Surf Nation

Smart Start to Pro Boxing Career

And now for something completely different. As in, nothing to do with cervical discectomy, fusion, Lyme disease etc etc. I'm stoked to report that our man from Sennen Cove, Newlyn-born southpaw Sam Smart, won his first pro boxing fight at York Hall last Friday night. I think Sam is unique worldwide in being both a pro boxer and sponsored surfer, but whether that's true or not one thing's for sure: he's a hell of a boxer. Here's to an excellent result on his debut. Below is a piece I wrote recently for the local paper, The Cornishman, which appeared just before Sam's fight.

“I want to win. I want to do some damage and knock the other guy out.”

Sam Smart is one man eminently capable of doing exactly what he says. The Newlyn-born man has competed at the top level in Amateur Boxing Association finals and has amassed a succession of wins by KO. But he wants more. He’s hungry for the big time. And so Smart is joining the small but illustrious band of professional boxers from Cornwall. He’ll make his pro debut at London’s York Hall, a place synonymous with British boxing history, on December 18.

Smart boxes at middleweight and has every intention of emulating Cornwall’s most famous boxing sons. They include Bob Fitzsimmons, the first British-born world heavyweight champion who was born in Helston in 1863.  The tall and frail-looking Fitzsimmons notched up a famous victory in 1897 against “Gentleman” Jim Corbett and became the first boxer to hold world titles in three different divisions (middleweight, light-heavyweight and heavyweight). One of his fights was even refereed by the lawman later canonized by successive Western movies, Wyatt Earp.

Closer to Smart’s home in Cornwall’s own wild west – Sennen Cove - Sennen’s Zachy Nicholas might well have become one of Britain’s greatest ever boxers, had it not been for the Second World War. Locals still talk of Nicholas with awe, not least because of his unusual training regime. “Dad used to run up and down Cove hill with bags of coal on his shoulders,” says his son, Ernie. Nicholas, who was born in 1918, amassed a series of impressive victories, many of which were chronicled by a columnist calling himself “Big Straight Left” in the region’s newspaper of the day, the Western Independent.

Despite an easy-going nature, Smart has also put in the hours. He signed recently with Plymouth’s On-The-Cobbles gym, where, under the tutelage of coach Dave Smith, he spars regularly with Scott ‘Dynamite’ Dann, formerly a British middleweight champion who also won Commonwealth gold at middleweight. Dann’s career was cut short at the age of 32 after sustaining a back injury in a car accident, but Smart says he’s still got what it takes. “Sparring with Scott is unbelievably hard,” he says. “He’s still super-fit and an incredible boxer.”

A blisteringly quick southpaw whose shots have KO quality written all over them, Smart can claim a unique double: he is soon to be both a pro boxer, while continuing, as he has been for many years now, to be a pro surfer. He is sponsored by Relentless and C-Skins - as well as the Oxygen Health Club, Penzance – and is well-known as one of Britain’s most dynamic surfers. But now it’s time for boxing.

“I live for boxing,” says Smart. “Each time I walk into an arena, I get a buzz from seeing the lights shining down onto the ring. When I walk into a gym I get high on the sweet scent of sweat and hard work. I love training, I love to push myself, I thrive on the fear.”

Image of York Hall courtesy of London Unlike. I boxed there myself twice but suspect that my boxing days are behind me now.

Yes! You can surf again after cervical discectomy!

I am decidedly down with all the pain. It's just hideous and is accompanied by a new set of nerve problems. The permanently cold sensation I had pre-op in my left knee has returned and the left leg is not behaving itself. I now have tingling in my right thigh. Bizarrely, my nose also tingles (what on earth is that about?), but the main source of aggro are the juddering shock-like sensations in my neck and the perpetual discomfort veering effortlessly to acute pain. However, in my relentless search for good news I've just found the first evidence of someone who had anterior cervical discectomy and returned to surfing. I'm emailing Dr Schiffer for more info, because whoever he is, his patient Mark Price is an inspiration. I hope it's OK to use the image, which has cheered me up no end.

Scarred Santa

Like Jedward, I'm with Rage Against The Machine. That nice Joe person is just too boring and nice. Yes, a heavenly apparition called Cheryl loves him but is that enough? While I'm at it, I also like Billy Bob Thornton as Bad Santa and that Baby Bird song in which Mr Bird rages against Father Xmas. 

Could these declarations have anything to do with the post-discectomy blues? If, for example, I hadn't had a disc whipped out and replaced by a metal cage, would I be commending the Joe person and raging against Rage Against The Machine? Maybe I'd be doing neither, because, quite conceivably, I'd have been surfing loads as usual and would only vaguely apprehend that such a highly charged controversy was sweeping the nation, still less would I feel moved to write about it.

