In the hospital, my Storm Trooper brace arrived shortly after a kind nurse helped me wash tangles of vomit from my hair and I scrubbed away my barf breath. There’s no way to look good in this situation, I’ve told myself.
It’s been 26 days since I fell.
It’s been 26 days of rest, recovery and bouts of worry.
For what it’s worth, it’s taken me about 23 of those 26 days to bribe myself with SourPatch Kids to sit at the desk and try to write again.
This is a test. Please bear with me.
‘It’s OK if the words don’t come as easily as the grocery store lists I text The Weed.’ (We always need yogurt and paper towels in this house.)
‘It’s OK if the spellings are funky at first.’ (They are.)
‘It’s OK if the composition of what I put down is flustered.’ (It is.)
‘Cut yourself some slack. The doctors said to.’ (This is hard.)
Still, it’s been 26 days. I think it’s time I try to be me again.
Late on Thursday, Feb. 1, I fell down the stairs in my home. Yes. It’s just that silly.
Since then, I have been charged with wearing an unwieldy neck/back brace (I look like a Storm Trooper — an angry, middle-aged Storm Trooper.) and staying quiet … All in the hopes of healing the compression fractures in my cervical and thoracic vertebrae, reversing the effects of the brain hemorrhage and quieting the dizziness, disorientation and nausea brought on by the concussion.
In the first few days after I returned home from the hospital, all I wanted to do was sit on my bed in the darkened room and try to figure out how the hell I fell down 15 carpeted stairs in the home I have known for nearly 20 years.
For the life of me, I can’t remember how or why I fell.
Some therapists say this is a good thing. I guess they are right. Falling down the stairs and literally breaking my neck is bad. Knowing I did it by tripping over my own feet or simply stumbling won’t ease this embarrassment.
The night I fell, The Weed heard me slip as I walked down the stairs, he says. He was dozing in our bedroom. He then heard a thunderous thump as me and my lovely lady lumps landed in a contorted heap on the hardwood floor below.
By the time The Weed trundled from the bed to see me mangled, I had vomited a few times and was trying to ‘crab walk’ on my hands and knees up the stairs to the second floor, he says.
I made it up the stairs and collapsed on the landing. There, I vomited some more and commanded The Weed to get me some blankets because I was cold. As The Weed tells it, he obliged and then began Googling head injuries and how to handle them.
Apparently, his research told him to go to the closet and get the remote-controlled Star Wars At-At Walker he received for Christmas and try to entertain me with it. I have no memory of The Weed driving the At-At Walker at me or him trying to cheer me. There are photos, I’m told. I have not seen them.
After some time of me being most vomitus and pretty incoherent on the floor, The Weed realized I was really hurt. He called 9-1-1 and promptly stowed his toy before the ambulance crew arrived and questions ensued, he says.
As it turns out, there were questions. The first question The Weed was asked that night was by an officer who responded with the ambulance crew: ‘Was your wife suicidal?’ the sheriff’s deputy asked. (Jesus … ‘I didn’t twice live through treatment for breast cancer to end it all by throwing myself down the dog-hair dusted stairs in my home!’ At least, that’s how I would have answered that question anyway.)
While The Weed was asked about my mental state, I, reportedly, was treating the EMT crew most cruelly. Having a head injury, I don’t remember but, apparently, I was a true banshee to the poor EMTs trying to stabilize my neck and strap me to a board for transport to the hospital.
For this, I am sorry. Mostly.
Yesterday, I received a bill for the ambulance ride and EMT service, $1,750. That’s a whole lot of cabbage for an 8-mile trip to the nearest emergency room after the crew responded to the wrong house in the first place. Thankfully, insurance will pay for most of that and I won’t have to look those poor EMTs in the face again. I am sorry I was such a shit. Mostly.
After I arrived at the ER, my clothes were cut away/destroyed, an oxygen line was shoved up my nose, heart monitors were attached to my breast cancer-scarred body and a group of medical folks began to question, evaluate me.
I have hazy memories of being pushed into a freezing room with a large CT scan machine and being handed a sort of vacuum nozzle that I was supposed to hold near my mouth in case I started vomiting while technicians scanned my body for injury. When I was handed the vacuum nozzle, I remember thinking to myself, ‘I’m going to suck out my eyeball with this stupid thing!’ Fortunately, I did not use the vacuum for any vomit or eyeball extractions.
