Down and Down I Went

For the next two weeks I took things easy and tried to heal.  My grown children in Memphis had invited me to come up to Memphis the weekend before Christmas on the City of New Orleans and spend a few days celebrating the holidays with them.  I took the folding wheelchair and they met me at the station.  My strong son was able to maneuver me over obstacles and stow the wheelchair, while the girls lifted the bed in their guestroom so that I could get up and down during the night and use my cane to get to the bathroom.

We had a wonderful time!  Lynne and Amanda announced that they had been legally married in Washington State while on the west coast of Oregon to attend the wedding of an old friend.  Other friends from Memphis who had flown out for the Portland Wedding had stayed for Lynne and Amanda's wedding in the park.  There were pictures and many tears of happiness, since they had been same sex partners for eighteen years before they were able to make it official.  They had been through a recent scare when Amanda was being treated for breast cancer and they faced the "next of kin" issues in a state that did not recognize their close bonds.  My son Tom, daughter Lynne, and daughter-in-law Amanda decorated a Christmas tree with a number of our family passed-down ornaments which I had not seen for several years and we made merry.

That Sunday went to their Unitarian Universalist Church in Memphis, where several of my old friends from former days also have attended. Then we met Tom at a dim sum restaurant and had REAL Chinese food.  Yum!

Monday, it was time to get me to the train by 6:45 and we cut it pretty close, but the train was a few minutes late.  Safely stowed on board I rode back to Yazoo City where Sis Gigi and Pat Ellis picked me up and took me back to my cabin in Heart's Ease Garden.

Two days later was Christmas Day and I was invited over to Sister Gigi's for their traditional Christmas breakfast with family and friends.  About 11 a.m., using my cane I headed for my 'gator to drive back to the Cabin.  Annabelle had been hit by a car that fall and Scout was the top dog now.  However, as I opened the door, he ran between my legs to get in first and I lost my footing, the left knee collapsed once more (even though I had a knee brace on) and I feel awkwardly between two vehicles.  My right leg never touched the ground, but was very painful, and it took two strong men to get me in the larger 'gator and back to my cabin.

An hour later, my body was experiencing ever greater pain after my nephew lifted me into my bed.  I called 911 for an ambulance to take me to the little local hospital for x-rays again.  On Christmas Day members of the local volunteer fire department were at my Cabin waiting with me rather than at home enjoying dinner with their families, and I will be forever grateful for their kindness.  This time the right femur was broken.  My orthopedic surgeon was unavailable, and in any case I could not be transported to the hospital in Jackson until the next morning.  That night was a demerol haze of pain, with a simpering voiced nurse's aide parading through inanely telling me to move in ways my broken body could not and slipping in and out of consciousness to find my nurse sitting by my bed to make sure I kept breathing with all that demerol in me.

The doctor on call at my local hospital located an orthopedic surgeon who agreed to see me at one of the two larger hospitals, and after a rough 40 mile ride in another ambulance and a period of giving information to Admissions from flat on my back on the gurney, I don't remember much except this doctor announcing several days later that he could not operate until the fractures just above my knee healed.  He was sending me back to sit with my right leg extended in a flimsy stabilizer and I was not to move it for at least 8 weeks..  On January 2, I was sent back to Yazoo City, first to the swing bed unit of the local hospital and then to the therapy house at the Green Houses skilled nursing facility.

Slipping Down the Rabbit Hole

My seventh fall of 2013 was on a Friday afternoon in early December after making two, layered, congealed salads for my Garden Club meeting the next day.  I stood too long and too late in the day.  About 4 o'clock, after refrigerating the salads, safely wrapped for transport,  I thought I would enjoy an Irish coffee with the Jameson's a friend had brought me a few days before; and I made a double with cream, sugar, strong French Press coffee and 3 ounces of the best Irish Whiskey.  I sat down, propped my legs up and was listening to Dylan Thomas' CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES.  With MS, you should relieve your bladder when you first feel the urge, but I was exhausted, wanting to hear the whole piece and enjoying the warmth spreading through my body from slowly imbibing the rare season's treat.  Result: when I finally hurried over to my handicapped toilet, I lost my footing as I arose, caromed off the 'fridge, my chair and the chair side table and landed face down on the floor and apparently out cold for an undetermined time.  When I recovered enough to review the damage, I discovered that my left leg, weaker due to post polio, had buckled and the knee hurt like I had wrenched it badly, but I crawled to my bed and pulled myself along and climbed in.  My neighbor apparently had come by while I was laid out on the floor and called my Sis.  They knocked on the back door and I assured them I was okay and getting ready for an early bedtime after taking some ibuprofen for sore muscles.  The next day I felt very sore, sent the salads but did not go to Garden Club myself and mostly stayed in bed.  Just after dark I had to pee and used my indoor walker to reach the toilet, but as I was standing to return to my bed, my left leg gave way completely and I slowly and painfully sank to the floor, moaning "No, please dear God, no!."

I could not get up.  Having retired early to bed as had long been my custom, I crawled back to the bedside table, found my cell phone and called my sister Gigi.  No answer.  I called my friend Fred, who drove his four wheeler across the highway in minutes.  Fred is a big guy and former college lineman, but this time he could not shift me from the floor.  We tried inching me up one step of the spiral staircase and moving everything in the cabin, but no luck.  Exhausted, I finally agreed that he call 911.  Several members of the community volunteer fire department came and waited with us until the ambulance drove the 10+ miles from Yazoo City to take me to King's Daughters Hospital emergency room, where x-rays showed no break.  Fred took me home along with a prescription for pain.

April 12, 2014 Recap

Almost 6 years ago, disabled and demoralized, I retired to live in the rural county of Mississippi where I had grown up in the 1950s and 60s.  Like Henry David Thoreau, "I went to the woods to live deliberately."  I acquired 7 acres of land with 2 old abandoned houses after I had built a small cabin with the help of a carpenter friend and his wife.  I gardened, lived simply and made plans around what I could still do, not what post-polio, MS and severe osteoporosis made too difficult or impossible.

I raised my own food, mostly, eating a lot of game, raising rabbits, buying farm eggs from my handyman's sister.  I had a Maine Coon Cat, a pair of part Jack Russell, part terriers:  Frodo, Scout and Annabelle and a few very dear family, friends and acquaintances to help and keep me company through the days.  My pain and weakness were so bad when I took retirement, I did not think I had more than a few years left.  We planted fruit trees, dozed and cleaned pasture, and restored the small one room cabin behind my slightly larger one.  Life was pretty good if a solitude one.

Last December, that all changed.