EXCLUSIVE: Comedian and author Dawn French has been speaking about her biggest fear health fears as she promoted her new novel
VIicar Of Dibley star Dawn French has admitted that her biggest fear about getting old is losing her mobility. The actress and writer has suffered with arthritis for the past 12 years. And she had to undergo knee surgery as she was in such pain. Now she is 68 years old, she claims losing her independence and becoming ‘immobile’ is a huge concern for her.
She said: “I think immobility is what worries me the most. I have got arthritis and I have had arthritis in my left knee really badly and then eventually got half a knee.. well, I’ve got half a new knee. And funny enough when I first started getting arthritis, which was about 12 years ago, I went to see the surgeon and he explained to me that I’d need a full knee or replacement.
“But he gave me some injections. He told me to wait a little while. But now I realise I should have done it ages ago. Do you know, I thought that whatever they put in my knee was gonna wear out and that I would outlive it.
“But I’ve got cobalt in there and titanium, it’s gonna outlive me anyway. By the time I went back to the surgeon all the medical technology had advanced so far that I only needed half a knee. So I said ‘By this trajectory, shall I wait another few years and I won’t need anything?’ And he said ‘It doesn’t work that way’.”
She confided in fans at In Conversation with Dawn French in Bath this week, that she feared more operations will be needed in the future. The star added: “So I have half a knee there and I am pretty sure that one is going to need doing at some point. I just want to be able to be mobile.”
Dawn was promoting her new book Enough which is Dawn’s fifth novel and she is proving something of a success as a writer. However the French and Saunders star admits her process as an author is ‘very Luddite’ as she does not use a computer.
Instead she writes everything by hand on note paper and she confesses that she is far from environmentally friendly as so many trees suffer as a result. She said: “I write by hand using a HB2 pencil with a rubber on top on lined paper. I have been given novelty pencils with names of castles on them but they are not as good.
“I write in longhand. I scan it.. well somebody else in my house does it.. I am Luddite. But I am not entirely savage because I do have an electric pencil sharpener. It gets sent to Sue and she types it up and then she sends it back to me. There is quite a lot of wasted paper. That’s a lot of trees. I am so sorry.”
Dawn says she would love to publish a novel in her own handwriting one day. She added: “When I have finished, it looks like my book because it is in my handwriting but when it is typed up it looks like ‘a book’. I’d really love to persuade the publisher to let me do a book in hand writing.”
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