My Last Broken Arm

 

by Pa Rock

Brittle Old Man

Today is the first anniversary of the day that I fell and broke my left arm just below the shoulder.  Less than three years before that, on May 31st, 2020, during the height of the pandemic, I had fallen and broken my right arm just below the shoulder, so when I fell last year I already knew the drill of what I was fixing to endure.

The first broken arm happened when I fell as I was backing out of a raised flower bed, not the smartest of moves.  The descent began with my feet already nearly two feet above the regular ground level, and as I fell backward toward the hard, unyielding earth, I knew that I had screwed up big time.  I watched the outdoor scenery drift along the edge of my vision in slow motion, and as I hit the ground I distinctly heard a bone break.  When I was finally able to right myself and get tot the house to retrieve my phone, I called for an ambulance and told them I had a broken arm.  I knew it for a fact.

I didn't actually hear the bone break when I fell a year ago, but I had been to the same dance before and knew, with absolute certainty, that I had broken the other arm - the one which, at the time, I called my "good arm."

The killer flower bed sits in my backyard about halfway between the house and two nice storage buildings that I had installed in 2019.  Last year when I fell it was early morning and I had been out to the chicken coop, also in the backyard, where I feed the neighbor's cat his daily breakfast.  It was just barely daylight, and after feeding the cat I walked over to check on the storage buildings.  My son uses one and I use the other.  Every day I open mine (it's an OCD thing) just to check and make sure that I haven't suffered vandals or thieves during the night.

On that morning, a year ago today, there was a heavy frost on the ground.  There are slightly sloped wooden ramps leading up to the doors of each storage building, making it easier to get large items in and out of the buildings.  I was wearing rubber-soled sandals, which I wear every day of the year, and carefully took the two or three steps up the ramp of my storage buildings to look inside, placing one foot in front of the other.  I reached the door, looked inside, closed the door, and was backing (again with the backing!) down the ramp when I suddenly thought that I needed to look in again (the OCD thing).  I reached for the door, opened it, and for some reason turned my body sideways as I looked in.  That turn placed my feet parallel to the building and put each foot on a separate, solid board - boards which had a thick coating of frost.

My feet flew out from under me, and I mean "flew!"   At one point as I began my slow-motion descent toward the ramp, I actually saw my feet in the air above my head.  When I hit I knew my left arm was broken - even without the soundtrack - and I began the slow, painful process of making my way back the hundred or more yards to the house where my phone sat safely on the kitchen counter.   Once I reunited with the phone, I called for an ambulance.  

(That feet-in-the-air thing was quite a physical achievement for me.  The only other time that I remember my feet being above my head was thirty years ago when a yoga instructor showed me how to stand on my head by backing up against a wall.)

My youngest son came down a couple of days later and took me to his home in the Kansas suburbs of Kansas City, and I spent the next couple of weeks recuperating there while being waited on hand-and foot by his wife, Erin, who is a saint.

This morning there was no frost on the ground, the neighbor's cat didn't show for breakfast (he is less regular now that we have a big dog in the household), and I again checked in my storage building and found everything there to be in order.  And, the phone was in my pocket!

If you are old, like me, and tend to wander, like me, carry your damned phone - and maybe wear a little extra padding, or some body armor!