FRENCH NOTES:A bone the size of a wren's egg has led me to the operating table I had previously dodged, writes MATT WILLIAMS

HOW IS your “Os Trigonum” going? Not sure? Let me give you some advice, do not take your Os Trigonum for granted.

For the best part of 50 years I have lived in blissful ignorance of my Os Trigonum. Today it is dominating my life.

Your Os Trgonum is a small accessory bone that sits in the base of your heel and, so I am told, it is about the size and shape of a small bird’s egg.

It has become very important to me in recent days, because last week I broke the bugger and it is giving me no end of grief.

Now I have led an active life. I have to admit to playing lots of rugby, cricket, basketball and I’ve been fond of surfing. I use to run a slow 800 metres. I boxed a bit or, as my Dad used to say: “you got boxed”!

As a small boy my grandmother told me I jumped out of her window with a tea towel tied to my neck pretending to be Superman. However there must have been kryptonite about as I hit the ground pretty hard.

I have fallen out of trees, jumped off cliffs into the sea, fallen from bikes. I have even been in a few car accidents.

I still play a bit of touch rugby, go to the gym, swim and cycle. Yet through all these rough and, at times, violent actions, my Os Trigonum has stood the test of time. Silently performing its small, yet vital role in keeping my body upright.

I am frustrated and disappointed that my Os Trigonum has chosen this moment in time to act like a selfish “big girl’s blouse” and fracture.

Last week I was attending the physical power testing of some promising young rugby players. The power test being measured was how far they could chest pass a five-kilo medicine ball. There were about 20 boys and the sports scientist present was both recording and measuring the throws.

I stupidly offered to help record the scores to speed up the process.

A 15-year-old scrumhalf came to throw the ball. He was only a little bloke. He could not throw the ball a great distance or with great power. The throw was performed and the five-kilo ball rolled slowly and gently towards me. I saw the ball rolling my way and put my foot out to stop it.

Big mistake.

I mistimed the contact and even though the ball was travelling so slowly it wouldn’t knock a rooster off a paling fence in a gale, my foot snapped back and a shooting pain ripped through my ankle.

It was so innocuous I could not believe I had done serious damage. The next morning I woke with an agonising pain in my ankle. It was swollen like a melon. The ankle gave way when I attempted to stand.

Now I have broken a number of bones over the years. Nose (a few times), toes, foot, hands, fingers, cracked my jaw and I have done most of the ligaments in my shoulders, ankles, wrists, fingers and knees. Yet I have dodged the operating table.

Its not that I dislike doctors, it’s that I have never really embraced the idea of someone, with a very sharp knife pumping me full of drugs and cutting me open.

That was when I was young. For this injury I needed a set of crutches to hobble into the doctor’s waiting room.

All the magazines were about Jennifer “bloody” Aniston, and the plasma TV was playing the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

I felt like the world was conspiring against me. The TV was playing the beginning of the show where Ellen does that annoying dance up and down the studio steps and the Yankee audience jump about and make noises like a flock of geese. They do my head in.

I loathed the environment. I know it was immature, but I decided to do a runner. I levered myself up and started hopping for the door. I accidentally trod on the toe of the lady sitting next to me and I then smacked the handle of my crutch into the back of the head of the man sitting in front.

“Sorry. Sorry. Learner on crutches,” I joked as I frantically made for the door. It felt very claustrophobic in the place. I needed to get out.

I was close to another escape from the knife. The door was mere metres away, when the doctor called out my name. I stopped and slowly turned to face my nemesis.

The system has forced me to accept my Os Trigonum requires surgery. After all these years and so many close calls, a bone the size of a wren’s egg is going to prove my undoing.

The immediate future contains X-rays, MRIs, orthopaedic surgeons, physiotherapists, insurance companies and the one thing I hate more than anything else on the planet – forced inactivity.

Maybe I’ll get a second opinion on my “blouse” of a Os Trigonum.