I danced my way through the pain – but now I MUST replace my ruined knee
RUGBYLEGEND AUSTIN H EALEY
RUGBY star Austin Healey is renowned for his fighting spirit. Capped 51 times for England in a career marred by agonising injury, he then cha-cha-chad his way through the pain to reach the quarter-finals of Strictly Come Dancing in 2008.
Now, a decade on from retiring from rugby and seven years from his moment in the Strictly spotlight, Austin has admitted the inevitable: he needs a knee replacement.
Crippling pain from rugby injuries and arthritis has dogged him for years, and at times he has had to rely on a cocktail of painkillers to get through the day.
And he is not alone. Provisional results of a study involving 150 ex-England rugby internationals by Professor Nigel Arden at Oxford University, and funded by Arthritis Research UK, show 12.2 per cent have had a knee replacement. This compares to an expected lifetime risk in the general population of 8.1 per cent.
The numbers show that, of course, elite sportsmen are not the only victims, and there’s a huge cost to the NHS. Approximately 70,000 knee-replacement operations are carried out on the NHS each year at a cost of £6,500 per joint. Knee arthritis accounts for one million GP appointments a year, with three in five of those aged 35 to 60 experiencing knee problems of some kind.
Austin, 42, isn’t yet ready to tackle such a big decision. He’s delaying the operation, saying he has always seen joint surgery as ‘the last resort’. ‘It’s a matter of pride, and the fact that I’m competitive by nature,’ he explains. ‘I don’t want to be beaten by something if at all possible.’
Former Leicester Tiger Austin’s difficulties began in 2003, when he snapped his left knee during a match, tearing the cartilage off the bone. At the time, his body was insured for £1 million, but Austin made the decision to delay a knee replacement because surgery would have put him out of the running for selection for the Rugby World Cup later that year.
Instead, he opted for an arthroscopy, a keyhole procedure in which the surgeon repairs or removes any damaged tissue and cartilage.
A thin metal tube that contains a camera and small surgical instruments are used, meaning recovery time is a matter of days.
DESPITE continuing pain, Austin fought his way back into the England team, only to miss the final cut for what turned out to be a World Cup-winning squad. ‘It felt like my lowest point ever,’ reveals Austin, who has four daughters, Ellie Mae, 14, Daisy, 12, and eight-year-old twins Bibi-Dee and Betsy, with wife Louise.
Coping with injury has been hard off the field too. ‘One thing I regret most as a father is not being able to get down to my daughters’ level because I couldn’t bend my knee,’ he admits.
After he retired from full-time sports at 32, his problems worsened. ‘At that point, the muscle mass fell away. I’d picked up a shoulder injury and I couldn’t swim. I couldn’t raise my arm above my shoulder. I couldn’t lift my girls up in the air.’
In addition to traumatic damage to the joint which caused loss of cartilage, now arthritis has set in.
Austin was taking a selection of painkillers such as ibuprofen and diclofenac to ease the pain. He also found comfort in red wine.
In pain and fed up, he piled on two stone, which only made the joint pain worse.
The turning point came in 2008, when Strictly called. Partnered with professional dancer Erin Boag, Austin threw himself into rehearsals.
But to begin with, his body couldn’t keep up with his enthusiasm. ‘Every- thing ached,’ he says. ‘My shoulder meant it was almost impossible to lift Erin. For the first three weeks, we thought we’d have to pull out. Initially, we rehearsed for about four hours every day.
‘But as my body became more flexible and I started to lose weight, it stepped up a gear to the point when we were rehearsing routines for up to ten hours a day.’
The constant practising meant Austin turned to junk food for meal breaks, but he and Erin waltzed their way to fourth place overall.
‘All that dancing meant I burnt
off the extra calories,’ he says. ‘By the end, I was in the best shape I’d been for years and really supple.’
Although he was back in shape, the pain in his left knee began to deteriorate over the following years. He says: ‘I started taking glucosamine, a nutritional supplement said to aid cartilage healing, but I found it just bloated me without providing any pain relief.’
A friend recommended Gopo Joint Health, a natural supplement made from cultivated rose hip, one of the new natural supplements supported by scientific evidence.
‘It took a couple of weeks, but gradually I noticed a real difference,’ says Austin. ‘It made my joints feel lighter and I was able to come off the painkillers.’
Austin also had knee surgery early last year to improve flexibility. ‘The surgeon removed a piece of bone from the back of my knee,’ he explains. ‘The idea was to free up that area and make it more comfortable, more flexible. It’s taken a lot of the pressure off.’
So why doesn’t he yet accept that the only option now is a replacement? He says: ‘I don’t fancy being out of action for three or four months or more. My new passion is cycling. I’d find it hard to give that up for any prolonged period.’
Dr Rod Hughes, consultant rheumatologist at St Peter’s Hospital in Surrey, says Austin’s determination to avoid surgery will have had have some positive effects. ‘The best way to deal with this kind of damage is to get the muscles around the joints as strong as possible. You might think that the more you use a worn joint, the more you wear it out. But the opposite is true. The more you use it, the more you strengthen all the tissues around it.’ Austin is determined to keep just as fit as he can. ‘If you don’t set yourself goals, especially when you get to my age, what are you going to do?’ he says. ‘I don’t want to go to the pub and drink every day. I choose to set myself physical and mental challenges – and trying to avoid the knee replacement for as long as possible is my biggest.’