Well then stay out of those places!
It’s amazing to me that something can be steady and consistent over the years, and then something changes in our checklist of abilities or behavior — even if we’ve seen it coming for a long time, like gradual changes in our ability to keep balance, our sense of physical space around us — and our world potentially falls apart. And I’m not using the word “falls” lightly.
On Nov 27, I posted an article about a serious fall I had achieved. 🙂 As a side note, that day is the birthday for Jimi Hendrix, Doug (former colleague at GE), and my great Aunt Ruth, the model for the annoying aunt in the Aunt Ruth Grammar stories.
Anyway, last Monday (April 1) at almost midnight, I had my second serious (Emergency Room) fall. I was ready to go to bed. My wife had been asleep for an hour or so, and I was still up, chatting with my son-in-law (my younger daughter’s husband). He’s the pastor at a church in Virginia just north of Lynchburg.
So anyway, I walked into the bedroom and it was dark. I could’t see a thing. I tried feeling my way across the room to my bed. When your eyes can’t focus on something, it’s easy to lose one’s balance. (Try standing on one foot, and then try doing it with your eyes closed. Is it more difficult for you to do it with your eyes closed? It is for me.)
Standing there in the dark (on both legs) , I lost balance and fell hard. I remember thinking, “Well, maybe the bed will break my fall; or maybe I’ll land on the mattress.”
As it turned out, my fall was broken by the corner bedpost, upon which my eye took the brunt of the hit. At contact, I saw an explosion of bright, white light and what looked like fireworks. (I found out later that bright light is common in concussions.) My PA daughter took one look and said, “We’ve got to get you to the hospital.”
The long and the short of it is that I was in the Lynchburg hospital until about 3am with my wife and son-in-law.The doctor said I was lucky. I could see fine. My eyeball itself sustained no damage. I had lots of bruising on the socket around the eye and several stitches to boot.
But Praise the Lord that it wasn’t worse than that!
That was the second serious fall in about 5 months. No more, please.