Falling isn’t fun. The older you get, the less fun it is. It’s downright scary!
So I have these wonderful Stegmann wool clogs, the best slippers ever. Not too warm, not too cool, they have decent arch support and I can wear them with or without socks. They aren’t cheap, but worth it for sheer comfort. And I can also step outside in them at need with no worries.
Eventually, they wear out. The uppers part from the bottoms and my old pair was quite bad and I worried about tripping and falling in them. So I bought a brand new pair off eBay for half price.
One night, just after starting to wear the new slippers, I tripped and fell! I guess I wasn’t quite used to the feel of the new footwear yet. Just what I was hoping to avoid by buying a new pair! Brand new footwear can be trickier than old, comfy shoes!
I was in the basement attempting to bring two gallon jugs of water up, distilled for my bedroom humidifier, spring water for my lovely ceramic ThirstyCat fountain. Fell with both arms outstretched. Came down hard on my knees, banged them up bad, sprained both thumbs and my right hand and FRACTURED both wrists. Busted one of the water jugs….
Could have been worse. Didn’t injure my head, didn’t bust a kneecap. Life without using thumbs is, um, really difficult!
I couldn’t hold things, vacuum, mop, clean, open jars, pick up my cats, clean their boxes, drive or do much of anything really. I just sat on the sofa and watched movies a lot to distract me from pain. For sure blogging didn’t happen!
Neither fracture got diagnosed quickly. For both wrists, X-rays showed nothing untoward. I had to go get a second opinion and a CT scan before the right wrist ended up in a cast. And then there was considerable delay getting a CT scan approved by insurance for the left wrist. A rather sad statement about insurance and current health care is that the bone in my left wrist had actually healed on its own before the fracture was ever diagnosed!
I’m in physical therapy now and my wrists remain painful, but I hope eventually that will fade. My therapist gives me a half ton of exercises and stretches to do, which isn’t fun, but I have gotten a lot of my range of motion back. We are working on strengthening and getting my wrist joints used to taking some compression again.
I’m able to type, but a little goes a very long way at the moment. I may have to get some sales going in the near future when the weather clears as medical bills are arriving.