Misstep

It was totally unexpected. Something was wrapped around my right ankle and arrested my motion to retrieve the small watering can I use to fill my iron. The Iron came flying off the ironing board landing on the cement floor behind me.

I struggled mightily to stay on my feet feeling a terrible twisting pain in my right knee. There was a moment of confusion and reorientation. It hurt to put weight on my right leg but I didn’t go down which might have caused me to hit my head or arm or shoulder. I picked up the Iron and put it back on the ironing board.

Yipes! I was in the basement, the place I feared most of falling. I checked. I had my cell phone in my pocket, my call button around my neck. I remember thinking.

“I hope you can make it up the steps. Go carefully you don’t want to compound this mishap.”

I turned off the light and iron. Slowly and carefully, bending forward left leg up first to lift my weight followed by my right leg to the same step I came out of the basement.

I laid down and had a wee nap. I was due to go to the movies with my friend Eugenia.

“I think I can make it. I don’t want to disappoint her.”

We went but I begged off from the planned restaurant supper after ward. My knee was becoming more painful and less stable. I got home and went to bed.

I had a restless and painful night. The next day I emailed Caleb and Anita to request that they bring me a large ace bandage. Fortunately for me my son, Caleb, who is both a Physical Therapist and an M. D. called me back and said he would be right over.

He went over me carefully and said he didn’t think anything was broken. He thought I had soft tissue damage in the knee that was pretty swollen. He brought a knee support and got me a cane. He put my shower seat in my shower and showed me how to transfer to it.

I had a better night last night and today feel fifty percent better.

Having an incident like this makes you painfully aware of the losses suffered in an injury to a limb. Think of all the things you could do with out having to think about it, before this happened.

Today I’m thinking about Hillary and her broken elbow, all the important meetings she had to cancel. I’m thinking about Sonia Sotomayor and her leg caste, still going to her meetings with the Senators and Representatives. I am thinking about Eugenia and her constant pain from her hip. She is reluctant to risk a replacement after one heart attack as a result of a colonoscopy. I am thinking about the teenagers in Somalia sentenced to having a hand and a leg cut off for stealing.

At Seventy-six I don’t like joining the elderly “physically compromised”. An injury like this exaggerates all the other ageing signs and symptoms I deal with. The future looks more unpleasant this morning.