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.