As readers of this blog know, I pride myself on never getting sick. I crow about it, ostentatiously taking a seat next to whoever is coughing and sniffling loudest in a room, because I'm immune to all germs and I never get sick. And if I should get a TEENSY bit sick, I get well instantly, after one good night of sleep. I haven't missed a class for sickness in years. I marvel at how inconvenient it must be to be someone who gets sick: how can you make any plans? how can you schedule your days with the specter of sickness constantly lurking?
Alas, I didn't bargain for injuries from a fall.
I took a terrible tumble Sunday night as I walked merrily home from a Colorado Music Festival concert at Chautauqua, the final concert of the six I was attending with my friend Diane, a glorious evening of Brandenburg concertos. A block from Diane's house, I stumbled on some invisible obstacle and down I went, flat onto my face. I broke my glasses and lost a lens. My nose bled all over my clothes. My ribs and chest were badly battered and bruised (though the next day's x-rays showed nothing broken). And oh, my face! Four full days later, my face looks ghastly: puffy, swollen beyond recognition, with a boxer's black eye, or rather crimson-and-purple eye. I've done nothing this week but hobble from bed to couch and back to bed again. All my grand plans have been abandoned. It's the first day of a new month, and instead of beginning a new life, I finally scrambled an egg and loaded the dishwasher and checked my email. Period.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen - literally! And it's hard not to see dreadful inklings of a distant future where falls like this will mean broken hips, and walkers, and care homes, and bed sores, and death! But perhaps these thoughts are a tiny bit premature? I probably still have twenty more good years before I have to face those darker possibilities. But I don't feel as carefree as I did a week ago, nor as glib and superior. Instead, I feel that I'm going to thank God on my knees for every day I can walk without pain and look in the mirror without wincing with horror at the sight.
And now I'm off to put a package of frozen peas against my throbbing eye and cheeks. And count my blessings one more time that this, too will pass.
Oh no Claudia! That sounds dreadful. Hope you feel much better soon. Deepa
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