Yesterday, I was sure my blog subject matter was all sewn up after walking my dog for her morning mile. It harbored a bit of humor and positively reeked of the common man element which makes for a painless read: the leash had become entangled with one of the brown Kroger plastic grocery bags I conscientiously recycle by filling with the fresh deposits Panda reliably drops at some point during our exercise. To further complicate matters, the ear piece cord from my iPhone was twisted in the mix. Cold weather and gloves made it difficult to simply unwind the mess.
So-o, in a winner-take-all sort of move -- the kind of hasty irritated action which is often not fully fleshed out in thought and can be loaded with the potential to invite disaster -- I pumped my arm in an arc. I immediately saw my error but was helpless to withdraw the motion. The loaded bag of warm elderly pooch excrement effectively worked free of its bondage and rotated around my wrist, before coming to a full and complete stop on the right side of my head. S-l-l-a-p! Not QUITE a V-8 moment but definitely stupid enough to warrant a quick look around me for any possible witnesses. No one. Fortunately, though the bag's contents were reshaped, the plastic held its ground. Nary a tid or a bit leaked, smeared, or otherwise erupted. Phew. I thanked the Lord for small favors and finished out the balance of our walk. At that point in my day, nothing more significant had come along to usurp its place.
See. That would have sufficed for a short but sweet entry. Open and shut. Laugh and move one. But what came next in the day, within hours, actually caused me to temporarily forget that I had knocked myself in the side of the face with a sack of sh- . . . well, you know!
As I've chronicled in fits and starts, my time as of late has been full of travel to Colorado in and around Thanksgiving, nine days, followed by almost full-time attendance to my mother as needed -- a week of overnight stay at her place since the 10th and staccato visits to our house afterward. As meaningful as my activities have been, and continue to be, they're also quite exhausting. The body and brain try to keep it all moving forward but fatigue is ever present. And with fatigue comes a certain amount of decision-making which doesn't fire on all cylinders. Much like the doggie doo episode.
It's 2:15pm. I've pulled into the parking lot of the diagnostic imaging center where mom is to receive her lower lumbar MRI. We hope to pinpoint the origin of the severe pain in her back and right leg which has transformed into a bit of a bully and a showoff in the overall gallery of pains she's had to endure since her knee surgery almost two weeks ago. The lightweight seated roller-walker which was the object of an intense week-long hunt comes out of the back seat; I'm grateful to leave the dinosaur of a wheelchair, which has been mom's sole means of conveyance between her recliner and the restroom, in the trunk of her champagne-colored Park Avenue sedan. Mom must remain off her right leg for two months while her cartilage regenerates in the mini-breaks riddling her scoured knee joint. So, for the past few days, she's busied herself with mastering the art of backward scuttling between our living room and powder room. But she can't roll herself safely on the concrete.
Scouting the terrain, I note the handicap ramp is short, steep, and sporting an inch rise between the two joining surfaces. "I'm gonna have to move fast to get a running start up that thing, mom," I warn her, "Just like we did in the wheelchair at the drugstore." She is facing me, snug in the seat, gazing up at my face as I grip the handles and get a move on. I'm slightly distracted by my heavy purse as it refuses to stay on my shoulder as I walk, so I don't sense my error in judgement concerning comparisons between a bulky large-wheeled chair and a featherweight petite-wheeled rollator intended to be walked and NOT ridden.
The second we make contact with the raised lip of the ramp, however, fireworks of realization explode in my brain. More rapidly than one would imagine possible, several things happen. The top-heavy roller does not roll -- it catches and topples over, sending my mother straight back, her suddenly very delicate and vulnerable gray-haired head tumbling toward the cold concrete. My right arm and leg begin to curve inward as I instinctively try to cushion my mother's fall. I'm not that fast. There is the sickening crack of her skull against a hostile unyielding surface, echoed by the hard thwack of my knee on the same. I curl around her, cradling her head, suddenly sobbing in my fear and mortification at what I inadvertently caused. "Mother, mother, I'm so sorry. Are you all right? Are you all right?! Oh, mother-r-r . . . " There's no stopping my cries. Though not for lack of trying on her part. "Gloria, I'm all right. Try to breathe. Calm down," she touches my hand, patting it, "You need to go get help for me."
