Kathy Lette on why London cyclists are being scared off the road

When I finally staggered to my feet I felt as though I’d been sodomised by a herd of elephants. By the time I limped home my bruised labia had swollen up to the size of a small African principality. Not Namibia but Numb-labia (it gave new meaning to “read my lips”). But it was my shoulder that hurt the most.

The scan showed a full-thickness tear with retraction of the supraspinatus with marked effusion — which is medical jargon for “some rotten mongrel bastard ran you off the road for no reason and now your life will be on hold for three months”.

The kind, reassuring surgeon explained that the tear would be repaired using keyhole surgery. This meant blocking the nerves in my arm, then inserting a small camera into the shoulder and relaying the images to a television screen.

Teeny, weeny instruments (note technological grasp of medical lingo) would then be introduced into the joint through small incisions, enabling the surgeon to shave the bone, wash out tissue debris and repair the tear with plastic crochet hooks.

That didn’t sound too major. In the hospital I tried to make light of it all. Well, it is called “theatre” after all. When the soothing nurse gave me the hideous paper surgical knickers I wore them on my head and took silly selfies. I got a pal to felt-tip a message to my surgeon on my shoulder, “Fancy meeting you at a joint like this!” and another to the anesthetist — “To the only man who can make me shut up!”

Post-operation, I now know that keyhole surgery is not an easy option. What I’ve also gleaned is that a “minor operation” is an operation made on others and a “serious operation” is any operation made on you.

Once the nerve block wore off, pain cleaved my cranium like an axe. This is not my favourite way to wake up. My favourite way to wake up is for Hugh Jackman to whisper softly into my ear that he longs to lick the roe from virgin sturgeon from my navel ’neath a tropical palm.

I was in agony. I breathed in shallow gasps. I wondered if this was how a fish felt lying on the bottom of a bucket, mouth opening and closing, drowning in air. I wasn’t exactly in a bright tunnel with my dead ancestors waving me towards the light but my pillows were soaked in blood and my throbbing arm was rapidly turning the colour of an aubergine. I was a long, painful week in hospital.

That was more than a month ago. Recovery has been slow and excruciating. I’m supposed to be on a book tour but can’t sign any stock. I’m supposed to make speeches and appear on television but can’t put on any make-up. I’ve tried to do so with my left hand and ended up looking like some Jackson Pollock painting. As for exercise? Well, the only thing I’m running up right now are medical bills.

I’ve just embarked on months of physio, and find myself speaking about mastering a simple arm raise the way mountaineers talk about conquering K2. Is the physio painful? Oh no... No more painful than say, childbirth. Put it this way, I now address my shoulder thus “What’s a nasty joint like you doing in a nice girl like me?”

I’m not sure I’ll ever be brave enough to get back on my bike. But why should one reckless driver be allowed to curb my enthusiasm for cycling?

With late-onset diabetes predicted to cripple the NHS in the near future, we desperately need more people to get back in the saddle. But most of my London friends are too terrified to cycle, which is why their most athletic activity is to get the lid off the jam jar. They get winded licking stamps. They’re only slightly more active than pot plants. Without a doubt, a lack of safe cycling lanes and lorry sensors means fatter, unhealthier people and more polluted air — giving new meaning to “a vicious cycle”.

When I finally get out of this sling, I plan to buy a new bike — something armored. Or perhaps a stealth bicycle with long-range missiles and a couple of drones aboard to fight off Chelsea tractors. At the moment, I will only have the courage to cycle again if I can get Bradley Wiggins to share a tandem bike with me. Better still, Lance Armstrong, so I can ingest some of his performance-enhancing drugs on route to dilute the terror. Or we could just pressurise Boris Johnson to give us cycle paths to protect us from psychopaths.

The novel Kathy Lette can’t tour because of her cycling accident is Courting Trouble, published by Black Swan.