In the olden days, when I were a lass in Yorkshire, there were things called chest expanders. Designed for men wishing to develop their pectoral muscles and what would, thirty years later, be called a ‘six-pack’ , they comprised two handles in between which was a series of tightly coiled springs. The purpose was to take a handle in each hand and pull the springs apart across the chest, thereby improving the tone and strength of the muscles. There was just one main snag in their design.
As children, we found some chest expanders in our attic which had belonged to my father. In his youth, he had been a boxer and the expanders were presumably the nineteen-fifties equivalent of a home gym. In pre-waxing days, boxers were traditionally hirsute in pursuit of the sport. So think naked hairy chest, chest expander with its very resistant coiled spring. Visualise the arms pulling the springs apart, empathise with the keen resistance of the springs as they tone the muscles and ...
Ping! Ouch! Bugger!
The involuntary release of the springs meant they instantly went back to their tightly-coiled default position, leaving no time for the chest hairs to get out of the way. This was why we found the expanders in the attic.
Several decades on and I became familiar with a very different sort of chest expander, one of which was very cleverly placed underneath the skin and muscle during the mastectomy surgery.
Two weeks after the operation, a day before my birthday, I received three unique gifts: the best news that there were no traces of cancer in the lymph nodes meaning it had not spread; the good/bad news that the pre-cancerous cells were very extensive making the mastectomy absolutely vital; and 100 millilitres of saline solution in the expander.
Back on the 'isn't science wonderful' theme the process is quite remarkable. A magnet under the skin signals the port of entry through which a needle is inserted and the saline solution slowly released into the expander. It doesn’t even hurt, although walking back to the car afterwards it felt as if I a weight had been sewn in there. I would have to get used to the iron breast plate feeling, but once again the body, grateful and accepting, responded by telling the skin and muscle to grow. Little by little, with fortnightly fill-ups, the chest duly expanded.
Spring had passed, midsummer was here and nature was growing and ripening everywhere!
No comments:
Post a Comment