Martha on a Roll/Stroll
So this series of blog postings really got its start on January 20, 2022, or two days after Martha’s fall. On that date, she re-posted to FaceBook a link to one of Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” cartoons. It showed his character, Peppermint Patty, lying in bed and asking plaintively, “If you wake up, but don’t open your eyes, will the day go away?”
To that, Martha added her own comment”
I'm in the ER for the second time in three days. I fell outside my house on Tuesday, hurt my right hip & inner thigh, was taken by ambulance to the ER, where I spent the good part of the day, since they were slammed with covid cases. An x-ray & CTscan later, they determined that my hip was not broken, but that I had two hairline pelvic fractures. Need healing, not operating, but quite painful. Painkillers, bedrest. Wednesday morning, but my left side started giving me intermittent shooting pains, which were much stronger this a.m. Told by nurses' call-in line to go to ER within an hour! This cartoon spoke to me when I realized what we had to do. I've had an x-ray, blood work, and an EKG, & am waiting for results. My dearest wish is that whatever I have, I can go home! Please do something fun today & think of me.
Needless to say, her friends …and she’s got a bunch of them…freaked and bombed her (and me) with questions. What happened? Where had it happened? Was she all right? Because Martha herself couldn’t answer them all (at the time, she was still on serious meds. Put her out like a light), I figured I had better do so for her. So, on the same day, I posted the following:
Hi, Everyone,
If you read Martha’s posts, you already know all about this, but, on the off chance you don’t…
As you know she took a bad fall on Tuesday morning. We spent a day in the ER and learned that she had a couple of hairline fractures in her pelvis. Nothing too serious, and no surgery, but major pain for sometime to come.
We got home and yesterday went sorta okay. But then, this morning, she woke up in major pain and we rushed off to the ER. We had another lovely day involving long waits, a CAT scan, a couple of X-rays, and a few blood tests…after which we were informed that it wasn’t a heart attack and no undetected breaks. (Insert “Whew” here.)
We came home and I purchased a *very* large amount of Barbecue, which we then ate a great deal of. Mostly beef brisket and pork ribs.
The good news is that Martha is feeling much better…and enjoyed the barbecue. In fact, she wolfed down a goodly portion. But, given that she’d had nothing to eat all day…
Anyway, I think she’s on the road to recovery.
Cheers
~mjt
That was all. I didn’t attach any pictures. I just did that one little posting. But, it had legs, as the Hollywood types say (or I’m told they say it). Our friends responded on a grand scale. Before it was all done and said, we had 60 comments and 70 “likes,” “cares,” or “loves.”
I knew, then, that I would have to keep them in the loop. I would have to let people know how she was doing…how quickly she was recovering.
So, after that, every couple of days, I began posting little news flashes to FB. Here was where we stood. Here was what was happening. Here was how Martha felt. Here was how much pain she was in.
*
The next installment of the postings came on January 24. In it, I wrote:
Hi, Everybody,
Well, I promised an updated on our situation. Here ’tis.
Martha is doing a lot better. (I’ll let her provide more details on her own FB page.) She is able to move a bit more now, she has been able to walk a few steps with her Rollator Walker, and we’ve been able to get in a couple of outings around the ‘hood in our snazzy new wheelchair.
She is, however, still feeling quite a lot of pain, particularly when she moves or walks. That, alas, seems to be SOP with this kind of injury. One of the doctors at the hospital said something about it lasting as much as a month.
But, fingers crossed that things get better much faster than that.
Anyway, that’s where we are at the moment. As I say, I’ll leave it to Martha to provide more details.
Actually, she didn’t post anything on her own Facebook page — at least, not right then — and so her friends got after me. So, the next day, I wrote:
Hi, Everyone,
This is just an update to the update 🙂
Martha continues to improve. She is still in pain (ouch!), particularly first thing in the morning and just before we go to bed. But, she says that it is loosening up a bit. She has also been able to get out in her wheelchair a couple of times. We even managed to go out for lunch!
Our biggest problem at the moment is getting the wheelchair in and out of the house. There is a serious, three-inch concrete step outside and that’s almost impossible to do a wheelie over. Today I got a custom ramp, though, and that works just fine. The wheelchair heads over it without a problem.
But...I forgot about the actual door threshold. That is still a serious barrier and I have to see about getting another, smaller ramp. Insert here the sound of me banging my head rhythmically, but with significant force, on the wall. If you are unfamiliar with the phenomenon, think of someone whacking a coconut with a croquet mallet. Similar sort of effect.
But, anyway, we’re making progress!
I left out a lot here. I didn’t talk about our …well, my…adventures getting the wheelchair in the first place. That was…amusing. That’s one word for it, anyway. I did manage to run a photo of Martha at Roots, the restaurant at which we’d lunched. I’ll add it here.
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The next time I got around to Facebook was five days later. On January 30, I wrote:
Hi, Everyone,
So here’s an update to the update of the update 🙂
Martha continues to improve. Her level of pain is much reduced. (Whew!) We also saw her orthopedist on Thursday and he was very encouraging. He said that, yes, it is going to take a while for her hairline fractures to heal, but they *will* heal in time. We just need to take it easy.
Meanwhile, Martha has been able to move about much more than she did before. She is actually starting to walk a bit inside the house with the services of her trusty Rollator Walker.
We have also used the wheelchair to good effect. We’ve been out to lunch a couple of times (btw, special thanks to Roots, @rootsbistro and rootsonthesquare.com/, where the food was excellent and the folks went out of their way to be helpful).
And, this afternoon, we managed a wheelchair walk/roll down at Booty's Road Park. (See the photo below.) Weather was great and it was fun getting outside for a while. Though, just fyi, I’ve discovered that pushing a wheelchair for a mile or so is a surprisingly thorough upper body workout 🙂
Oh, and as of Friday, we became the proud possessors of an official temporary handicap parking permit! A triumph!
More to come!
Martha At Roots
And, well, that was about it for January. At least, I can’t seem to locate any other postings on my Facebook. Though, I’m not the most organized individual in the world, so it is possible that there are others.
Also, at this time, I still didn’t think the postings were going to go on for much longer. I figured a week or two, tops, and then they would dwindle away to nothing.
But…
Partly because people kept asking for updates, and commenting on the ones I’d already posted, I realized that a whole new thing was getting started. I was going to be posting about Martha and our adventures for quite some time to come.
Plus…
I had begun to realize, however dimly at this point, that there was more here than met the eye.
Specifically, I was beginning to understand that this was an important moment in my life…in our lives. Yes, Martha’s condition was only temporary. As the doctor said, she would heal. Soon enough, she would be back to where she was (in fact, as I write this, in April, she pretty much is. I’ve just escorted her to the door while she is off to her Tai Chi class. She took her cane, but she probably won’t need it).
But just the same…
As I said last time, we are no longer young. We are no longer even middle aged. Mind you, we are not old. We remain vital and energetic and, well, bluntly, alive. We have years, maybe decades, of new, exciting, enjoyable adventures ahead of us.
But, even so, they will be adventures undertaken with new considerations. We will have to think about new things…consider new difficulties…pursue new advantages.
Or, to put it all another way…
By George, we seem to have reached one of those transition places between one stage of our lives, and another…
Changes not necessarily for the worse…possibly for the better…but either way…
Inevitable.
*
Until next time…
Onward and Upward.
~mjt
Copyright©2022 Michael Jay Tucker