Fall

"Getting old is not for Sissies."
-Bette Davis

Talk about a true statement that is one.  

"If I had known I was going to live this long I would have taken better care of myself."
-W.F. Woodard 

I fall down. Go splat.

Me.

Yep, I am officially old. I fall down a lot. And this time I won the big prize: fractured upper orbit eye socket, concussion, scratched cornea, bruised knee caps, and lovely, colorful patches all over my face.

I guess it was good thing that I do like color, because I am a rainbow. 

I had gone under the house to find Snell. He had turned off his hearing aids and he can’t hear the phone and went under the house to change the filters on the pool. I was supposed to call him when the water level got to a certain point. No hearing aids, no phone and deaf as a post. I had to go under the house to find him.

When he'd been gone a long time and didn't answer his phone. I got worried and went looking for him. Mistake No. 1. I swore if I didn’t get a full basement under this house I would NEVER go into the crawl space. I didn’t get the basement. I got a crawl space, in which I have been exactly four times in 27 years. This was the fourth.

Mistake 2: Trusting Snell to NOT turn off his hearing aids. I was supposed to call him for heaven’s sake. He can’t hear the phone and the vibration isn’t strong enough to give anyone a thrill. 

So here I am, searching for an 85 year old man with no hearing aids working and a puny vibrator. I go all around the house. I stand at the crawl space door. I yell. I scream. I wave my hands in a please don’t be dead manner. Nothing. For the fourth time in my life I go under the house. Mistake #3.

Over in the corner, way over in the corner, is Snell. “I thought you were going to call me.” 

Me “What is wrong with your phone?” 

Him“Nothing, I guess. I had to turn my hearing aids off because the pool motor was making so much noise.
 
Mistake 4:  Putting the pool motor, etc. under the house. (I didn’t’ vote for that either)

 Mistake 5: Telling me he turned off the hearing aids and looking puzzled at my concern.

Mistake 6: Telling me later in the ER he discovered he had accidentally turned off the vibrator to his phone.

In exasperation I turned and started walking/crawling to the door. The space is 4 feet high. I am 5 feet 3 inches on a good day. It was not a good day. I was mimicking the Hunchback of Notre Dame in walk pattern.

The crawl space floor is concrete. I’m not sure if I won the fight, but I beat that concrete floor into submission with my face.

I hit left eye first. My hands are not even scratched. I didn’t even try to break my fall. I just hit the floor and skidded on my face, filling my left eye with concrete dust.

 “What’s the matter? Did you fall? Are you okay?” No, I like laying on a concrete floor in a claustrophobic crawl space that I both resent and hate.

I just lay there. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t think. All I could was hurt. I had a baby. This pain was so much worse.
​
I was covered in concrete and other dust. My eye was filled with blood and dirt. My knees would not support my weight. I was gasping for air and inhaling dust, dirt, any critters that had died under the house.  And it had started out as a very pretty and productive day. 

After several minutes, Snell was able to help me get out in the blinding bright light and fresh air. I tried to wash some of the dirt off my face. I washed my eye out with a saline solution repeated. Finally the majority of the dirt was out of my eye. My eye is swollen shut and the knot on my head could be used to carve one of the busts from Mt. Rushmore.

Snell dropped me off at the ER entrance and I walked in. I thought I was doing okay by then, except for blindness and the headache. “Excuse me. I need some help.”

One of the nurses looked at me and said “You sure do, Honey. What is your name and social security number?” Admission and fee paying always comes before treatment and/or death.

I remember looking at her and thinking “Social Security Number.” I know I was in shock. I remember starting to say something and then I am falling backwards. Before I hit the floor someone caught me and then a chair was slamming under me and my sore knees.

The next thing was a very bright room. I couldn’t see it was so bright. I had to shield my one open eye. The lights dimmed. “I’m Dr. whose name should not be mentioned for his indifference. How badly are you hurt?”

Duh. What do you think, Doc.? I have an ostrich egg on my forehead. My eye is swollen shut. I just passed out in your entrance way. “Gee, Doc, I bumped my wittle head.” I could have strangled him with his stethoscope.

Now this is the truth. When someone for whom I care goes to the emergency room I am there. I know enough about medicine to be dangerous but I am great at emergency care. I can butterfly a gash as pretty as any ER doctor. I can even to do Madison Bandage on an open torso wound. I am never hysterical. I am never nauseated. Blood is just interesting. I make sure that every wound is checked, treated and it is right.

That doctor never came fully into the room. No one cleaned the concrete out of my facial wounds. My knees were never touched. I was skinned from in my hair line to my chin on the left side. My shoulder was painful and I couldn’t lift that arm well.  I was just one bigopen dirty strawberry burn. Except that some places were very deep. The space above my left eye and on my left cheek bone were deeply raw.  He ordered a CT scan. That was it. Oh someone gave me a barf bag. I remember being very nauseated.

CT scans revel I do have a brain, perhaps a big jiggled up. It did not show the fracture of my upper left brown bone. Another doctor a week later determined that injury.

 I do not have a personality eyebrow any more. I cannot lift my scolding, loving, quizzical eyebrow. That brow is very important to my demeanor and my ability to communicate.

Two weeks later my left eye opened. Dizzy spells have continued for all that time with a headache that simply pounds. Light is an issue and so is noise.  The headache lasted off and on for nearly four weeks.

I have saved quite a bit of money on make-up. No spackle is strong enough to cover this colorful face. People are nice to me. I get lots of kindness.  

It was all Snell's fault. I don’t care what he says!!!

30 minutes

4 hours

5 days

3 weeks

5 weeks, with spackle makeup