Pre op part 2

...Sport! I used to be really into sport. I was branded a tomboy from an early age; labels tut 🙄. For as long as I can remember, it was my therapy. It was my legal high and my escape from childhood traumas. I guess we all have our safety nets, our 'go to release' when things get shitty. Counselling, alcohol, food, drugs,supportive friends and family. Me? I had sport.
I was the only girl in junior school who was allowed to play football during P.E. Back in those golden  olden days, girls and boys were split up for P.E. While the rest of the girls played netball, I was hacking the fudge out of the lads. Who'd have guessed that all those P.E. lessons would have had me scoring with the male of the species. Quite the contrast against my score sheet as an adult 🙊
As soon as I was old enough to go out on my own, I spent all of my free time over the park playing football, tennis, running and playing basketball. I was also pretty nifty on a pair of roller skates, often recreating scenes from Xanadu on a Sunday afternoon at our local sports centre.
By the time I began my high school education, I was representing Suffolk in badminton and cross country running and played netball for Christchurch ladies. When I was 12 years old I recieved my Five Star and pentathlon in athletics along with a letter of achievement from Joslyn Hoyte-Smith. I can honestly say that sport was my life and I continued to participate in anything remotely sporty throughout my academic life, including 6th form, even managing to squeeze in 3 years of nurse training. While I studied to become a psychiatric nurse, I was playing football for Ipswich Town ladies and learning how to kick arse as I karate chopped my way through the belts in English Korean Karate. I became the east of England and national champion. I was like Hong Kong fucking Fuey, floating like a brick and stinging like a, like a, erm....😬 Yeah, sorry, I digress.🙈
I was in training to take on the British kickboxing champion in an event that was to be televised on Sky sports, when I discovered that following a nasty bout of 'got really pissed and fell over', I had fractured my scaphoid bone. Five operations!! Alcohol is demon spawn.
I've bored you all senseless with my love of sports, haven't even gone into surfing and water skiing, for the sole purpose of trying to give you an insight into what I was all about. To me, I was sport and I was nurse. Both took dedication on my part, hard work, sweat and plenty of tears. No one expected me to make it as a nurse. I'd messed about at school, finding it far more entertaining to be class clown  than learning about X and Y = C-7 3/4....sport was my escape, my coping mechanism from childhood  traumas and nursing was my focus. I wanted to make a difference. I knew how my demons had made me feel and I wanted to help exorcise those demons for others, help them to live and not merely exist.
I came to know far worse demons than I'd been used to when I was referred to Ipswich hospital for a swollen knee. That, my lovely people, is a story for another day. ✌🏻️