By Jim Heffernan
“I’ve fallen and can’t get up.” Those are not words I ever expected to find myself saying. I especially did not expect to find myself repeating them, over and over again while laying face-down in a puddle of water on my kitchen floor at 4am in the morning.
It all started because I couldn’t sleep because of a tingling in my foot. I read that soaking your foot in warm water could tame the tingling. It was true. It did work for the tingling in my foot, but when I got up from my stool, somehow, I let the stool slip from beneath me and I fell to the floor, knocking over the bucket of water in the process..
When we’re young, we just get up, no planning, no strategy. Old age forces us to make a plans to make the best use of our meager strength. Getting up from the floor involves getting to a crawling position and heading for a stable vertical surface.
Now I was face-down in a puddle of water that prevented me from getting to my knees and crawling. I thought I might be able to slither like a reptile to a nearby stairway. I reached the stairway, but lacked the arm strength to use it to raise myself up. I yelled for my wife, but was unable to rouse her. My yell was probably more like a loud whisper.
I struggled for about an hour, totally exhausting myself in the process. Then, I just waited, waited two hours or so until my wife woke up and came to my rescue. Together, we were able to make our way to dry floor and a stable vertical surface. I got to a crawling position and used the kitchen counter to regain a standing position.
When I was standing again, I felt like I was on the losing end of a hours’ long fist-fight. I stumbled to my chair and spent most of the day napping.
When Scrabble-time rolled around at 5:30PM, I was still too knackered to grasp the mechanics of keeping score. We gave up on Scrabble and watched television until 10PM. The next time I tried to stand up, I slid to the floor from my recliner and my wife and I together could not bring me to my feet.
She called 911 with the complaint, “He’s fallen and can’t get up.” Paramedics and firemen arrived and, with some difficulty lifted me into a wheel chair.
They asked me if I wanted to go to the ER (emergency room) and I said I think I should. It may have been the only good decision I made that day.
I was loaded into an ambulance with a large window and slowly driven to the ER. The last thing I remember seeing was the soft neon glow of the Safeway sign. I felt like an alien vehicle was transporinting me to another dimension.
I was to spend the next six days in the hospital in the figurative embrace of a wonderful collection of nurses and doctors who, motivated by kindness, take in people afflicted by health or injury.
I remember most of the nurses, a remarkable community who helped me, day and night, recover. They were a very diverse group of women and men who treated me with kindness and guided me back to better health. I encountered more black nurses than I knew existed in Tillamook. Whether they were young or middle aged, their kindness painted them with quiet beauty.
I will always have a high regard for those that showered me with kindness and led me to recovery.
The hospital is to be applauded for the solace they provide for those in need..
After being discharged from the hospital, our community falls short on the needs of recovering patients, but that’s another story. I also have a story about how an un-co-operative patient let cellulitis be a pernicious squatter afflicting him for 17 years.
It’s only lately that I’ve been able to sit at my keyboard. Expect more from me as the weeks go by.
As always, discussion and comments welcome at codger817@gmail.com
