The World According to Bob

over. I pictured him lying on the sunny roof at Belle’s without a worry in the world while I hobbled off to sell The Big Issue on my own.
    It wasn’t such a leap of the imagination. Back at Belle’s I was spending more and more time on my own, lying in my room asleep. As a result, I had less patience for Bob than usual. He’d sidle up to me on the bed, waiting to play catch with some treats, but I’d fail to respond.  Sometimes he would try to drape himself around my leg, which I found unbearable. By now my leg was a violent, red colour and the pain was relentless.
    ‘Go away and play somewhere else, Bob,’ I’d say, brushing him to one side. He’d reluctantly slide off me and head out of the bedroom door, throwing me a disappointed look as he went. It was hardly a surprise that he was starting to look elsewhere for affection, I told myself afterwards.
    I’m not much of a friend to him at the moment .
    I knew it wasn’t helping anyone, least of all myself, but I didn’t know what to do to dig myself out of the black hole that had been slowly consuming me these past few weeks. One morning, however, I woke up and decided that enough was enough. I simply had to do something about it. I didn’t care what the doctors thought about me and my past: I wanted some answers, I wanted this problem to go away. I got dressed, grabbed my crutch and headed for the local surgery, determined to have a proper examination.

    ‘That’s an interesting crutch you have there, Mr Bowen,’ the doctor said when I turned up in the consulting room.
    ‘Necessity is the mother of invention,’ I said, sticking the weather-beaten pole in the corner and climbing on to the examination table where he began casting an eye over my thigh and leg.
    ‘This doesn’t look too good. You need to keep pressure off that leg for a week or so. Can you take time off work?’ he asked me.
    ‘No, not really. I sell The Big Issue ,’ I told him.
    ‘OK, well you need to see what you can do to keep your foot elevated at all times,’ he said. ‘I also need you to have what’s known as a D-Dimer blood test which looks for clotting in the blood cells. I suspect that’s where your problems lie.’
    ‘OK,’ I said.
    ‘Now, what are we going to do about this crutch of yours? I think we can do better than a tree branch,’ he said.
    ‘No chance of a wheelchair?’ I said, suddenly remembering the one I’d seen in the car park.
    ‘Afraid not. But I could offer you a decent set of crutches while we try to get this swelling and inflammation down.’
    By the end of the morning I was the proud owner of a pair of proper metallic crutches, complete with rubber grips, arm holders and shock absorbers. I was soon clunking my way around with my legs flailing in front of me. I was acutely conscious of the way it must have looked. I felt silly, even sillier than I’d looked with a pole under my arm. I could feel what people were thinking about me. It was depressing.
    The time for feeling sorry for myself was over, however. I didn’t waste any time and went to have the blood test done the following day. It wasn’t that straightforward, of course. Taking a blood sample from a recovering heroin addict is easier said than done.
    The practice nurse at the clinic asked me to roll up my sleeve but when she tried to find a vein she failed miserably.
    ‘Hmmm, let’s try this other arm instead,’ she said. But it was the same again.
    We exchanged a look that spoke volumes. I didn’t need to spell it out.
    ‘Maybe I should do it,’ I said.
    She gave me a sympathetic look and handed me the needle. Once I’d found a vein in my leg, I let her extract the sample. The humiliations of being a recovering addict were endless, but I wasn’t going to let that deter me.
    A couple of days later when I rang the clinic the female doctor confirmed my worst suspicions. She told me that I had developed a deep vein thrombosis, or DVT.
    ‘You have a blood clot which I’d like to have further investigated. So I need you to go to University College Hospital for an ultrasound test,’ she told me.
    In a way it was a relief. I’d always suspected I’d caused myself a problem on those long flights to and from Australia. Looking back on it I could see that I’d suppressed the thought for all sorts of silly reasons, partly because I hadn’t wanted to sound paranoid but partly also because I hadn’t wanted to have my suspicions confirmed. I knew that DVTs could cause all