Not Yet… Again

In October last year, I had just turned 89. In November of 2022, I transferred my body and other parts of my life from the icy climes of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to the tropical climes of Fort Lauderdale. Doing what I do best, deluding myself, thinking I was still 70, I packed and unpacked the car, closed and opened each house, and shopped for needed articles for the new rental.  And, oh yes, let me not omit the biggest stress of all: I flew to Florida.  I don’t care how old you are or if you wheelchair it to the gate or buy first-class; flying today is right up there on the stress chart with Olympic Weightlifting.

It would surprise no one but me that one evening in the first week of arrival, after moving some furniture and putting down some new carpet, I felt kind of funny.  My blood pressure indicated there was logic to my feelings.  It was immediately decided the hospital emergency room was my next stop. I arrived in time to avert a permanent checkout.  The experience of almost biting the bullet was the impetus for the title of the memoir that I had recently begun to write.  

NOT YET

Oh boy!  I had learned my lesson.  When I exchanged my winter domiciles this year, I was going to be a responsible, careful, thoughtful 90-year-old adult.  There is no way to illustrate how delusional I really am without a backstory.  On my big right toe, a red swelling was unexplainable.  Like the plant in Little Shop of Horrors, it was growing.  As Dr. Heit, my diagnosis of “It’s nothing” didn’t seem to fit anymore. You should know that since I always had all the answers for everything, this included my physical and mental well-being.  Also, I had the bane of every Doctor’s practice at my fingertips, the internet.

The Thursday before Thanksgiving, I called my primary physician (he doesn’t know, and please don’t tell him that I am helplessly and hopelessly in love with him).  His nurse, whom I also adore, answered the call.  She suggested sending a picture of the offending digit.  Not a problem. It’s the latest in diagnostic tools: the iPhone camera. I can do that.

This is where we begin the drum roll.

I hung up the phone.  I stood up.  I lifted my right leg to mid-hip height.  I extended my right leg.  I leaned over to take the photo. Oh, did I mention I wasn’t holding onto anything?  That’s right, I wasn’t holding onto anything. My days of placing my leg high on the bar for ballet exercises were long over. I lost my balance. My phone flew up in the air. Wait!  Wait! You must know the bedroom was carpeted except for 4 inches of exposed tile.  My head found those four inches.  So did both of my replaced knees and my camera.  

CRACK!!

The sound of my head hitting the tile floor is permanently embedded inside my earballs. The first thought after the sound of my head cracking on the tile was It’s over; I’m dying.  This was unacceptable to me.  I know this because instead of just lying there on the cursed tile floor waiting for the Angel from Death, I sat up and reached out to where my cell phone landed.  I knew something bad had just happened.  Was that really my first thought?  Was I dying?  I know I was terrified.  But that wasn’t dying.  I had been terrified many times before.  Feeling the comb my mother pulled through my tight, curly, unruly hair, marriage, labor, opening nights… This was different.  I have lived many lives over my 90 years. I guess it could be said that this wasn’t the best way to go, but, hey, if I was stupid enough to attempt a hands-free forward leg extension, there was no one else to blame.   I was the one who opened the door, which led to my extinction. Damn it.  

NOT YET!

I don’t think I need any further proof of my animal origins.  The primary animal instinct is survival.  I was all animal – big time.  There was no brontosauraus or teradactyl to battle.  I simply needed to keep breathing and to keep on until I stopped keeping on. There’s a video of a song by a husband and wife team, The Bengsons, called The Keep On Going On Song.  I think they wrote it during Covid. It was a defining moment for me.  I just was going to keep on keeping on until I stopped keeping on. 

With my cell phone gathered off the floor and into my shaking hand, I dialed a number.  I didn’t know then that the bang on the tile was about to destroy my phone forever.  But there was one hour of battery left, and in survival shock, I dialed my friend and assistant, Charles.  He answered.  I croaked out.  “I’ve had a fall.  I hit my head.  Hurry.”  And hurry he did.  He arrived.  Fortified by his presence and take-charge manner, I called the Doctor and explained what had happened.  I was ordered immediately to come to the office.  The miracle was already happening. I moved.  I talked.  I hadn’t lost consciousness.  I wasn’t bleeding out… yet.  I could walk.  Not easily and not without pain, but I could move.  Ok.  

Now, this is where it gets really stupid.  Yes, even more stupid than what just happened.  I insisted on taking a shower.  Charles tried to convince me otherwise.  I tried to explain. My survival had now moved from breathing and moving to being clean. I was raised on a family cliche:

Cleanliness is next to Godliness. 

Charles drove me to the doctor’s office.  There were no marks except a bloody scratch where my forehead hit the tile, but it didn’t bleed out… so it must have bled in.  My knees were beginning to swell, but no discoloration.  Dr. Heit’s theory is that when the body goes into shock, the normal bruising and swelling that accompanies a hard fall is frozen until the shock defrosts.  

Ok, enough detail of the incident.  Let’s get to the details of the day.  Appointments were made for a CAT scan of the head, which I thought would show that I didn’t die when it happened, but I was definitely going to die any minute;  x-rays for knees and ribs.  The idea of replacing my already replaced knees was beyond my understanding.  After looking at the big toe that was the cause of all the damn trouble, to begin with, my beautiful doctor made an appointment with a nurse practitioner in a vascular surgeon’s office.  His theory that the inflamed toe came from a vascular problem was proven correct.  Charles moved me like an automaton from one end of the hospital to another to get it all done.  I can only guess that my frozen shock made it possible to go from one task to another.  

