Falling with MS, Old Age, and Disability. It's About Getting Up, Stupid!

When I was three years old, on Christmas Eve, my mother ran out of cigarettes. She started downstairs from Aunt Vi's famous Christmas Eve party, to get a pack from our apartment. I begged her not to go, and would spend my young life begging her to quit smoking. She would spend all my young life trying and failing. (In her 60s after ONE hypnosis session, Mom stopped forever.)

As Mom walked downstairs a visiting Dalmatian ran down and tripped Mom. Mom grabbed the railing, dislocating her shoulder. That was the first person falling I had ever seen.

When I was 4, Aunt Vi bought me a stuffed Dalmatian (Oh, my gosh, same type of dog!) puppy and I skipped (I SKIPPED, I DID NOT RUN) from Aunt Vi's car, cradling it and I slipped on a crack in the sidewalk, falling smack on my forehead. (The Aries' curse.) The elders rubbed a knife across the growing bump.

After visiting a dam in southern Indiana, with her 9 year old, Mom tripped, dislocating her shoulder again.

My partner fell after flying out of our studio apt. in Seattle while our blind landlord worked during a power outage on our leaking kitchen sink pipe. Later she slipped on ice after getting a coffee at Starbuck's for me. Such a hard fall, and she didn't move afterwards. I had a cane and had to ask a video store cashier to run over and check on her. (In Seattle we help each other like that, strangers--it's a beautiful thing.) A few years later she tripped, while carrying laundry, over a fan, breaking her wrist.

For awhile I thought people around me were falling at a statistically high rate. But, now, at 53, the fall I remember best is my first fall as an adult after having MS DX 15 years.

Not an unusual day, just making my breakfast, toast and OJ, when I stepped over to the counter and down I went. I would replay it over in my head a hundred times. The fall was not so bad, I fell as I had been taught in drama class, but I couldn't get up. Falling is easy, getting up is the trick I have not mastered. My partner is too weak to help me up. 911.

And so it went 6 months later, I was cleaning, bent down to pick something up and straight down I went, hitting my face on our beautiful African slate coffee table. A little blood and 911. After that I had to get an alarm necklace, wore it for years, HATED the feeling that I was a collared dog.
But, yes, I had to use it twice. Finally, since moving to an assisted living home I can put it away. It comes out only when I am alone.

Funny, I never minded the cane, walker, scooter, wheelchair, or power chair, but that necklace...seemed so permanent. Falls for the disabled and elderly are horrible events. They know it could be the beginning of the end. It baffles me, really, we are so close to the ground...

Gives more significant to "falling" in love. That can be very, very, hard.