Sunday Pain

Getting old sucks!

I fell yesterday. It was a hard fall. I still don’t know exactly what happened.

We’re painting the living room, so of course we moved a lot of stuff out of that room into others. Our family room is large and we have segmented it into the living area and the “mudroom/storage” area near the patio door by placing a loveseat on the border between the two area to create a physical divider. This narrows the walkway to the patio door where we let the dogs out to about four feet. Plenty of room, unless you have piled stuff from the other room in that space.

Every day, I take my transplant meds at lunch and they kick in about an hour later, making me drowsy and feeling quite intoxicated. It’s like a three-martini lunch without the fun. Once I feel my brain dissolve, I begin wobbling around like a drunk and take that as my cue to curl up on the couch with a book until I nod off after a few pages. Following two or three hours of couch mode, I sober up and resume my daily life.

Unfortunately, Gidget McFidget couldn’t wait two or three hours to go outside. We have a routine where she curls up with me for a nap, but after an hour of naptime yesterday, she suddenly needed to go outside.

Gidget is fifteen years old, and when she has to go, she has to go immediately. Any delay might cause her to go where she is. This causes great embarrassment for her and annoyance for me. She can’t help it. I don’t make a fuss and have created a quick cleanup and sanitation routine. The people who make Swiffer pads with Clorox must love me.

Gidget McFidget, looking for her next spot.

Once she gave me her urgent command, I got up from the couch, thoroughly stoned, and stumbled toward the door. I turned sideways to squeeze through the obstacle course and found myself hurled violently to the floor.

Because of my haste, there was some momentum to my fall, and my left shoulder hit the floor with a great deal of force. My left hip hit a fraction of a second later. It took a moment for me to realize that I was on the floor when only a moment earlier I was upright. The whole thing came as a great surprise.

My left arm was entirely numb, and I could not use it to get up. Electric shocks ran from my shoulder to my fingertips. I had fallen and could not get up. In response, I unleashed a string of expletives that might have peeled the paint off the walls. Gidget retreated away from the door and back into the center of the room, looking for a spot to crap.

After I sat there for a moment, I realized my husband must not be home and crawled on one hand and both knees to the loveseat and pulled myself up. Once I regained my footing, I gingerly picked my way around the piled junk and herded Gidget out the door so she could go outside. I sat down in a patio chair and, clutching my injured arm, began to cry. That’s when my husband appeared in the doorway and asked what was wrong. My reply was not tactful or sweet, but he did move the stuff away from the door.

Today, my arm feels a little better. It surprised me to find zero bruises when I showered. I thought my whole left side would be black and blue. Washing my hair was tricky. It hurts to raise my arm over my head with my elbow bent to touch my head. I can point straight up with no problem, but shrugging into a T-shirt this morning made me yelp. I don’t think I broke anything, but if it still hurts in a couple days, I will see my doctor.

The worst part of the whole situation was the shocking realization of how easy it is to fall and how hard it is to get back up. I’ve tripped and fallen a few times in my life, and there was always that split second of realization and a chance to catch myself. Not this time. I went down like a sack of potatoes.

Until now, I never thought of myself as getting older. I’m going to be 57 next month, and I can still get into most of the yoga poses I used to do, although not easily. In the new year, I will try to join some yoga classes or follow some online. My balance has been a little bit off since the second transplant and related stroke, but I’ve managed to stay on my feet until now.

This reminds me of a joke I heard a long time ago and thought was funny but now think is accurate. “If you don’t think you’re old, fall down in front of a group of people. If they laugh at you, you’re still young. If they rush over to help you up, you’re old.”