Tuesday, July 18, 2006

I am a danger to myself(and possibly others)

Lately I have been noticing that I have gotten a lot more clumsy. If you know me, you would think that was not possible. I am normally pretty clumsy anyway. However, in the last month or so, I noticed I have been much more so. At times it is almost as though I don't have control over my own body! I run into things. I drop things. I go to take a drink of something and miss my mouth completely. I fall down stairs. Heck, I fall on flat surfaces. It has gotten really bad. I was discussing it with my doctor, and he says some of it is due to side effects from the many medications I am taking. I am taking a lot of medications at the moment. On three of them, one side effect is dizziness. I have to be careful when going from a sitting position to standing. One side effect of Prednisone is trembling. My hands shake almost constantly, especially when I get hungry. It makes it hard to hold things. It also makes me jittery. Nervous. It's hard to sit still. Anyway, it is very frustrating to feel so out of control of my own body at times. This is all leading up to my camping stories. We arrived in Big Sur at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, and proceeded to our campsite. Joe and I began unpacking the car, and then set up the tent. We couldn't find the square of astroturf that we usually put down in front of the tent, so Joe placed some straw beach mats that we had brought. I went to the car to retrieve something and was headed back towards the tent. The tent was on a slight downward slope and I was walking at a pretty fast pace. My right foot came down on the first beach mat. The mat slipped out from under me so far that it went underneath the tent. My body was perpendicular to the ground, about three feet up. I fell so hard and with such force that Joe heard all of the air rush out of my body, and he was standing a good ten feet away! My head thwacked the ground with a dull thud. Pain radiated throughout my whole body. That's right, we had been there only twenty minutes and I had already had my first fall. Not a good way to start our trip. But wait! There's more! So later on that night I decide to head up to the bathhouse to take a shower. My husband lovingly hands me a flashlight and tells me to be careful. To which I reply sarcastically "Uhhh..I'm taking a shower. I think I'll be O.K." Ha! After a long, hot shower, I'm feeling clean and good and I start down the hill to our campsite. On the way back, I accidentally passed the dirt road I was supposed to go down. There was a small stream separating our site from the road I was on. Instead of backtracking to the easily accessible dirt road, I started looking for a way to get across the stream. My first mistake. I found a small log that was laying across the stream and thought "Oh good. I can get across there." As I approached the log I had a fleeting thought of "Hmmm...maybe this isn't a good idea." I quickly dismissed it and started across the log. I took about two steps when it all started to go bad. I'm not even sure exactly what happened, except I lost my footing and fell(bounced actually) off of the log and into the stream, landing on my back, with my head facing downhill and my just shampooed hair in some brown algea that was growing in the stream. I cannot get up. I am laying in a freezing cold stream in my clean sweats, my just shampooed hair in the mud, and I cannot get up. I begin yelling for someone to help me. My sister's tent was right next to the stream, so she comes running out to see what has happened. At that point I am just laying there crying, unable to get up. She summons my husband to come and help me. He comes and helps me out of the stream, and brings me some clean clothes so I can go back up to the shower and clean up. Sigh. Something like that could only happen to me, right? I have pictures of the crime scene that I'll post later. So I had two pretty bad falls in a few hour's time. And that was just the first day! Sheesh! Maybe I should just stay within the confines of my apartment to avoid hurting myself!

2 comments:

Kristin said...

Woman, you need to get yourself a helmet and some knee pads!

Joannah said...

Ouch! I'm glad that you weren't seriously hurt. I'd do something like that. Very clumsy girl here.