Falling Down

As happens so often with most things in life, it begins innocently and without agenda. In this case, it’s time to walk Mojo. He’s just eaten dinner and his bowels are eagerly pointing him to the great outdoors for post-dining relief. I have him on his leash, poop bags in hand. My flip flops go on with nary a second thought, and we head out to the deck on our way to the mean streets of Wild Dunes. A repeat of a drill done at least a thousand times in the almost two years since the big guy joined our family. It’s been raining and everything has a nicely glazed sheen to it. Beautiful. And, then, fate decides to hiccup. As I work my way down to the first landing, my weight distribution shifts just a bit and the combination of the rain-slickened staircase and my less than tenacious flip flops causes me to lose my balance. My feet take off in a direction I had surely not anticipated, my body goes horizontal, and in that micro-mini second of awareness, you know nothing good is about to happen to you. My body crashes downward to be intercepted by the edge of the last step above the landing. I hit very hard and the pain shoots through me as no pain I could ever recall. I am in disbelief but the spectacular pain in my back reminds me every passing second now that what I think has happened, in fact, has.

As I lay on the landing, my right hand spastically and reflexively reaching for my back, my various body parts extend at oddly inconvenient angles. Cattywampus, some might say. Others might legitimately have mistaken me for the damaged scarecrow in “The Wizard of Oz” laying in a disorganized pile by the side of the road. I moan, I scream, I grunt. In my own mind, I am groaning loud enough to be heard on Neptune. Lily, however, is no more than twenty feet away behind closed doors and, apparently, hasn’t picked up on the tumult just steps away. My mind is racing: Have I truly damaged myself? Can I get up? Have I severed my spine? Has Mojo run off? Do I still own two kidneys? Do I need an ambulance? The pain is now at DEFCON 4 and not subsiding. Lily does emerge and is aghast. She asks me if an ambulance might be needed, but for a few moments I think maybe I can shake it off. All I need to do, I say, is walk. Lily takes the leash from the amazingly patient Mojo and we head down the street. I don’t think we are more than 60 feet from our driveway when the reality sets in that “walking it off” is not the kind of serious medicine that is called for here. We head immediately back to the house and then off to the nearest emergency room.

After three hours of lolling about a seemingly empty ER, the diagnosis is presented to Lily and me: a broken rib. Internal organs: good. Internal bleeding: none. I am sent packing with a prescription for oxycodone and a shrug from the doctor that suggests there’s really nothing else to be done. I should be fine in maybe 4 to 6 weeks. What they didn’t tell me is that it might also be a good idea not to laugh, sneeze, burp, hiccup, and, for all I know, fart. Those things can set off the kind of shock waves in my way too fragile body that are not to be casually invited.

In the aftermath, when folks learn of my mishap and, naturally, want to learn how it happened, I have the strongest urge to tell them it was an unfortunate outcome from a hang gliding incident, or maybe a spelunking adventure, or possibly a heroic effort to save someone from a burning house. But, life doesn’t dish these things up quite so neatly, or quite so romantically. No, I fell victim to the mundane not the sublime, slipping and falling at my own home engaged in the simplest of tasks, and now my life is out of joint for weeks. No golf, no running, no swimming, no running with Mojo, no nothing. Nada, zip, zero.

What was it Robert Burns said almost 250 years ago? “The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry, and leave us nothing but grief and pain, for promised joy!” Yeah, maybe for the hang gliders and skydivers among us. For the rest of us… I’m not sure we are such worthy illustrations for Mr. Burns’ lofty thoughts.