The Good, the Bad, and the bingo wing

Three weeks ago - on Tuesday - I had the surgery. My, doesn't time fly!! And it  has been a pretty rough time. In fact, I kept asking myself why I was so nuts as to have such a painful operation so soon after the mastectomy. I just wanted the whole thing to be over, so I don't have to look forward to any surgery in the near future. I am done with surgery!!

The good thing is that the pain level has decreased. I still have pain, but it isn't so excruciating that I sit and cry about it. It's bearable now-and when I do too much walking, or moving around, and the knee swells up, I just rest it and know that it will be fine-eventually.

With the good inevitably seems to come the bad: on Tuesday I saw my neurologist, Dr. Turner (aka Dr. Dimples). He was very late-but all NHS doctors seem to always be late!! We spoke about the knee thing (I am on crutches. We couldn't exactly avoid talking about it!), and the cancer, and he said that it has been a very bad-and stressful- year. No, really? He also said that I probably have made as much progress as I am going to make, given that it has been three years since the initial gentamicin poisoning. I asked him about the setbacks of the past few months-and he advised me to go back to the very first exercises, since my nystagmus has returned and my eyes are moving around of their own accord. He said to just keep doing as much as I can to try to return to where I was before disaster struck earlier in the year. And he will see me in twelve months, at which time he will have to discharge me from the clinic, since-he said-he can't keep me on the books indefinitely. He wants to see if I have made any progress in the next year.

I was so discouraged, I went home and went to bed early. I really didn't feel like talking to anyone, or going online-I know it's been over a week, but severe pain and sleep deprivation kept me from doing much-but this setback was really very painful.

So I thought about everything very seriously yesterday. I thought about the surgeries, the illnesses, the setbacks to my balance and vision-and I decided that it is possible that Dr. Dimples is mistaken. I return to everything I have read about neuroplasticity, new neural pathways, the fact that we just don't have enough information about the brain (yet) to make that kind of hard and fast judgment. So I refuse to quit. I have a year to prove Dimples wrong: I have a year to get back to that all important 80%-more, in fact, if I can do it. It just means that I need to stay healthy. No falling down concrete steps and landing knee first!! I have a replaced kneecap now, and I don't want to have to have a brand new knee to go with it. And-there is no reason I can't stay out of hospitals, providing I do everything I can to keep myself healthy. I need to get back to that optimistic mindset-the one where I refuse to give up, because I know I can do it. I just need to do the work-and I have become pretty lazy, I can tell you!!

And then there are those bingo wings. I have to mention those, because they are the scourge of women everywhere-right up there with fat thighs, hips and backside, muffin tops, bra fat, and, of course, the awful turkey neck!! Is this relevant? Of course it is.

When I first got the crutches I said to a couple of nurses (that was when they were still speaking to me) that at least I would be able to get rid of my bingo wings. They laughed and said that the muscles were the wrong ones. Er...well, yes and no. Can I explain? Well, I thought you would never ask.

Bingo wings are the fatty areas between the armpit and the elbow, and just about every woman I know has them. Some are so large that if someone raised both arms together, she would look like a huge bat. And imagine suddenly raising your arm, having a wing fly out and give some poor innocent bystander a black eye. Try explaining that to the paramedics (or police). Errant bingo wing causes facial damage...whatever. So we all cover up, wearing long sleeves to ensure this never happens-and because it looks terrible. I used to see women at the gym, doing tricep dips until their arms nearly dropped off-and when they were done, they still had those bingo wings. And probably something they ruptured, too.

Why, you ask, is this relevant? Duh?? Because I have found a cure,that's why. It isn't surgery (are there things like bingo wing lifts? Probably). Or hours of daily tricep exercises. Or special creams (rip off!!), or pounding or pummeling. The cure is... crutches. That is what I said: crutches. You read it first here, and you got it for free. How good is that??

I have been on crutches for three weeks, and my arms are developing biceps that are finally bigger than a sparrow's kneecaps...make that a sparrow's elbows, kneecaps are a sore point with me (literally!). But all the shlepping around with crutches, and trying to get it the way the physiotherapists told me (crutches down, then bad leg, then good leg, then crutches, etc), and I have noticed that my bingo wings are shrinking. They were never bat-sized, but they are shrinking. And that is due to the crutches, because I'm not doing anything else.

So there you are. Get some crutches-not the old type that sit in your armpit, but the ones with the plastic thingy (a technical term if there ever was one) that goes around the elbow, keeping the crutches from dropping. And walk. A lot. And lift yourself on the crutches. A lot. And say goodbye to bingo wings and long sleeves.

Let me know how it goes. When those wings are gone, you can take me to lunch. Huh. I should write a book, I would make millions.

And by the way: I'm back....