The next hazy memory I have was when someone asked me an ‘orienting’ question: ‘Who is the president of the United States?’ I promptly, loudly responded: ‘Donald Fucking Trump.’ I don’t remember hearing any laughter to the response, so, sadly, I knew I was correct.
The final hazy ER memory I have was when a quiet female physician looked me in the eyes and told me to focus on her. She explained that I had a head injury and would be transferred to the intensive care floor, I might need surgery to repair the brain hemorrhage and I was likely to feel pretty sick for the next few days.
Girlfriend spit the truth.
By the time I was situated in an IC room, my vomit was soaking through the hospital gown and blankets I was now wearing. Barfing while still wearing the cervical collar the EMTs put on me was getting to be my jam. It wasn’t as difficult as I feared it would be.
For the remainder of that night, I have morphine-adled memories of being awakened by nurses and technicians to check in on me. There were more orienting questions. There was more vomit. Slowly, though, the antinausea drugs started working and the only thing left was confusion.
Waking in that dark room surrounded by beeping, buzzing medical equipment was one of the most unsettling sensations I’ve ever felt. Not immediately understanding where I was, why I was there and why I felt so horrid was terrible.
I made it through the night with help from a set of caring, understanding nurses and assistants. The next day, I was moved from intensive care into a few rooms on ‘normal’ hospital floors. (That weekend was a busy one at Exempla Good Samaritan Hospital, I’m told. Patients with the flu were stacking up and being airlifted to nearby facilities. So, I was transferred to different rooms a few times to accommodate those sicker.)
Eventually, a trauma surgeon visited me and told me to expect a series of tests and scans to check for any fractures or ‘missed injuries.’ I told the surgeon my right wrist and sternum were smarting. He inspected them and the bruises on the left side of my face and told me to ‘hold tight.’ There would be answers.
One of the most difficult parts of my time in the hospital came later that afternoon when I was wheeled in for a MRI. The nausea, head-splitting aches and disorientation were being held at bay by a host of medicines. Still, when the technicians blind-folded me and pushed me into the MRI machine, I nearly lost myself.
As the 45-minute scan progressed, I tried to stay calm by singing ‘Holiday’ by The Scorpions. Unfortunately, I could not remember the lyrics and the notion of me not knowing this song I have sung to myself for years while going through similar scans scared and downright shocked me. I started crying and tried not to focus on the deafening noises the MRI machine was pinging at me and my head injury.
To describe it, I felt like a person with a sensory disorder trapped in an oil drum while someone beat on the outside with a baseball bat. I never want to endure that again. That was a really bad bit.
After the MRI, I was returned to my room and given a toothbrush and paste to scrub the past several hours of vomit from my mouth. Later, a kind nurse would help me wash the technicolor vomit and bile from the tangles of hair now pasted around my head. That (the basic hygiene) was a much better bit.
In the end, the MRI revealed the compression fractures in my vertebrae. The neck/back brace was ordered and a new technician fit it to me. The recovery road ahead was starting to come into focus.
The next morning, I ordered a regular solid food breakfast and again met with the trauma surgeon, neurologist and various therapists. All agreed it was time for me to return home. Thankfully. (By this time, The Weed was texting me photos of the dogs standing by the door at home waiting for me to return. Ugh. Sad.)
Fast forward through weeks of recovery in darkened rooms; confusion that left me calling our Alexa device ‘Erica’ on numerous occasions; head-spinning dizziness; hot-water showers marred by an obtrusive brace but helped by a stool I can sit on; and, other indiscreet tidbits … We’re basically all up to speed.
It’s been 26 days since I fell.
I sure do feel embarrassed by the level of injury this fall caused, the disruption it has brought about for me and The Weed and the general detour this has been to our lives.
The pain is mostly diminished. I’m no longer taking medications for aches. I can make a Blue Apron meal without needing help opening containers or washing dishes.
I think I am starting to feel like myself again. The confusion is getting better. I can read books and retain what I’ve read. It’s taken me more than 90 minutes to write this. It was a test, though. I want to be thorough.
I think the embarrassment of this fall will always be there for me. Falling feels so silly, so preventable.
Still, I know it’s the getting up that is most important now.
