I'm like Mr Sandyface

My fibro flashes—muscular spasms that typically shoot up or out my right arm—are more frequent of late. Pain meds help, but they don't stop flash. They merely dull the intensity. 

However theWife got me onto to tension bands—strips of rubber of various stretchiness—which I can use to help stave off the symptoms. 

I loved comics as a kid. I tried to get and read as many as a could, with supplies limited due to my regional New South Wales youth. The library at least had Asterix and Tintin galore even now, thirty years on, I could look at just a page and tell you which album that page is from. 

Given I only had a limited supply I would read and I'd re-read all the comics I had, cover to cover, including the ads. The ads, for US and Canadians only, within were glorious. Spiderman beating up some similarly dressed proto-supervillains in matching green rubber suits who have been distracted by Spidey-emplaced Hostess™ fruit pies, ads for novelty toys like x-ray specks, or an ad for a fuck-load of toy soldiers that came in an allegedly genuine reproduction footlocker. 

One oft seen ad was a comic strip of this weedy dude who's dating a woman beyond his station. At the beach a bully kicks sand in his face and when he complains he's threatened and emasculated in front of his girl. Cue Mr Sandyface chucking a snit over his and one order of exercise know-how and bling plus months of training later, Mr Sandyface reclaims his cock from the bully with a strong fist to the jaw (1).

I imagine that the exercise Sandyface did to get all buffed included a lot of arm stretching, using those tension spring things that you punched with, the springs providing resistance against your punch.

I'm the only (dis)abled in the building that I know of. So I sometimes I dash into the disabled toilet—it's roomy in there—with my rubber tension band. I stand in the centre of the white tiled room, the band wrapped over my shoulder, the band's end clenched in my fist. Then I frantically punch forward, punch after punch to downgrade the sting of the fibro flash.

At night, when the flashes come, I head out to the shed. I slot myBeloved tablet on the still-working boom box from Costco and watch something I like, old eps of Community or recent discoveries like PhoneShop. Band wrapped over my shoulder, end clenched in my fist, and the punching begins.

It's royally irksome to be forced to exercise. Though I admit the fact I can now reliably do 40 minutes a day on the bike, with frequent bouts of stretching, gives me a sense of achievement (2). Especially for those times when the session hasn't been bad; even enjoyable in its own way.

It's likely my go button on the sequel to the TFCWM, our name for the attending gloop—that crisis crap that crops up in a family from time to time—of my original hip replacement, is  sooner than I had foreseen. And with the fibro flaring even now as I type I may have to go on leave even beforehand. 

I'm trying to hold off as much as I can. Last time the TFCWM came with a bunch of attending disasters. Not only did I nearly die two days after the operation—coming to to discover I'd been revived and death or brain damage from lack of oxygen prevented—theWife and I picked up gastroenteritis. A bowel-loosening condition that's somewhat more challenging when you're on crutches.

The other element too has been a slab of fear and shame. When I nearly died the attending physician in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) sneered at my sweat slicked bulbous furred form and presumed my weight meant apnoea and therefore my unconsciousness was my fainting from fatness more than anything else.

theWife had been with me when I'd gone into the ICU. Given my resurrection, lack of glasses, and state of mild panic I hadn't taken in what had just happened and part of me presumed the Doctor was right. That it was me that did it to me and so if I do this operation again then it will happen once more.

It wasn't my failed me, of course, that was to blame. We found out later it was an embolism; a chunk of marrow floating free during the operation and drifted into my blood. The clump lodged in my lung and down I went. I still felt, however, I was to blame. Because I didn't just lapse into sudden unconsciousness. I felt I'd merely fallen asleep because the last thing I remember was eating breakfast, a spoonful of diced peaches in my mouth, and that I thought I might have a light doze before I swallowed. 

In other words, that the collapse was me and my morally-fallen biology was to blame. And that even if an embolism is what took me down, my lumbering over-laden form exacerbated what happened. 

I am the least reliable witness to what occurred after my collapse, but theWife reiterated the doctor was a malodorous sneerer. A physician who insta-deemed me the cause of my own near-demise without evidence considered beyond that of her eyes. I remember being bewildered when she went on about my weight, and my weakly protesting I rode 20 minutes a day, but felt shame and accepted her critique was right.

I have the same chance of something severe going wrong—one in a thousand—I had last time. Perhaps they'll be more careful given what happened before, lengthening the odds further still. But I'm fitter now than I was back then and I'm still young enough that my recovery time will be quick, fibro et al not withstanding. 

But of whatever happens in surgery or after I'm closed then at least I can say one thing for sure. I tried. Fuck me, I tried. And not even I can take that from me—and certainly not some anti-fat prick whose opinion was set the moment I rolled through the door.  

(1) Deliciously, that's apparently more or less the actual origin story for the man behind the exercise system—Charles Atlas.
(2) Occasionally I imagine I'm on the back field of the private school I was so foolishly jammed within—the fact no apology has been proffered over that particular fail still grinding—and the bike I am on is riding around the oval there. And as I pass Mr H---, the high-waited short gym-short wearing balding fucktard with his John Newcombe moustache, I expertly shoot him in the nads with a paintball gun. Oh, and 400 metres later I get to shoot his prostrate groaning form again, since, as I recall, that oval was 400 metres in length. Hey, we all need our motivations. Imagining villains of youth put paid to by middle-aged me seems to keep me peddling along.