Then again, I have no idea what the surf is doing. Is there a wave out there? Somewhere? 

Note the nice scar. I'm told it'll fade in time. I must add that I'm grateful as ever for the emails and comments. In particular, thanks to Lucy. I'm glad you're a nurse and thanks for explaining what the propofol low is. However, given as you say that my liver is working overtime to sort everything out, am I allowed a drink? As in, not a cup of tea? Not that I feel like one, especially. I'm just curious (honest).

This pain is in a house in a football team

Lousy night last night as the pain got the upper hand. Very little sleep and in the midst of the agony I remembered that QPR had got a 1-1 draw at home to Sheffield United under the club's 27th manager in three weeks, Paul Hart. For a second, I thought about supporting another club, one that favoured the continuity to be acheived by having just the one manager for, say, a 12-week period, but then I remembered that vaudeville goes with the territory at Loftus Road and thanked my lucky stars that even though I had a battle against myelopathy and Lyme disease on my hands at least I supported a club whose capacity for entertainment never ceased to raise a smile bordering on outright hilarity.

As for the pain, imagine that you are a house. You stand there, nicely built and shiny, impervious to the elements. All seems well. But deep within, there is a problem. It starts in the pile holes which form your foundations. Someone or something - a Chelsea supporter, perhaps, or the Birmingham City fan who once head-butted me in the the Duke's Head, my crime being to vouchsafe my allegiance to QPR - has decided to undermine your foundations. He's doing a good job, too, first chipping silently away with a chisel, then using a sledgehammer and now he's got a bloody great pneumatic drill. The over-used cliche 'rocked to the very foundations' at last has meaning, for now you understand what it is like to feel that your very core is being attacked and undermined.

In other words, the neurological mayhem and general post-op pain springs from so deep a well that you start inventing metaphors about houses and thinking of abandoning your beloved football team. But then, having taken some more excellent drugs, you remember that lo, Paul Hart is in charge! He will rebuild the corroded pile holes! He will vanquish the errant Chelsea fan who has invaded your being! He will be Jim Magilton in the face of the rogue Birmingham fan who to this day is banned from the Duke's Head! Like QPR, you will rise again!

Bloody hell these drugs are good.

Pictured courtesy of Home Plans: a diagram illustrating the point at which Paul Hart needs to start work.

Post-Op Pain and a Bit of Research

Just about every bit of me hurts. There's so much pain that it's impossible to determine what's going on neurologically, though I remain optimistic that I'm fixed. But why all the pain? Well, this footage provides a clue. Watching it inspires yet more respect for the art of surgery - just how skilled are these guys? - and brings home how daft it is to expect your body not to be in pain after being opened up and fiddled around with like this.

I found the video while searching google for info on post-cervical discectomy exercise. Essentially, I discovered the following:

1. I can't do anything for the next two to four weeks. Walking perhaps a mile should be the limit of my ambition. I can't drive, can't do the housework ("Do you ever?" says Karen), can't lift anything heavier than a pint of milk and mustn't move my head backwards and forwards. I should expect a lot of post-op pain.

2. There is a learned essay out there about rugby union players returning to the game after cervical discectomy. Now that seems mad to me, but if they can do it, I can surf again. One day.

Not Just A Shaving Cut (Honest)

Here is a post-op picture of me. Nice!

What happens with an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion is that one's neck is cut open at the front, hence the patch and beginning of some nice swelling in these images. The surgical team push your voicebox and windpipe to one side so that they can work on your spine. For this reason, post-op some people have difficulty swallowing and speaking. I had both initially, with a hoarse voice that both the nurses and Karen liked, but it's mostly gone now and swallowing is fine.

But, in answer to the question of someone who served me in a shop on the way home yesterday, no, I did not cut myself shaving.

(Shaving has played a minor role in my woes to date, with a female locum doctor diagnosing my Lyme rash as a shaving rash a few weeks ago. Now as a person who's been shaving for 30 years, I seriously doubted that she was right, but tried a bit of hydrocortisone cream anyway. It didn't work, and on one of my trips to the bathroom after the op I found myself brushing my teeth with it. Yes, befuddled with morphine as I was, I mistook the tube for toothpaste. But as I look at this lovely photograph, I notice that, beneath the stubble, the Lyme rash is barely evident. A glance in the mirror confirms that it's hardly there anymore. Has the op somehow cured me of Lyme disease? Or maybe I should have brushed my teeth with hydrocortisone cream all along? Whatever. Here's hoping that the rash isn't simply in abeyance because of the shedloads of drugs in my system.)

