TRIPPING AND FALLING

“MOM! You have to look down!”  It’s 2008 in Washington D.C. and my son is exasperated. I have just fallen forward like a plank, walking though the crowds at Obama’s first inauguration. It is not the first time I have tumbled and won’t be the last; nonetheless I pick myself up, unharmed, perhaps relaxed by the happy exhilaration surrounding me.

 

In the scalding heat of Athens in August 2013 I am not so lucky. I am walking cautiously on the big marble flagstones, when, distracted by a man passing me at speed, I whip my head around -  and step into a hole, crashing to the ground. I will learn that I have broken my fibula, which means 6 weeks without putting my foot on the ground. It is the first day of our vacation there. I will spend the remainder in a wheelchair pushed by my husband, seeing Athens, Crete and Santorini from a different and unexpected perspective.

 

A week ago, 8 months into our self-isolation quarantine, I catch my foot on the doggie gate I’ve just had installed. I jack-knife into the air and land on my right knee and then on my right cheekbone. My glasses clatter away across the hard stone tiles. I hear Victor shout, “Mom, are you all right?” 

 

The pain is monstrous and I am hyperventilating. Victor eases a yoga mat under me, and after a while I can lift my eyes to see his and Oswaldo’s worried faces, and those of the dogs, who’ve lain down nearby. We are alone in the house on a Sunday in the middle of a Covid pandemic. It is not clear how to proceed.

 

Using an office chair with wheels and Victor’s strength, the men manage to settle me on the sofa inside. There’s a later chapter getting upstairs to my bed, which involve tears and eventually sliding up, step by step, on my butt. Early on Monday Victor and I head for the emergency department of a hospital in Copacabana, where an orthopedist is waiting. We’re very apprehensive about venturing into a live Covid scene after all those careful months but have no choice.

 

Imaging soon shows I have broken my kneecap clean across on the diagonal, and that the two halves have shifted, making surgery a necessity. My worst fall yet, I realize with dismay. After a Covid test (negative, of course) I am admitted to a hospital bed, the leg protected by an immobilizer with many Velcro straps. It’s still quite early, around 10am, when Victor goes home to get our things. When he returns, he’ll have to do a Covid test and wait for the result before joining me in the room. His 2-hour wait in the lobby with other patients will turn out to be stressful as he watches some patients test positive for Covid. Also, surgery, initially scheduled for 7pm, keeps getting delayed and they only wheel me back into the room at midnight. Victor stays the night, sleeping in his clothes on the hard, slippery couch. “Think of it like staying over at a friend’s,” I suggest.

 

They send me home the end of the following day, with my leg immobilized from ankle to thigh. I will need a walker and a wheelchair to get around, and the orthopedist predicts I’ll be back to normal in four months’ time. Four months?

What bad timing ...