There are plenty of important things I could blog about, but I’m in a slough of despond so I’m going to share. Fun? Not! Maybe it will spark some regeneration for my spirit though.

Last week I got a cold, which for me was a severe cold. I often say, I never get sick, but it really isn’t true. I do sometimes have a logy period, or a slightly leaky nose, or a persistent small cough. What I never do is alter any of my activities due to same. Last week though, I woke up with a fever of over 101 degrees F on a work day, and I felt really lousy. Even my boss, hard-hit because we were already short-handed, pointed out that I should rest for at least 24 hours. I also had a painfully scratchy throat, so I went to urgent care (is that rest? I sat around waiting for three hours) and got cleared on both strep and Covid counts. By that time the fever portion was over.

The next couple of days I was still feeling substandard, so I took it easy, in my own fashion. On Sunday we went to see Falstaff in San Jose, and my husband drove, dropping me off to minimize the need for me to walk. We went out to dinner afterward, where I drank only water. On Monday, I worked at the store from 11-5, choosing when possible less strenuous duties, and rested the remainder of the evening afterward. On Tuesday I rested all day. Toward the end of that day I found myself thinking, I’m back! Bill was at class, so I made myself dinner, then got up from the table to walk into the living room.

I’m not sure what happened then. I fell, obviously, I remember falling. I don’t remember why I fell, or why I couldn’t break my fall with my arms, but I face-planted onto the side of my head, leading my glasses frames to carve a second eyebrow under my regular one, and deeply bruising the entire orbit of my right eye socket. I didn’t know this immediately, of course. What I knew is that I was on my hands and knees howling as buckets of blood poured from my face and spread across the dining room floor.

For a while I just lived the moment. Then it occurred to me to wonder if I had broken anything, like my nose (also bleeding) or my eye socket. I couldn’t see anything, and I wasn’t worried enough to drip blood onto the bathroom floor (newish) or any carpeted area. I looked outside to see if anyone was in the parking lot then tried to call a neighbor, but no luck. I left a message for my son to try to reach my husband. I poked my face and decided based on the pain level (low) that nothing was broken.

Being female, my next thoughts were of cleaning. The hot tub towels were piled nearby since it was raining outside, so I used one to mop the floor and my face, not in that order. I noticed blood on the tablecloth, removed it, found more on the table, wiped it up. By this time my own bleeding was manageable with a smaller towel, so I carefully removed my shoes and examined my socks, then ventured into the laundry/bath area to get one. By the time my husband got home an hour or so after the event, all visible-to-humans blood was gone and the linens were in the dryer.

I had–and have–a huge shiner around my eye, and my husband felt the laceration warranted stitches, so off to the ER with us. That took four hours, and I got four stitches, one for each hour. We got to bed at 2:30 am.

Less than six months after achieving Medicare, I am an elderly person who injured herself in a fall. For 2-3 weeks I will be either sharing the monstrosity that is now my face with others or, more likely, wearing a vision-impairing eye patch, which invokes curiosity but not nausea. A choice of social nicety over efficient function? Mostly I am thinking that once seen, this deformity won’t be erased from memory, and I don’t want my customers and co-workers to retain that image of me. But I will not be able to completely shake the image myself.

I wish I could feel more pleased with my relative resilience than despairing over my fragility, but Proximity Matters. If I don’t have any more time-absorbing, feature-destroying, work-missing incidents for, say six months, I will start to feel safer, but at the moment I feel justifiably paranoid. This could be the start of the precipitous slope to disability, aka the time when I start becoming my mother.