There are not many people in our community who could claim to have the same heart and spirit as Elaine Woodburn, our councillor and Copeland’s leader, who, we are delighted to report, has gone back to work full time following her recent operation.
One of my final tasks as a reporter with The Whitehaven News was to interview Elaine as she prepared to go into hospital to have her leg amputated. It was a great pleasure for me to interview her again recently, and the progress she has made since her life changing operation is remarkable.
What struck me when I interviewed her back in November was that she had a steely resolve and was desperate to get back as soon as she could. Her only instruction to me was not to make a fuss. She didn’t want to look like a victim and wasn’t interested in sympathy.
Elaine suffered from a chronic infection of the bone and bone marrow, but had bravely battled on for 20 years. Her numerous achievements as an Egremont councillor and in more recent years as Copeland’s leader have been even more remarkable when you consider the daily struggle she endured just to make it out of bed and into the office each day.
"It was hard," Elaine said this week. "I had got to the point where the pain was becoming unbearable and I decided that it was time to have the operation – it had become something that I had to do. I had been disabled for 20 years, and people might think I’ve done well to hide that, but I haven’t hidden it, I’ve just tried to get on. I think you can sit at home and mope, or you can grit your teeth and have a go, I’ve always tried to do the latter, and it’s the same now coming back."
She had the operation in November, and has since surpassed even the most optimistic estimates as to her recovery time.
"There probably is a danger of me doing too much, too soon, but I really enjoy being a councillor, and being the council leader. There have been some really low times since the operation. I’m not always a very patient patient and at times I have been in lots of pain, but at no point have I regretted having the op, and in time I will be pain free and in a much better position than I have been in for years.
"I have a prosthetic leg now, and one of the hardest things I am now facing is learning to walk again, which is obviously going to take a while to master. "I have been told that in time, once I have learned to walk with the new leg, I’ll be able to walk around without it being obvious that I even have a prosthetic limb.
"The weekly physio sessions are hard, but I think I’m getting there. I think the biggest thing for me is making allowances for it from a time perspective. At the moment I am slower then I was so I have to sacrifice that extra ten minutes in bed after the alarm has gone."
Elaine has now returned to her duties five – or often six or seven – days a week, I was keen to find out if anything had changed much while she had been away.
"Not really," she said. "I have been able to keep up to date with what has been happening because I had a really supportive team on the executive, the support I had from the council staff and councillors from both parties really was fantastic.
"I have been able to take a step back from council business during my time away. I’ve been able to have a look at things and come back refreshed.
"I have had time on my hands for the first time in years, and I’ve used that time well. It has been great, for example, to actually read The Whitehaven News from cover to cover and see how the council is being perceived and how we can, perhaps, conduct ourselves differently.
"I have come back fresh, but most of my views and my priorities haven’t changed a great deal and in many ways I don’t actually feel like I’ve been away at all!"
And Elaine’s only instruction to me when I ask her if there is anything she wants to add to the interview: "Don’t make me sound like a victim, I’m not a victim. There are so many people in the world who are in a far worse situation then I am, and as a councillor I am often in a position where I am able to see that, and understand it."
Insert photo by Alan Alexander
Elaine, back at the helm with colleagues on the Copeland Executive,