Limping, and still crying, I enter the waiting room and ask for help. Two gentleman, one dressed distinctively in Harley biker fashion, sporting a beard and longer hair, jump up and follow me out the door. Seeing mom sprawled out on the ramp, still and silent in the cold, they exclaim their disturbed surprise and quicken their pace. All the while, I'm informing them of her condition, warning them to take care with her knee . . . and yes, I'm still crying, heaving, unable to calm myself. This isn't like me. Only one other time did such tears and panicked wailing overtake me: when my son, as a frightened 5 year-old, ran screaming from the dentist office and almost plunged headlong into oncoming traffic before my terrified eyes. I could not catch him. If it had not been for the portly man who crafted dentures in the back of the office moving at superhuman speed and snatching him up at the last possible moment, I would have only two children today.
It takes me several minutes to rein in my emotions once mom and I stand before the receptionist. I hiccup through our tale of woe, and explode into a fresh round of weeping. Another employee emerges from behind the counter and embraces me, cooing her sympathies as I shudder. When I feel sane enough, when I'm reassured that my mother is not dead and will likely live to see another cruise in the offending rolling walker, I set about the business at hand. Paperwork and searching for her lump. My stomach turns when my probing fingers find a dent but mom quickly reminds me that there's a matching dent on the other side due to her forceps delivery from back when such methods were employed! We soldier on. Because of the bump to her noggin, mom is instructed to endure the test without the aid of medication which would lessen her anxiety. Can't risk missing the signs of a concussion. She counts down the agonizing minutes as the giant magnetized tunnel vibrates with the telltale knocking which is a signature of the system. Lying down flat is not in her bodily vocabulary right now, so this is a bit of necessary torture.
It is unthinkable to return to the ancient wheelchair in her estimation. I am ready, willing, and extremely eager to retrieve it for our departure. Nope! She mounts her trusty lightweight steed and rides again. Being the trusting soul that she is where her loyal daughter is concerned, she has me escort her right off the bat. But gently. And with great forethought. And the purse set down on the sidewalk.
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In the end, we decided she would return to our house for safekeeping. My son accompanied us to her apartment in Woodbury to gather a few items necessary to her well-being. My knee throbbed, resonating with the echoing sympathy pains to my mom's own healing knee, but a cold gel pack and ibuprofen, working in tandem with the Chambord and fresh lemon juice over ice, encouraged the angry joint to lessen its grip on me. There followed Chinese take-out for dinner with frozen yogurt and brownie chasers. Our Christmas mood returned with a viewing of "Elf" and late-night chatter with my daughters and their boyfriends which dissolved into silliness and laughter. Eventually, we surrendered to sleep somewhere around 2am. 12 hours had come and gone since the debacle.
My brothers jokingly accused me of elder abuse and a botched murder attempt. I'm able to giggle about certain aspects of the event but still can't bear to hear my mom explains how it happened, especially when she describes the watermelon thunk of her head on the ramp. This morning her neck hurt. Whiplash, of all things. My knee is a touch swollen. Some bruising. A nice scab embedded with the outline of the corduroy pants I was wearing at the moment of impact. A soothing haze has begun to drop down over my recollection . . . which is just fine with me. It won't happen again. Though my mother is the senior one, I don't think MY heart could take it.
And that, dear readers, is how yesterday went from 'the day I hit myself in the head with pooch poo' to 'the day I almost killed my poor mother!'
Oh Gloria! I laughed outloud at the poo. And cried about your mom. And your memory of Zachary and dentist made me think of the time when we lived in that crappy trailer in Dalhart. Jon was about 18 months old and I had left him watching Blue's Clues and went to the bathroom. I was gone 3 minutes, tops. When I came out he was standing on a chair he'd pushed in front of the gas stove, with all four burnners going full blast. he was reaching between the left and right burnners for a dish towel. I was still shaking at the thought of how close I'd come to losing him, when Zan came home 5 hours later. He couldn't firure out why. Men! Great entry! Love you!
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