(1) PURE BAD LUCK LED ME TO DR. JOPLIN.

     
May 20, 2006
     A bridge partner, Maude Walker, had a terrible fall a few weeks ago.  She was coming downstairs, holding dishes in both hands.  She stumbled, and instead of dropping the dishes and grabbing the railing, she hung on to the dishes, shrieking for help as she fell to the bottom of the stairway.  When Ray reached her, she was unconscious and remained in a coma for several days.  Blood on her brain, a fractured wrist, and various other consequences.  At last she recovered enough to come home for the rest of her recuperation.
     I had called Ray a few days after the accident, and he warned me, “Always keep one hand free when you’re coming downstairs.  Two days later I had my own scary fall, not downstairs but in our lower parking area. After picking up some books in the function room library—one of them a huge biography, I returned to the door of Bedford building and extricated the proper key with difficulty, since I had the huge book under my left arm. I put the key in the lock and pulled, as I always do. This time it flew out of the lock when the door started to open, and I found myself losing my balance.  As I fell backwards, my life didn’t flash before my eyes, but I did have time to wonder how badly injured I would be.  I landed with a thump on my behind, and then my head kept going and banged down on the concrete floor. The indoor-outdoor carpeting on the threshold wasn’t much of a cushion.  I sat up and re-positioned my wig just in time to smile up at a resident who was coming through the door, carrying a cane.  He put the cane aside and somehow, between the two of us, managed to get me to my feet.  He told me to go ahead into the lobby and sit down, he’d pick up the book I had dropped along with my keys.

       My savior went on his way, and as he left, a pretty white-haired woman came into the lobby and went over to the mailboxes.  I was so full of what had happened to me, I had to tell her about it.  “I just had the most awful fall,” I said, as she was pulling out her mail.

       “Oh yes, it’s felt a lot more like fall than spring,” she said. We took the elevator to the first floor, where I parted from this deaf resident, laughing to myself at the misunderstanding.  I still just had to tell someone, so I called Ted and described my lucky accident.  I didn’t want to share the news with Kathie, knowing how much it would upset her.

       She calls me every night at seven, and I never said a word about the mishap until a few days later.  “My bridge partner is making too much of my fall,” I said.  Oops. 

      “WHAT FALL!” came a stern voice. 

      “Oh, um—about my book coming out in the fall,” I tried, but it was no use, the beans had spilled.  
So I told her all about the kind man with the cane and the deaf lady.  Even managed to make her laugh with that last description. . . .