A Tale Of My Two Left Feet
I’ve never been graceful, but this is ridiculous
It’s a bitch getting old, of course maybe this has nothing to do with it, but I need some kind of excuse!
I’m not the epitome of health. I’ve had various issues since about the age of 7 as I recall and let me tell you, they haven’t improved as I’ve gotten older. This covers everything from numerous pneumonias requiring hospitalization, deteriorating posterior tibial tendons in my ankles, to type 2 diabetes resulting in peripheral neuropathy. I’ll elaborate more in a bit.
So let’s get on with my tragic tale.
Last Saturday I was helping my children move from their apartment to a single family home. Being nice, and the fact that my wife wants a new couch, we decided to give them our current couch.
We’ve had it for close to 20 years and by virtue of it spending most of those years in a formal living room. It didn’t suffer much wear-and-tear since it never got used except for those years when we hosted Thanksgiving for the family. So basically once a year at most.
Just know that the couch and my health are related.
So what happened
My kids rented a moving truck to transport their belongings from the old place to the new. After their first run, they came to our house to pick up the couch, and a area rug that we no longer needed.
As you might expect, I pitched in to help load the couch into the truck. After struggling to get it through the front door of the house, we navigated it to back of the truck and prepared to load it.
The thought that kept repeating in my head was “Be careful not to trip on the ramp.” You know the ramp I’m talking about, the one that extends out of the back to make the truck easier to load.
Well, I don’t know if my peripheral neuropathy played any role in things or not, but I have it pretty bad in both feet. Anyway, somehow I caught my foot on the ramp and went airborne. This resulted in me dropping the couch, and flying over the ramp landing on my left side and chest on the concrete driveway. I also understand that I knocked my adult daughter over causing her to land on top of me while I was down.
I don’t remember that happening, but it could be because I had the wind knocked out of me and the pain distracting me from thinking of anything other than I needed to get up and shake it off.
After a few moments I got up on all fours, still having trouble catching my breath and in a great deal of pain. I did manage to make it to my feet with some difficulty as you might imagine.
At this point, my day helping the kids move was over.
They managed to get the couch into the truck; stupidly I lifted the ramp and slid it back into the truck. How or why I did this is beyond me, but I did it anyway and then doubled over in pain.
A couple minutes later I hopped in my car and followed the moving truck back to the new house while struggling to minimize the pain. Once there, I planted myself in a chair and didn’t get up again until it was time to go home — yes, I drove the car home.
Did the pain subside or did I die
In typical “me” fashion, I told my wife I would be fine, “I just pulled a muscle.” With a sneer, she simply said, “Okay”, not trying to make it sound too believable. I knew she thought I was full of you-know-what.
I don’t think I slept a wink that first night. Because of the pain I had to lay on my back, but that isn’t how I like to sleep. I sleep on my side, my left side most often. Of course, that wasn’t going to happen, it just hurt too much.
I got out of bed around 8AM; I didn’t want to wake my wife. Well, it didn’t work. She woke up and looking at me asked if I was okay. Being the dumb ass that I am, of course I said, “Yes, I’m fine.” Okay, I was fine until I tried to sit up and my whole left side began to spasm. I felt like every muscle in my side seized up. I doubled-up in pain causing me to stop breathing mid-breath. That was pain like I’ve never felt before.
Okay, I lived but it wasn’t without a lot of effort
“Do you want me to take you to the ER?”, my wife asked.
Well, after swallowing my foolish pride, I told her yes, I think I should. With difficulty, I brushed my teeth and got dressed. Guess what, I wouldn’t let my wife drive so I drove to the ER, and my wife road shotgun, not happily, but she did it.
The wait wasn’t long. I was having x-rays taken about 5 minutes after I finished filling out the paperwork. I was led to an exam room to await the doctor. He came to introduce himself, but couldn’t tell me much until the radiologist reviewed the x-rays.
After about 1/2 an hour, the doctor came in and told me that I had fractured my ribs. Many of you that have been through this ordeal probably had already surmised, but me, no I thought I had only pulled a muscle.
“So this is what fractured ribs feel like. Well, I don’t like it.”, I said as my wife just smiled and shook her head.
Takeaways from my stupidity
First, and most frustrating is the fact that I still should be able to do something simple like this without hurting myself. Unfortunately, it seems that I can’t.
If I think about it, what I learned from this is that I should be honest with myself about my condition when I get hurt. Oh, and to be honest with my wife when she asks me if I’m okay.
Actually, this was a big one. It got me thinking that I need to take better care of myself, both mentally and physically. I believe that if I don’t, my later years will be far less pleasant than they could have been. It concerns me because I never was this accident prone. I wasn’t exactly graceful, but certainly wasn’t accident prone.
I’m hoping that this was nothing more than me being careless and tripping. I’d hate to think that it is a symptom of something more serious. As a result, I’m going to take this as a lesson and schedule an appointment with my doctor to get my annual physical. It’s coming due anyway, so why not get it done.
My long term goal now is to pay more attention to my health, taking my existing conditions more seriously. This is something that I do most of the time, but not as consistently as I should and my test results prove it.
If you have health issues and are anything like me, please take them seriously.
I just hope that I’m not already too late because of my stubbornness.
Oh, and a final tip would be to never sneeze because this hurts like nobodies business.
Until next time…