The Bionic Women
One of the unusual stories that I was able to share at school was that my famous mother had, has had, for most of my life, a man-made elbow. This didn’t have an impact on her writing career (other than slowing down her ability to type for a while) but it is perhaps one of the lesser-known facts about her life.
Those who are close to Evelyn will know that she started to develop osteo-arthritis some ten years or so after I was born. This condition is not treatable, although it may be managed to some extent. Evelyn has always done her best to manage it through diet and medication, and she has had more than her fair share of pain and discomfort as the condition has continued to progress over the years.
Early on however, she was suffering with pain in her right elbow, to the point that she was very limited in her ability to use her right arm at all.
One day after a hospital visit, I was in the car with my father to pick her up, and she got into the car overjoyed that the doctor had deemed it worthwhile to replace her elbow.
How odd, it seemed at the time, that she would be so elated, however it meant progress as she had a chance at having a ‘useful elbow’ that would be pain-free, even if it wasn’t her own natural elbow!
And so the time came, when she eagerly went through the surgery and the associated exercises and physiotherapy associated with such a procedure. My mother was now a bionic woman, just at the same time as Lindsay Wagner was all over the British television screens in the American programme, ‘The Bionic Woman’, a spin-off from ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’.
That elbow was designed with a useful life of about ten years, and Evelyn’s elbow was one of the first of its kind in the UK. There were a few similar elbow replacements of this kind at this time in Scotland. We did hear only a few years ago that Evelyn’s elbow is the only one of this type that has not been replaced, and it is now well over 40 years old! We are wondering if this is one for the record books?
Simon & Evelyn Hood