February 25, 2005

• It’s only a mild concussion.

  There’s more discomfort from the whiplash injury, but I’m okay… really I am.

  Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day.  We were almost out of water,
  so we went to the spring.  Our last two water runs had been small
  ones, just a few jugs to get us by, because of my breathing
  difficulties and the cold weather.  This time, we loaded as many
  buckets and jugs as we could get into the hatch and the rear footwell.

  I took the Mutt® ice-chipping tool out of the hatch and headed down to
  cut some steps in the sloping path and chip ice from the pallet we
  stand on to fill our buckets.  I slipped, with a loud squawk, on
  ice in the parking area before I’d even started down the slippery path
  to the waterhole.  Doug dropped the empty buckets he was carrying
  and rushed over to me.  Before he said anything, I said, “I hate concussions!”

  I’m experienced at this.  By now, I suppose I should be able to
  twist when I fall and land on a shoulder or something.  But it
  happens so fast — my feet go out, butt hits the ground, and then the
  head goes crack.

  Doug asked if I needed help, but I used the Mutt and levered myself to my feet.  I am
  experienced at this.  Too many times, with someone trying to help
  me up, I’ve lost my balance and ended up in a painful heap with them on
  the ground.  One fall at a time is quite enough.  I started
  looking on the bright side right away.  As I pulled myself up on
  the Mutt handle, I looked down that steep slope and felt glad that I’d
  slipped in the level parking area.  If I’d slipped on the path,
  I’d have slid to the bottom and probably have lost some skin, maybe
  even have landed in the water.

  I picked my way carefully down using the Mutt for stability.  The
  steps that other neighbors had cut were all but obliterated by recent
  snowfalls, but there were little foot-hollows to follow.  The
  worst part was the ice accumulation on the freight pallet beside the
  spring.  It’s more than a foot thick, maybe about sixteen
  inches.  In my profile pic you can see me crouching on the pallet,
  reaching down to fill a jug.  Imagine the reach and the balance
  needed to do it from an icy surface more than a foot higher than that.

  I chipped away at it without much effect until my shoulders were
  aching.   After Doug had brought down some empty buckets, I
  sent the Mutt back up with him and told him to bring me a pad to kneel
  on and had him scatter some kitty litter for traction on the icy pallet
  and the path.  Then I got down on my knees and started filling the
  jugs and buckets.

  Doug asked me if I was okay to do that.  I said I’d let him know
  if I wasn’t.  I said, “It’s not a bad concussion.  If I
  notice any nausea or…”  I was going to say double vision, but
  then I noticed that I was already seeing double.  I told him that
  and said I’d fill jugs as long as I could, then I’d quit and let him
  finish up.   As I worked, I was trying to remember how many
  concussions I’ve had.  I remembered one ER doctor telling me that
  damage from them is cumulative.  He cited the example of
  “punch-drunk” fighters.

  I recalled the “windfall” when a gust swept me off my feet in an icy
  parking lot, and the time my father-in-law’s horse ran me under a
  low-hanging branch and swept me out of the saddle.  That one broke
  my arm and cracked my skull.  There were four car wrecks, a few
  beatings, the slip on my icy front porch when I cracked my tailbone,
  that time I misjudged the overhead clearance crawling around under the
  shed….   I really don’t know how many, but I’m sure
  Muhammad Ali’s brain is a lot more beat-up than mine is.

  I filled ‘em and Doug carried ‘em, two at a time until there was only
  one left.  Then I carried that one up the path and we came
  home.  Before we stopped at the spring we had already gone up the
  valley to Sunshine and down to Camp Caswell to tack up posters for
  Greyfox’s next gun show.  It’s the same weekend as the start of
  the Iditarod.  I wonder how that will affect business.

  I didn’t even notice the whiplash until I was cooking dinner.  The
  headache had been there, steadily increasing all along, but my vision
  had cleared and there was no nausea, so I knew I was in no mortal
  danger.  It was just pain and some muscular weakness in my neck.
    I know how to deal with pain, and I’m used to weakness. 
  Periodically, it comes as part of the damned disease.  No big deal.

  Even so, as I was reading in bed last night about the characters
  swigging laudanum, my mind turned to drugs.  If I’d had any handy,
  I’d have taken some, maybe.  I dunno.  The option wasn’t
  readily available, so my NA clean date remains intact.  I did take
  some ibuprofen after dinner and another dose before sleep.

  When Greyfox called and I told him about the fall, he asked me why I
  don’t just do the driving, stay in the car and let Doug do the
  work.  I sputtered and stammered some lame answer about that
  meaning another short water run and my preferring to fill all the jugs
  so we don’t have to do it again so soon.  That was true as far as
  it went, but a deeper truth is that I just can’t sit idly by and let
  other people do my work for me unless I am genuinely incapable.  I
  have quite enough incidents of incapacity as it is.  If I’m not
  pulling my weight, earning my oxygen, I feel worthless.  The
  result of that is self-destructive behavior.  No thanks.

  I vented a little to Greyfox about how the various stresses of this
  past month have left me craving laudanum or any other available
  anodyne.  That must have triggered some of his 12-step
  programming.  He advised me to look for some positive factors, to
  find in all of this some reason for gratitude.  Since I’d already
  been doing as much self-consolation as I could manage, I left it at
  that and read myself to sleep.

  When I woke today, I had a new cause for gratitude.  I realized
  that I’ve known several women my age or younger who have broken a hip
  with a fall no harder than the one I took yesterday.  I’ve
  apparenly thus far escaped osteoporosis.  That is surely partially
  due to genetic factors.  I have big heavy bones.  Premature
  gray hair is a marker for osteoporosis, too, and many of my
  contemporaries are completely gray by now.  I have sprouted a few
  gray hairs.  My first mother-in-law found the first one on the day
  after my wedding, when I was fourteen.  But my hair remains
  predominantly copper red even now.

  We are told that regular weight-bearing exercise is the best preventive
  measure for osteoporosis.  I’ve been hauling buckets of water from
  that spring for amost 22 years.  For more than a decade I kept a
  garden at Elvenhurst across the highway.  There, I collected
  rainwater from the eaves in buckets and carried it to the garden and
  greenhouse.  When I want to make a pot of tea here, or fill a
  pet’s water dish, I have to lift a water jug to pour it.  There’s
  firewood, too.  Although Doug does most of the chopping and
  carrying, I lift wood to feed the fire.  Daddy did me an immense
  favor in more ways than one when he demanded that I pull my own weight.
  

  • 1:41 pm
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