 

Notes from an Operation

My word, I'm tired. I slept for about 12 hours after getting home yesterday and am fairly sure that I'm going to spend a lot of today sleeping. A lot of wise counsel has come my way to the effect that there is nothing to be gained by being up and about and doing things, so despite the fact that it goes totally against the grain today I am going to do very little indeed. Here, though, are some notes on the last couple of days, which I may add to as the mood and mental wherewithal takes me.

1. In the operating theatre, which I entered at around 10.30 a.m, the bloke in charge of proceedings was called Mike. He was a surfer and remarkably enough had heard of me. Rather cunningly, he distracted me with chit-chat about waves so successfully that I didn't even realise his colleagues had pumped me full of drugs. When they duly flooded my brain, my instinctive reaction was to fight them. Quite why I don't know, but I recall Mike saying, as I tried to sit up a couple of times, that it was best just to let them do their work.

2. Very quickly indeed, the drugs had done their work. I'd promised myself I'd visualise a perfect wave before going under and had lined up any number of exotic overseas boardshorts-only right-handers. I said to Mike: "I'm dreaming of a perfect right-hand point break" but instead of sun-drenched foreign idylls murky old Salt Ponds popped into my mind. Of all the places to surf with a metal cage in one's neck, SP is probably the last place I'd choose. Maybe I am indissoluably wedded to British surf.

3. The last words I remember saying are: "I am definitely going to surf again after this."

4. About 90 minutes later I was being woken up by a nurse. I could move. Bliss! Cervical discectomy and fusion carries a risk of paralysis, one that is very small but which I'd been terrified about pre-op. I was drugged to the max and in terrible pain but ecstatic that nothing had gone wrong. Better yet, I could discern tangible strength in my limbs, and the cold and damp patch on my left knee - ever-present these past two months and a consequence of the myelopathy - had gone.

5. One exercise the nurse got me to do was pushing the soles of my feet against her hands. This, too, I could do. Naturally it involves arching one's waist upwards, prompting a ribald comment or two from the nurse. These were most welcome. Thank God for ribald nurses, that's what I say.

6. The surgeon arrived. By now I was sitting up and wholly amazed at the movement of which I was capable. He's known to his colleagues as "Mr P" and his full name is Lou Pobereskin. He presides over one of the best neurosurgery units in the country. He asked how I was, I told him, and my exact words were: "The only conclusion I can reach is that you are a genius."

7. By now, the rider to complex invasive surgery such as cervical discectomy arrived - pain. Being the macho fool that I am I thought I'd deal with this via mind power alone, then I accepted that a bit of oral morphine might be nice, and then I committed 100% to the morphine drip.

8. The next few hours are a blur. I was put in the high dependency unit, which I understand is one below ICU, and checked constantly by nurses and doctors. Loads of the nurses had husbands who surfed. The pain was bad, both in my neck and head. The morphine drip is a brilliant device, though - you give yourself regular doses but the machine is set up to cut off if you're having too much. You can't overdose on it.

9. By around 7.00pm I was lucid. My Mum and Dad visited at about 7.30. As a parent myself, I don't envy them lately. They've not only had to deal with me and myelopathy/Lyme disease but also my sister Suki, who was recently rushed into hospital with gall bladder problems. My sister's relationship with her bloke could be better, too, and the night before my op my nephew, baby Isaac, was rushed into hospital. He turned out to be fine and my sister is currently awaiting an op to remove gall bladder stones. Mum and Dad are also at the tailend of trying to sell their house and are nervously waiting to exchange contracts, the last buyers having pulled out at the last minute. It's fair to say that their stress levels have been on the high side lately but it was great to see them on Wednesday night.

10. By 9.00pm I was up and about. This was regarded as ambitious by the nurses but I knew I could do it. I staggered back and forth to the loo rather than use a bedpan. I've nothing against bedpans - I just wanted to see how my left leg was faring. I couldn't really tell - I was too dizzy.

11. The Derriford neurosurgery unit is brilliant but night-time on the ward is not great. Why would it be? You're there with six or seven other people and none of you are well. People are moaning in varying degrees of pain. One poor old bloke was seriously ill and could barely breath. Machines make noise all night long and nurses are constantly in and out attending to patients. Post-anaethestic, you doze rather than sleep, and with all the noise I slept not a wink. I got up at 2.00 a.m and asked if I could sit in the waiting room. I took my diary in with me and made a few notes. A kindly nurse called Jane made me tea and toast and we had a good chat. I stayed in there til about 3.30 and then went back to the ward.

