Bending over backwards

Jean Butcher might be 95, but it was only a few months ago that she nearly attempted to do the splits.

“I was just leaning over the sofa and thought to myself, I wonder if I can still do that?” laughed Jean. “I started to stretch out and get into position, then I gave my head a wobble. At 95, I don’t think that would’ve gone so well.”

Jean, from Westerham, had rehabilitation at Tonbridge Cottage Hospital earlier this year, after surgery on her thigh bone, or femur. The stretches the physiotherapists pushed her to practice were nothing to the former dancer, who was proudly showing off black and white photographs of her former life as a performer.

From a young age, Jean performed as a child acrobatic dancer and later as part of a travelling dance troop.

Jean said: “My parents noticed my joints were really mobile and they sent me to a dance group when I was little, near Portsmouth where I grew up, just before the war. My uncle was a performer and dancer, so it was in the family.

“I would get myself into some really unusual positions on stage – legs wrapped around my head, balancing on a stool or chair, anything really. The feeling of watching the audience’s surprised faces was quite something. They’d clap and cheer, I just loved how it made me feel.”

When war broke out in 1939, Jean had to stop dancing while she ‘watched German planes fly from France over the house’ and witnessed a bomb land just behind her back door, creating a huge crater in the ground.

Jean was an acrobatic dancer as a child

She said: “I don’t remember being scared during the war, to be honest. I always loved to dance and I couldn’t wait to get back to it.”

Once the war was over, Jean joined a dance group and started touring all the military bases where soldiers were still stationed but not in action, entertaining the troops.

She said: “We even went out to mobile offshore bases, right in the middle of the sea. After the trauma of war, it was nice to feel we were making people happy.”

Jean worked part-time in an office and continued to take as many dancing opportunities as she could, touring all over the country.

“I appeared in pantomimes from Portsmouth, Devon all the way up to Liverpool,” she says. “There were some well-known faces in the shows, including Frankie Howard.”

Jean stopped dancing when she met her husband, John, who she married aged 21. The couple moved to Kent and had daughter Claire in 1958.

“It wasn’t really considered a proper thing to do back then, to be on stage, so I gave it all up. John was also a ballroom dancer, but he had to stop due to national service. It was different times.”

What may have seemed like a distant memory all came flooding back when the staff on the ward were getting to know Jean through her recovery.

She said: “When Anne, my lovely physio, was talking about her daughter who is at a top ballet school, I felt compelled to tell everyone about my career. Suddenly my story was the hot topic on the ward.”

Physio Ann encouraged Jean to get up and about

Jean stayed for rehabilitation at Tonbridge Cottage Hospital for a few weeks, after she first tore ligaments in her right knee, then fell and needed surgery on her left femur.

The first time she has had a major injury, Jean believes the fitness she built as a child and her activity levels in later life have kept her strong.

“I’ve always walked everywhere, done gardening and like doing everything for myself. I’ve got a beautiful big garden and over the last few years, when standing with a trowel and shovel got too much, I’ve sat down and done it. It takes a long time but it does me good and I enjoy it.”

Jean felt welcomed and ‘at home’ at Tonbridge Cottage Hospital.

She continued: “Everyone on my ward got so much better during their stay here because the staff make you get up and walk around. I had to get myself to the toilet and I wasn't allowed to just lay there in bed all day. They made me go up and down the stairs.

“The staff seem to love their jobs, they are fun and upbeat and it makes it a nice experience.”

With her daughter Claire at Tonbridge Cottage Hospital

For Jean’s daughter, Claire, her mum has always been a source of inspiration.

Claire said: “We lost my dad in 2005, to Parkinson’s, but mum has always had this real resilience and ability to do whatever she sets out to, by herself.

“I love looking back at old pictures of her as a girl, that muscle memory has never left her. She’s kept all those photos of those incredible moments, totally pristine. We even have programmes from her pantomimes.

“She had a rod and screw in her femur in the hospital but was up and about walking the next day, which was incredible.

“The change we saw in mum, as soon as she came to Tonbridge Cottage Hospital, was enormous. There was no loitering in bed, they had her up, moving and going to the loo by herself. I knew she was better when she was back to her old bossy self!”

Rehabilitation starts with you

Our rehabilitation patients are cared for by a team of nurses, healthcare assistants, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and a care manager.

Helping the people we care for starts with finding out what matters to them. For Jean, it was getting back to gardening, for others it might be playing with their grandchildren or attending a weekly club.

At KCHFT, rehabilitation is about supporting people to regain their independence so they can get back home to the things they love.

We encourage all our patients to get up, get dressed and get moving.  Find out more.