Aches & Pains by Maeve Binchy

ACHES & PAINS
     
    This is a ‘Cheer up’ book. Not ‘Cheer up, it may never happen’ … because to some extent it has happened. You’re not well. Not ‘Cheer up because there are people much worse off’. That is a ludicrous piece of advice. Are we seriously meant to feel better when told someone else is in bad shape? Not ‘Cheer up because the rest of us are sick of looking at your misery-ridden face and you’re actually depressing everyone in a radius of five kilometres’.
    It’s really a sort of survival manual: some nanny-ish advice about how to muddle through a time of aches and pains. There’s also a slight touch of the head girl mentality in it, I think. And though neither Wendy Shea nor I were ever head girl material, we have each long had this feeling that we could run the universe quite adequately if asked to in a polite tone of voice.
    Not that either of us is a very good role model for anyone with aches and pains. There was an awful lot of grizzling and anxious whingeing as we both packed our suitcases and went off, hearts pounding, to different hospitals to get hip replacements. No medals for bravery were pinned to either of our nighties during our stay in hospital.
    But on the other hand, things weren’t nearly as bad as we thought they would be. You can get used to anything after a while, and I am still automatically offering my arm every time I see anyone in uniform, expecting to have it wrapped up while blood pressure is taken or stuck with needles while blood is injected or removed. I’ve offered my arm to air stewardesses and cinema ushers and security guards in a kind of reflex reaction, but so far none of them has taken me up on it.
    I was very interested in other people in hospital, and had amazing conversations in the corridors with total strangers as I limped around with them. Together we would study the hip manual and note that sexual intercourse could be attempted after so many weeks, which was a good topic of conversation at the water cooler. The hip manual also said that after eight weeks we should be able to drive.
    ‘That’s great,’ one man said wistfully. ‘I always wanted to know how to drive but I never had time to learn, it will be a huge advantage to me.’
    Wendy and I both met, in our separate hospitals, fellow patients who were optimistic, cheerful and interested in others. We also met people with weaselish bad tempers who were driving their families insane, and gloomboots who thought no medication was working and suspected incipient clots in every part of their body. We met those frightened that they wouldn’t get cured and get back to work, and those who were already malingering and plotting scams to stay out longer.
    We learned awful things about healthy eating plans, and good posture and the amount of exercise that normal people are meant to take.
    And Wendy and I both got a whole new lease of life from the new legs, and wanted, as a thank-you, to try to raise some funds to support the good work of the Arthritis Research Campaign, which you are helping to do by buying this book.
    But we also wanted to pass on the wisdom that the cheerful survive somehow better and help themselves as well as everyone else along the way. The wallowing in other people’s sympathy doesn’t do all that much to make you feel better. How many times do you want anyone to say ‘How terrible it must be for you’?
    Everyone is different, and of course there are people for whom the ultra-sympathetic tones and hours of listening to their ailments are what will make them better. Speaking personally, I’d be afraid to risk it.
    It’s not that I wasn’t grateful for sympathy during two years of great pain and much disablement before the operation. I suppose I’m afraid the sympathy fuse is short and can be tried to breaking point, so I allowed myself to indulge in it very sparingly. I said I was fine when I was terrible, and I was much better when I was much worse, and I was full of hope