When all was accomplished, there was no way I could go home without a phone.  My cell phone was fried.  Charles drove me to the Apple store.   Have you ever gone to the Apple store without an appointment?  I pulled every acting trick out of my 90-year-old bag.  If I had waited until the next day when my blood thinners and defrosted shock began bringing color to my face, I am sure they would have served me immediately.  Get that Bride of Frankenstein out of here.  But nothing showed anywhere.  So, I went into my spiel.

“Sir!  I’m a 90-year-old woman with major health problems.  And I’ve just had a life-threatening fall.  I lost my balance and hit my head on a tile floor.  I’ll probably die while we’re talking, but before I do, my phone, which is only a year old, crashed and broke like my head.  I need to have a new phone in case I die after I go home.”

“Do  you have an appointment?”

“No, I don’t.  This morning, I didn’t know I would fall, cracking and breaking my head and my phone.”

Checking his appointment list, he said, “It’ll be about 10 or 15 minutes.”

“I have Apple Care.  Can’t you just give me my new phone?”

“10, maybe 15 minutes.”

Almost two hours later, after staring off into space and waiting for the other shoe to drop, we were called and attended to.  Throughout the entire time, the Apple Aide kept telling me how lucky I was.  “Because I’m still breathing?” I asked. “No, because you only waited two hours without an appointment.” Another miracle. 

Thirty minutes later, we left with a new phone.  Charles drove me home.  My doctor called to tell me all the CAT scans were clear.  The x-rays were clear.  And the toe would be dealt with after I healed. Ask me. Go ahead, ask me.  Ask me if I believed him. I did not.  I loved this Doctor.  I would follow him anywhere, but I did not believe him.  I was sure the highways of my nerves and vessels and the viscera of my brain and my knees and my ribs were about to throw me a surprise funeral.  

I asked Charles to stay.  Either he could help me if my stupidity went for another ride around the park or attend to my body when the bullet that I was waiting for finally struck. In my frozen state, I was able to sleep.  

The next morning, as the frozen shock of what had happened began defrosting my blood thinners wreaked havoc with the coloring of my face and my knees.  Every color of the rainbow was represented on my face and knees, but black and purple were dominant.  The face was swollen. 

Charles insisted I wear a sign around my neck:
I fell.  This is not elder abuse.

I countered his suggestion with: 
I’ve just had a facelift.  I do not recommend this doctor.

The knees have grapefruit-sized hematomas that extend to my feet. No wonder I didn’t believe the doctor.  Like in the old great Bette Davis movie Dark Victory, it was evident that he didn’t want to tell me I didn’t have long to live.  No matter.  I went to see the Doctor.  He assured me it was the confluence of the crack of my head and body on the tile floor, along with the blood thinners.  It would take many weeks to heal and probably get worse before it gets better.  It was time to cover all my mirrors.

As the defrosting continued, it was also time for the panic of what almost happened, didn’t happen, actually happened to take over my life. My normal neurotic tendencies took flight and raised the bar of my anxieties to dangerous levels.  Every so often, I would stop and stare into space, trying not to shake my head in case the fall had loosened any of my hardware.  I was waiting to take my last breath. 

I asked Charles not to leave me alone.  I knew if he did, I would construct doomsday scenarios that would make Edgar Allen Poe or Edward Gorey look like Pollyanna.  Every twitch, every breath, every anything was the prologue to the beginning of my end.  I was a mess.  How did this happen?  

Before the fall (a great title for a celebrity bio or civilization’s history), I was the most satisfied I had ever been in my life.  At an age where the good stuff was supposed to be in the past, I was doing the most challenging and creative work of my career, my memoir.  I gave myself and my friends and family a brilliant and loving celebration of my 90th birthday. As if to defy my age, I boogied on down and sang and read from my memoir.  Following that, I exchanged my winter coat for my bathing suit.  My three daughters, their husbands, eight grandchildren, extended family, and friends (the few left) are all reasonably healthy and making appropriate and inappropriate choices that would keep me intrigued and guessing until….  And for once in all their lives and mine, it didn’t matter what I thought or what I did.  It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Then, like a ballerina, I had to go and take a picture of my big toe.  

CRACK!

Oblivion… not yet.

I’ve always believed there is rhyme and reason for everything that happens to me. And if you pushed me, I’d have to confess I believe it for you, too.  Over the years, I never turned away from exploring the nooks and crannies of my life – the whys and wherefores of my actions and reactions.  Therapy and various life passages like marriage, relationships, and mostly having children changed me from teacher to student.  I thought I understood how much I didn’t know.  

Was this all about control again? Did I still think I was in control, pretending I wasn’t? 

“Hey, SJ, Ms. Jerkball, get over it.”  I’m 90 years old.  I wasn’t present in the room or my body when I took the photo.  I thought I was Margot Fonteyn (google her).  I lost my balance.  I cracked my head.  I didn’t die. My phone had enough battery left for one call before it died.  I don’t understand anything that happened after that. I really, deeply, sincerely do not understand. And that has to be alright. And you know what, it is. After all the years of talking the talk about learning to live with the questions, this experience brought home to me walking the walk of living with no answers.  I understand more better than ever before that going from one moment to another moment is all I have.  My circulation, which brought rainbow colors to my face and body, does so with as much gratitude as I can cycle it with.  That is why this Thanksgiving was and still is the best Thanksgiving I ever had.  

A healing and happy Thanksgiving was made possible by my hero, Charles.

I can’t believe myself sometimes.  For years, whenever I could, I would tell anyone who would listen to pick up their right hand and place the fingers of their left hand on the inside wrist of their right hand. Can you feel the beat?  You can?  

Shut up and peel the potatoes. 

Love, Sally-Jane ❤️