BrasaBloom ad: A nurse in Bali told me this

A nurse in Bali told me something about my legs that no doctor at home ever had. She said if she pressed her thumb into yours tonight, after the way you've been living, you'd be shocked at what's sitting there. Except I didn't go to Bali to see a nurse. I went for my 30th wedding anniversary. Jodie and I had been planning that trip for six years. Every year something came up. The kids. The mortgage. My shutdowns at the mine. We kept saying next year. Then in March I finally booked it. Ten days in Ubud. A villa with its own pool. The works. I'm 56. Diesel fitter, thirty one years, out of Mackay. Twelve hour shifts. Big lad. My legs had been going for a few years. Boots tight by smoko. Sock grooves at night. Ankles puffy by the time I got home. But I'd stopped noticing. You do. The flight from Brisbane is six hours. I sat in that seat with my knees jammed against the bloke in front and didn't get up once. When we landed in Denpasar, I couldn't get my thongs back on. I laughed it off. Jodie didn't. By the second night, at a restaurant looking out over the rice paddies, my ankles were the size of grapefruit. Hot and tight. My shins were shiny. I couldn't sit still with them. Jodie had bought a new dress for that dinner. She'd had her hair done that afternoon at the villa. She'd been waiting thirty years for it. And halfway through the main, I said, "Jode, I've got to go back. I can't sit here." I watched her face drop. She didn't say anything in the taxi. She just held my hand and looked out the window. The next morning she said, "We're going to the clinic. I'm not having you sit in the villa for eight days." There was a little clinic down the road from the villa. Open-air, tiled floor, a ceiling fan, a frangipani tree out the front. The nurse was maybe sixty. Tiny. Completely unhurried. She sat me on a plastic stool, looked at my feet, and asked me what I did for work. Then she asked me what I did when I got home. Nobody at home had ever asked me that. "Boots off. Feet up. Couch," I said. She nodded like she'd heard it a thousand times. Then she pressed her thumb into my shin, held it, and let go. The dent just sat there. Jodie leaned in to look. "Not fat," the nurse said. "Water that cannot go home." Then she pointed out the window, at the rice terraces running down the hill behind the clinic. "You see the water there? It goes from the top field to the next, to the next, all the way down. Little channels. Always moving. If one channel is blocked, what happens?" The field floods, I said. "Yes. That is your leg." Here's what she explained, in her slow, careful English. All day, a little bit of fluid seeps out of your blood into the tissue around it. That's normal. It's how your body feeds itself. Then a second set of tiny channels collects that fluid and carries it back. That's your lymph. Your drainage. "But the water in your legs has to go up the hill," she said. "Not down. And the only thing that moves it is your muscles squeezing. Walking. Climbing. Breathing deep." "You stand all day in one place. Then you sit in the car. Then you sit on the couch. Then six hours on the plane. Your channels are blocked. So the field floods from the bottom." Ankles first. Then feet, shins, hands, and the gut. I call it the Flooded Paddy now. And when she said it, I finally understood why nothing had worked. Cutting salt? A bit less water coming in. The channel's still blocked. Three litres a day? More water in the field. Feet up? You drain the field for one night. It floods again by smoko. Compression socks? Someone holding the channel open while you wear them. Take them off, it blocks. And the seven kilos? "Your leg is not fat," she said. "Losing fat does not open the channel." None of it cleared the channel on its own. That's why none of it lasted. "So what do I do?" I asked. She smiled. "Walk every hour on the plane. Walk before you sit at home. And at home, in Australia, you have the old plants for this. Cleavers. Red clover. My teacher in nursing school, she was Dutch. She always said the old drainage plants." Jodie wrote them on the back of the clinic receipt. That night at the villa, legs up on a stack of pillows, I looked them up on my phone. I nearly scrolled past what came up, because it looked like an ad. It was a little dropper bottle called BrasaBloom Lymphatic Drainage. On the label, four herbs. Cleavers, red clover, stillingia and prickly ash. The nurse's two, right at the top. No list of twenty things. No secret blend. Four plants and how much of each. Three things made me order it from that villa. One, everything is printed on the label. When I got home, I showed my pharmacist. She said, "That's a good simple one." Two, they sell direct. No middleman. Three, ninety days to try it. If it did nothing, they'd give my money back, even if the bottle was empty. I'd spent more on one cocktail at that restaurant than the price. On the bigger pack it works out about A$14 a bottle, or A$28 for two. It was waiting at home when we landed. It's two droppers a day. I have mine in my water bottle before I head out to site. And I walk round the block before I sit down. Week one, nothing. Week three, I got to knock-off with my boots still laced and didn't think about it till I was in the driveway. Week five, no sock grooves at night. Jodie checked. Week eight, my wedding ring came off in the shower without soap. Then in June we did Bali again. Same villa. Same restaurant over the rice paddies. I bought Jodie a new dress and booked the same table. We stayed till they stacked the chairs. On the way out, Jodie stopped at the little clinic. The nurse was out the front sweeping frangipani flowers off the step. Jodie showed her my ankles. She pressed her thumb into my shin. Let go. No dent. "Channel open," she said, and laughed. I'm 56, not 26. I still work twelve hour shifts. But I've got my wife's anniversary back. If your ankles go up every long drive or flight, do this tonight. Press your thumb into your shin and count to five. If the dent stays, it's not fat, and it's not the beer. It's a Flooded Paddy. And now you know why nothing else lasted. This is where I got mine: brasabloom.com/products/brasabloom-lymphatic-drainage Darren P.S. Jodie framed the clinic receipt. Two words on the back in her handwriting. "Cleavers. Clover." It's on the wall next to our wedding photo. Tap Learn More below to see the page.