It was back in hospital last week for another life-threatening operation, this one at least below the waist, only scar tissue now remaining above.
Not so much a brush with death as three council road-sweepers thundering down the street swishing full throttle at a bus ticket discarded in a gutter.
But while my life in medical terms may certainly be no more than a discarded bus ticket in a gutter, I still have my love of sport. Lydia Ko! I will say no more. No, I must say more. Lydia Ko! Beyond perfection.
However, Lydia's name never came up in Room 21 Ward 7C. It was rugby every day. As it should have been.
That Waikato game will never be forgotten.
Music legend Shayne Carter has a tradition of texting me in the dying stages of Otago Ranfurly Shield challenges where we always snatch bumbling defeat from certain success.
Told you so, he texts. But my phone was strangely silent during the Waikato game. Turns out Shayne fell asleep at half-time.
This is a dreadful thing to happen to a man once described in Melody Maker magazine as the sexiest man in world rock, so damning an anecdote I promised him on my dog's grave that I would not tell a single soul.
But I did send him a YouTube clip of Jethro Tull's desperately resigned anthem Too Old To Rock'n'Roll Too Young To Die.
I was surrounded by fine rural rugby folk in Room 21.
Is Mosgiel rural?
Central Otago definitely is.
Tarras! Lydia Ko!!
Where was I?
Oh yes. Central Otago rugby.
Tales of the Ranfurly front row, Pescini, Kreft and McAtamney. Was it Ranfurly?
The names of those tiny towns swirled around the room like errant starlings trapped in a windowless cell.
The language cannot be repeated here, suffice to say Pescini, it seems, was quite a rough and tough man.
My tale-teller spoke of a hate game where the first thing Pescini did when he took the field was break the opposing hooker's jaw. And Kreft! What a magnificent player!
An All Black who gave it away at 25!! Lydia KO!!!
No matter in what order you say the names Kreft, McAtamney and Pescini, they sound frightening. We are talking of a front row like no other ever assembled. We are talking names you find only in The Sopranos or Breaking Bad.
Everyone had numerous Ranfurly Shield stories in Room 21.
I had one, and didn't tell it. But I will leak it slyly here, taking care not to mention the name Marshall Seifert, for he does not deserve to be publicly humiliated.
Marshall likes a sporting bet, but in 1994, sports betting had to be done with Centrebet in Australia.
Marshall, whose intellectual strength was softball, a game invented for people who liked baseball but wanted the ball to be bigger and delivered more slowly, struggled with the art of transtasman betting, so I did all the work.
Soon, inevitably, he suggested we bet together, joining his wild illogical knee-jerks with my wise sporting knowledge accrued from many years of rational analysis.
In this way, we gradually amassed a kitty of $600, at which point Marshall suggested we put it all on Otago to win the Ranfurly Shield challenge against Canterbury.
The game was in Christchurch, where the home crowd stab visiting players with forks as they run out on to the field, so the odds were tasty.
''It's their money,'' said Marshall, a unique rationale for public agency betting I have never understood to this day.
The crushing pain I am still suffering, not so much from the operation as from the tape which is attached to my wound, making every step akin to childbirth, is nothing compared to how I felt when Mehrtens, born in South Africa, who would later cost us two World Cups, narrowly snaked the simple penalty kick inside the right-hand upright.
Nearly two grand was whipped from our wallets just as we were about to put it in.
But you know, that's rugby. I suppose.
Lydia Ko!!!
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
