as we were resigning ourselves to another 500 km drive to Kampala to get treatment the Principal of the School of Nursing told us about Michael. Four hours later Michael appeared at our door.

He is the son of a Church Teacher, born and bred in West Nile and the same age as David Beckham but with his Achilles tendon still intact! Originally he wanted to train as a pharmacist, but was advised instead to train as a physiotherapist. He was told that as a physiotherapist he would never have to look for work – work would look for him. The advice, it seems, was spot-on. Now Michael works at Arua Hospital four days a week and is living in Ocoko, a village just a couple of kilometres from Kuluva. He rides a motorbike and has a car – so is doing quite well – and always turns up at the right time looking very professional.

Michael is unfailingly cheerful with a very positive outlook. Nevertheless he said that because of my age(!) it would take longer for me to walk properly than a younger patient! So saying, he went to work on my ankle. Each day since then he has come to apply hot compresses to my foot and ankle. He has massaged and manipulated, pushed and pulled, and entered into various competitions with my ankle.... ...I even understand the exercises now.

Last Sunday Michael told me it would probably take another 3 weeks before I could walk without crutches, but yesterday, Friday, less than a week after I first met him, I confounded the prognosis. For the first time in ten weeks I was able to walk without crutches. Michael is delighted at the progress and I am delighted with him. If we hadn’t met him, Anne and I would have been going to Kampala this weekend.

This week Michael has taken centre stage in our life here and Uganda has done it again. A doctor in Kampala performs an operation on my leg 10 minutes after first seeing me, I am treated royally at Entebbe airport (unlike Heathrow), the car gets repaired within 48 hours of being crashed into by a coach, and now successful physiotherapy at home within 4 hours of learning about it. Beat that!