My life as a shut-in, Day 3

Hello, everyone.

It's day number 3 in my first old age accident report.  Tuesday afternoon I managed to get my feet stuck and in a round of strapping tape blowing along the ground as I walked home from the grocery.

Down I went. Of course, I couldn't have fallen on any of the three-quarters of a mile of relatively soft ground between me and home. I had to go down on a driveway. And down I went!  Hard.

My grocery sack, slung over my shoulder, cushion to the fall. Just not very well.

I picked myself up, took note of the skin I took off two knuckles on my left hand, and proceeded the rest of the way home.  That was when I began to realize how badly I had banged myself up.

After a nap for a couple of hours- AKA going slightly into shock -, I woke to discover my left knee and right wrist swollen up like cantaloupes.  The new pretty much didn't work, certainly not to put weight on. I remember down at the other end of the house was a chair on wheels, so I blundered my way down the hall to collapse into it. With my good leg, I pushed myself back up to the den.

That evening, and all of yesterday, were pretty unpleasant.  Here is a useful tip:  if you have to bang yourself up, try to do it on one side rather than both.  Summoning the muscle power to raise yourself up from a seated position comma and lower yourself back into one,  is damn hard to do when you have one arm and one leg announcing they are just along for the ride.

About 8 p.m. Tuesday night, I decided I wasn't going to be good for much for the foreseeable future. I put myself to bed. Happily, old lessons I learned from a 2001 bicycle accident - which left me in a back and neck brace for 6 weeks - came back to mind and once I got into bed,  it was a pretty nice place to stay.

Yesterday was pretty much status quo. Everything hurt something fierce. I splinted my wrist and forearm just to keep it more stationary, as motion pained it.  I managed to do about an hour's worth of work and then headed for the couch. The rest of the day was an extended nap, lucid periods in which were punctuated by the kind of eccentric documentaries only  Japan's NHK Network can produce. 

All in all, this was a good thing, as I tend to brood and fret over being unable to look out for myself, living alone as I do. In the evening, I essayed some more trips in the office chair with wheels in between watching kids shows on PBS. The nice thing about those is that they don't  get interrupted for fundraising pitches. Hopefully, PBS offered up multiple episodes of a series I actually like, Odd Squad. If you have not seen it, it is worth your time. A production of the Fred Rogers Company, it is made by the Jim Henson group with all of their trademark ingenuity end wit.  It's a sort of James Bond spoof in which a super agency of kids solve odd events with math.

"Something very odd has just happened."

The only adults you see in the series are either hapless victims or mustache - twirling villains.  And like any good kid show, the jokes are pitched at an adult level.  I imagine parents who have to suffer through these experiences with small fry are grateful for that. 

I just find them hilarious. In one episode, an agent is put on trial for an alleged crime. when one of the agent - attorneys ask for a recess comma the judge says,”I think that's a fine idea,  everyone single file out to the playground,” and begins ringing a giant school bell on her bench.

You probably had to be there, and in pain.

I went to bed at 10 last night, and because I had slept most of the day, could not sleep most of the night.  I discovered just how boring and repetitive the BBC Radio series Newsday is. There was a terrorist attack in Afghanistan. There was a fire in a children's home in Guatemala. The Barcelona football team made an astonishing comeback. the number of illegal immigrants trying to get into the United States is way down, the government says, but they want a wall anyway. And a man pretending to be Justin Bieber on the internet in order to induce children to send him naughty photographs was indicted on 900 counts of various internet sex offenses in Australia.

Still, there's nothing like being on your back for 10 hours comma and when I got up this morning at 8:30 I was pleasantly surprised to discover I could stand up. my right wrist still hurts like crazy, but at least I can walk after a fashion. I look like Walter Brennan in The Real McCoys. But I can walk. Pushing myself around in a wheelchair gets old. It tends to be much more challenging on carpet. And, for reasons I will never divine, the doorway to the bathroom is slightly more narrow than all the other doors in the house. As sensitive authors used to write, we draw a veil over that scene. 

So just before 9 a.m. I plopped into my desk chair to take part in an interview online for this Saturday's program in the Rare Book Cafe.  I was in a hoodie, as buttons are still beyond me.  trust me to have banged up my right wrist in a world of right-handed objects when I am otherwise left handed.

 Undaunted, I pretended to be appearing as a fryer from one of Shakespeare's plays, given that our guest was Veronica Matthews, artistic director of the St. Petersburg Shakespeare Festival.  Were I slightly more popeyed, I could have passed for Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein.  But everyone went along with the gag, the interview went well, and I promptly lay down to take a nap as soon as it was over.

Now it is 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I have answered my email, and am updating the Henry Bemis Books blog and social media pages.  Since rehab has to hurt, I have been forcing myself to use my right hand to type. It is a very Presbyterian character - building experience.

In a way, my timing was perfect. Though yesterday and today were lovely days in the high 70s,  another bipolar episode is coming in the weather map. The temperature is supposed to drop 35 or 40 degrees in the next couple of days. The television weather people, who just love their pavlovian jokes,  are teasing rumors of snow in order to watch everyone cause traffic jams going out to clear the shelves up bread and milk.  I can live with cold while disabled, because I can't really do anything outside anyway. I am a long way from being able to do serious yard work. And, if it gets very cold, it will not stay very cold for very long. If I keep pushing myself to snap out of this, and learn to watch for loops of strapping tape blowing along the ground, I should be back as new in no time flat.