I hope everyone had a wonderful, fulfilling, and filling Thanksgiving day.
Mine was a bit different than all the 63 years before.
So, we were going to have Thanksgiving dinner at my younger son’s place. They just moved out of an apartment into a big house with 2 stories. This was our first visit to the house and my daughter-in-law was taking us on a tour.
I’ve been feeling better with the weight loss, I thought I could slowly go up, then down the stairs.
(you can see where this is going…right? Yep.)
Their stairs look a lot like the ones in the photo. Carpet, with a lip/overhang on each step. That’s even the color of their carpet.
The house is beautiful and after living in a 2-bedroom apartment with 2 kids (now adults), this house is fantastic.
And they had us take our shoes off at the door to preserve the carpet. This will be important in a second.
A word about me: there’s a reason for my clutziness. I have had a diagnosis of MS that came in my mid-20s. It’s been gone for years but this last couple of years we’ve seen a rise in some of the symptoms–especially balance. I can fall just standing still.
I also have what my doc terms “the worst case of fibromyalgia” that he’s ever seen. And that is a problem with this tendency to lose balance. My parents used to say my middle name should have been “Grace” because that’s the only way I could have any. Yeah, falling down is a real THING.
So, when I went upstairs to see the house, I got to the second from the top step of the landing and somehow I fell.
It’s normal to fall down stairs, it takes real talent to fall UP them. And so that’s what I did.
The stairs had a small “lip” to them, about an inch. All we can figure is that I didn’t get the right foot high enough to step up. So, I caught my toes on that lip and fell forward.
I’m talented.
I not only fell UP the stairs, I managed to hit my head on the wall. I may have a very light concussion, it did take a few minutes to let the “bells” stop ringing.
So, I’m sitting on the landing step waiting to see if I can make it down the steps. My husband and daughter-in-law are staying with me to see the same thing. The head is hurting but that’s it. My son grabbed me some ibuprofen to take.
As I said, I have a great talent for falling. I knew I would be feeling the jarring of the whole body a few hours later. That’s the way it’s always been.
But yet, I did something even better. (if better can be said about a fall.)
Now, remember how I said that I tripped over that lip on the step. And I was barefoot.
It’s at this point that I am putting in the warning…
IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO ICKY THINGS, DO NOT KEEP SCROWLING BECAUSE I HAVE A PHOTO THAT IS VERY ICKY.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED–STOP READING NOW.
So, as I said, I was talented enough to fall UP the stairs, after catching my toe on the lip of the step.
That’s important, the catching of the toe, not the talent.
THIS is my toe. Well, rather the foot with the big toe.
What you are seeing is what I did to that toe as I fell. That’s my nail, sticking up at almost 45 degrees.
I didn’t notice it until I felt something move across my foot. It was blood. It bled a lot.
And these two pictures were taken when my daughter-in-law was cleaning up a second time so we could go home after the meal.
This is cleaner than it was. The first time she tried to clean it, it was a massive amount of blood between the toes, across my foot, and onto their clean stairs. The amount of blood was so epic, a vampire would love it.
This is the stairs where that blood fell before we got a towel. I didn’t think a foot wound would bleed that much. We had several gauze pads full of blood in addition to the stuff you see here.
So, I’m going to take pain meds and hope this thing falls off on its own before Monday.
If it hasn’t fallen off, I will be calling my podiatrist about getting an appointment to take it off.
The main thing, at this point, is keeping it elevated and covered.
So, now you know why the Thanksgiving visit in 2020 was such an adventure.
I’m going to be glad when we are in 2021 because it has been a year. A very…uh…interesting year.
Next time I plan on talking about the Christmas.
IF I don’t do something even more spectacular with some random body part.