A Smash and Two Falls

 

Sometime back in early November, as I walked on the treadmill, I lost my footing and began to fall. I caught myself on the bars around the home treadmill, hit the kill switch, and righted myself. I shrugged it off as “no harm, no foul” and kept going.

But I had hurt my shoulder, and as time progressed, so did the pain. Since it was my right arm that was bothering me, it became difficult to function. I wasn’t able to do the holiday baking and cooking I normally do because I couldn’t hold the mixer.

I couldn’t stir fudge, either. Talk about disaster! I’m known for my fudge. When I was a news reporter, I’d make at least 15 pounds of fudge and then walk around handing out pretty boxes of candy to my sources and other folks who’d helped me throughout the year.

With the holidays coming up – Thanksgiving, then Christmas – I just tried to keep moving through it. Then my father passed away in January. It was March before I saw a doctor and asked her to send me to physical therapy. That’s helped a little, but not as much as either I or the physical therapist had hoped.

Not long after I started physical therapy, I smashed my middle finger at the end joint. The car console lid fell down on my hand, and my finger took the brunt of the blow. I remember thinking that was going to leave a mark, but it didn’t, and it wasn’t until about 10 days later, when suddenly my whole hand swelled, that I remembered the accident. Turns out I had a fracture in that finger. It still hurts even now, months later.

And then in May, I got up in the night and placed the splint I had on my finger on the bedside table while I tried to open a bottle of water. The splint rolled off the table and under the bed. Our bed is high, and my husband had made me a stoop with two steps to use to climb into the bed.

I sat on the lower step with a flashlight, trying to find the splint, and somehow lost my balance. I fell over backwards, hitting my head on the hardwood floor and waking my husband. The next thing I remembered was him standing over me, the overhead light on blinding me, and all I could see was his boxer shorts while he said he wanted to call an ambulance.

“I can’t lift you,” he sputtered. He has had a hip replacement and isn’t supposed to lift over 50 pounds.

“Just let me sit here a minute, will you?” I said. After a few minutes I was able to get myself up. My head seemed fine. To my knowledge I never lost consciousness, I was just rattled.

But that fall set off an unexpected chain of events, about which I will write in my next post.