12. Next morning, you already know about. The most significant thing about it was walking down a flight of stairs and finding that my left leg was no longer spastic. The physios and I were astonished by this and so was a maintenance man who was fixing a door. He stopped what he was doing and watched proceedings. I was vaguely aware of him as I demonstrated what the leg had been doing previously to the physios by wobbling my right foot as if it were out of control on each step. The I asked if I could do the stairs again. I walked up them briskly and came down with no spasticity again. I was beaming, so were the physios, and so was the maintenance man. I clenched my fist and punched the air, looked at him and said: "Result!" He looked as happy as I was and I'll remember his smile for a long time.

And so to this morning. The leg is working again! Now I know that it might not work later - that there are going to ups and downs in the rehab - but so far today, it's fine.

STOKED!

A More Appropriately Bionic Post...

Sorry folks, that little report was a bit negative. It would have been a miracle if I'd walked out of hospital after major spinal surgery completely cured within 24 hours. I know that and know that this is just the beginning of getting better. (But damn it, the leg did work so nicely...). So enough negativity: I am bionic and stoked, not least, once again, by the tremendous support shown by so many people. Thanks so much for the emails, text messages and comments. They're all massively appreciated, especially when things don't seem quite so rosy as they could be.

Pictured below: in the absence of the possibility of an aerial attack, the talk turns to 006. Who is he and is it true that he failed to make the grade as 007? The wife and best friend of the wife of one person in this image know the answer, but they also know the reprisals of which a titanium-fuelled 006 is capable and so say simply: "Alex, go to bed and get better".

("I thought you said the morphine had left your system?" Ed.)

Bionic and (Mostly) Stoked

Yes, it's true. I am now bionic. I went under the knife yesterday at around 11.00 a.m. with a full set of spinal discs; a couple of hours later one of them, along with sundry nasty bony growths, had been whipped out and replaced by a titanium cage. Various theories abound as to why:

1. I am engaged in a covert attempt to become taller than 5"9' (The Twisted Pilot - "I've seen this kind of thing a thousand times").

2. I am plotting a smuggling racket which entails being able to beep at airport metal detectors (Mr J'Asbo).

3. "Titanium has other uses in other departments, 006 - are you sure you've not acquired some for elsewhere on your person?" (a friend who wishes to remain annoymous but who knows the last three digits of my phone number).

4. I willingly, if with total terror, submitted to a surgical procedure whose aim was to cure me of electric shocks to my spine and make my dodgy left leg work again.

There is merit in all four theories, but the last one is perhaps the strongest. I was totally stoked to emerge from the op yesterday with everything working and even more amazed this morning when, aided by two physiotherapists, I walked up and down a flight of stairs with the left leg behaving in a completely normal fashion. "The surgeon is a genius!" I announced. I took the opportunity to tell him so myself. Having signed a consent form agreeing to all manner of disasters - from paralysis to incontinence to death - potentially occurring, it felt nothing short of miraculous to find that everything was working and that my left leg had been cured.

Unfortunately, as the day has progressed the left leg has started to misbehave. The pain is acute and I'm totally out of it from the anaesthetic, morphine drip and various other painkillers. I'm home, which is great, but I'm a bit down because clearly there is a lot of work to be done yet before I'm better.

This is fair enough. I was warned that I'd continue to suffer neurological symptoms for a few months and what must have happened is that inflammation has set in around the site of the op, constricting afresh the flow of messages through the nerves down my left side. The fact that the left leg did work perfectly for a while has got to be a good thing - it's the first time it's done so since all the rot set in a couple of months ago.

So, I am: bionic, up and about, and mostly stoked. I'm also steeling myself for the hard work ahead and inevitable days of frustration when it seems as if things haven't quite worked out, the ultimate goal being... to paddle out again and enjoy a clean blue face or two.

Aloha from The Bionic Surfer. 

Image courtesy of Paxton Holley.

Off for the Op with Huge Thanks to All

Right then, off I go for my cervical discectomy and fusion. Well, tomorrow morning anyway. Right before the op, I will be visualising waves and planning on surfing them again one of these days. I'm pleased that the op is upon me - these last few weeks of will it/won't happen have been rubbish. The Lyme rash is still there but c'est la vie. The pain in my neck and back has been severe these past couple of days, and the wonkiness of my left leg has returned - I guess because the steroids have worn off - so I'm glad that something is going to happen to sort it all out.

It only remains to reiterate how stoked I've been by the huge amount of support that's come my way. People I haven't seen for ages and people I've never even met, as well friends and family, have got in touch to wish me well. Thanks to everyone. As the excellent Mr Schwarzenegger says, I'll be back.

Meanwhile, here's that son of mine looking smooth in Portugal, with thanks to Ben Jones.