The Fall and the Fear
About six months ago or so I was taking a shower, something I do on a monthly, if not weekly basis, when something unfortunate happened.
I lost my balance and time seemed to slow down and accelerate simultaneously as I slipped and landed right on what felt like the base of my spine.
It was a slapstick pratfall but since I am a forty-five year old man who does not take care of himself it was also excruciatingly painful.
I cried out in agony. In that awful moment I feared that I might have broken something that would never fully heal, that I may have caused permanent, irrevocable damage to my middle-aged body.
If I were a different kind of person I might have gone to the hospital but as a rule I do not care for hospitals or the police, and try not to get them involved if at all possible. So for several days I lie in bed taking painkillers and recovering from my fall in the shower.
The physical pain was bad enough. But what really made the experience horrifying was the dread it engendered. For perhaps the first time I truly felt my age.
The fall engendered a free-floating fear that if I was not careful I could fall down at any time and experience the same debilitating pain I experienced during the fall in the shower or worse.
Here’s the thing: I am a big fucking dude. If I had to describe my body type it would be “big fucking dude.” I’m 6’2. I never weigh myself because to do so would be to tempt madness but I’m well over 200 pounds. I’m barrel chested and broad shouldered.
I’m not just a big fucking dude. I’m sturdy. I plummeted to the hard concrete following Phish back in 2011 and just kept on rolling, literally and figuratively.
But 2011 was a long time ago. I was a much younger man then and one of the hallmarks of youth is that you can hurt yourself and then recover quickly and completely whereas one of the many perils of aging is that the older you get, the longer it takes to recover, if you recover at all.
For many decades my father, who has Multiple Sclerosis, would fall down regularly because he took terrible care of himself and had a degenerative neurological disease. Then one day about five years ago he fell and had to be taken to the hospital. He was in and out of consciousness for days after that and entered into the nursing home system permanently.
My father has created a fictional narrative around his fall that holds that he was doing great and completely independent and then he fell and was unfairly robbed of his freedom and independence.
That’s not true. My father was doing so badly that a tragic fall was an inevitability and he probably should have been in a nursing home years before he fell. Yet my dad’s experience nevertheless affected me deeply. It instilled in me the notion that you can be going about your business and fall in a way that has a profound negative affect on your life.
I’m more careful these days. I use handrails whenever possible and try to avoid situations where I might fall. About a month ago I lost my balance on stairs and nearly fell but stopped my descent just in time, only to twist my ankle in the process.
That’s getting older: even when you don’t fall you still end up hurting yourself. Your reward is that you don’t hurt yourself quite as badly as you would otherwise.
I suppose it’s a good thing that I’m being more cautious and safe now. I’m a dad and a husband so I’m living for my family as well as myself. It was a much-needed wake-up call that I’m not a kid anymore and need to be safe in ways beyond wearing a mask and social distancing.
I need to take care of myself so I am doing anything and everything to avoid a repeat of my tumble in the shower, because I know the pain of falling at this age and stage of my life is only partially physical in nature.
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