On about my upper body 'deformaties', I feel I should show these photos to hopefully explain my problems more. As you can see with the top photo, I have a slight curvature of my upper spine, caused by my operation. It's developed over the years, as the surgeon who led my operation team said it would do. Nothing can be done about it and if it could I wouldn't bother having anything done as we have to 'embrace our disabilities' they say. We see calenders now with folk who have much worse physical disabilities than me, not hiding them, instead showing them to give hope and encouragement to similar cases. In the bottom photo (excuse the flaking paint on the wall, but I'm not house proud, always telling folk that I only have enough hours in the day to either 'tart' myself up OR my flat). I chose me as if you like to be noticed, folk will notice you if you make an effort, whereas hardly anyone will notice a 'fancy' flat apart from yourself!)😉
My bottom photo shows my lack of a pectoral muscle seemingly on my left side as you look at it, but that's due to my selfie photo, with the lack of a 'pec' on the right, not the left. This lack leaves a gap, which is noticeable and over the years the lack has caused my shoulders to go forward, causing a dislocated shoulder affect. Getting off the peg jackets to fit is very difficult. As I said before, I could find a tailor to alter my jackets to form around me, but that'd be quite expensive and do I want to look at such alterations and be reminded of how I am...no I don't! Not only that but such altered jackets would be almost impossible to sell, should I feel the need to do so. I also have a very thin neck, with most of the right side being my right pectoral muscle which had to be cut away then moved upwards to fill the gap where my significant tumour was. The only person I have ever seen with such a neck as mine was snooker player Alex Higgins who was photographed just before his death, when his same as mine cancer returned. Having only a 13 inch neck, with a large size upper body means getting shirts to fit my neck difficult. If I go for a 13 or 14 inch neck sized shirt I end up again with the sleeves too short and it'd be tight on the back. If I go for a 15, 16 inch neck I have a collar that looks like a ventriloquist's dummy's collar, having to be wide enough to move that head around. I would and do wear kravats with shirts too big in the neck, but even then, they don't always fill the gap, leaving too much flesh on display and not keeping my neck warm enough in the colder months. Thanks for listening to my attempt at explaining my predicament. I hope it helps when folk sometimes think 'Oh look, he's got that wrong'! Yes, to them it will look that way, but believe me, I give one hundred percent it trying to look 'normal'! I can only do my best and as the doctor who saw me the other week said, I shouldn't be here, as I'm a one in a thousand case that has lived so long after such a significant tumour and its removal, making me think how grateful I should be to still be here, making my disabilities pale into insignificance!❤️
Actually, looking at the photo below, it is correct in showing my lack of a right side pectoral muscle. It does look like my left one is missing as well, but that's just how my waistcoat sat as I took that photo. I was offered a skin and muscle transplant to fill that gap, taking part of one of my buttocks away, but then what about the new gap in my arse I asked!😏 The surgeon agreed that it'd be an unnecessary operation, causing me more problems, so we decided to leave things as they were/are.😉
