I'd fallen & could not get up -- for 9 hours! Parts I & 2

 

1,124 words

It began to dawn on me the fourth time the EMTs said no, they meant business: they were not going to allow me to drive the ambulance.

A more intuitive patient would have sensed this when he realized they’d strapped him to a gurney the way guards secured ol’ Doc Lechter when he asked if they had a spare can of fava beans.

It was 6:30 a.m. last Wednesday and we were on our way to the Latrobe hospital emergency room where they would scratch their heads wondering what the hell I was doing there.

There was no trauma. No wound. I was coherent and joking.

Why all the fuss?

I’d fallen and could not get up.

For 9 hours.

I’d become the punchline to a preposterous commercial me and the boys would ruthlessly mock back before we’d ever dreamed our bodies would eventually betray us.

A nurse asked how far I’d fallen.

I told her 25 feet.

“Twenty-five feet! How do you explain not a scratch on you?”

“It wasn’t all at once,” I said. “The first fall was about 3 feet. Then I fell about a foot once every 30 minutes or so for the next 8 hours.

See, I have Parkinson’s Disease. Was diagnosed in ’18.

I was symptom-free for so long I believe my friends suspected I’d made the whole thing up because they know I crave attention.

But lately, in the last 6 months, the progressive neurological disorder has begun to assert itself. This is mostly in immobility and balance issues.

I now appear to be drunk all the time, which in public gives you all the baggage of being drunk with none of the folly or fun. 

It’s a frustrating development. We can be wrapping things up after a nice meal and my table mates get up and head for the door and I remain frozen there, my legs feeling as if they’re immersed in wet cement. They won’t budge.

I’ve tried distracting thought. I’ve tried hyper-focused thought. And I’ve tried cartoon-balloon inspiration.

In my head I’ll imagine myself springing into crisp motion as I shout, “Ninja!” “Action!” Or my personal favorite, “Polamalu!”

None of it works.

Worse is the balance betrayals. Because a man sitting frozen can be dismissed as a garden variety weirdo and we’re all used to dealing daily with them.

But a lurching, off balance man is a menace to all he beholds. Caught in the throes of gravity he might reach out for a stabilizing shoulder and seize, instead, a bystander’s innocent breast and that right there tears at the fabric of society.

At my first momentous fall, there wasn’t a shoulder or breast in sight. 

I’d stepped outside to look up at the full moon from just off our front porch. I’d had not a drop of alcohol. But sobriety will never factor into my need for whimsy.

Maybe too much whimsy makes one woozy because down I went, straight over on my back. Truly, I was lucky I didn’t break my neck.

I landed face up surrounded by flowers. Lying there, staring straight up at the stars, festooned with  flowers, prospects dim, I wondered, “If six pals show up toting a pine box, should I just climb on in?”

I lay there for an hour, my body refusing to obey my commands. It’s a scene rich in irony.

My whole life no one has ever been able to tell me what to do. Now, here I am, 62, and I’m no longer capable of telling myself what to do.

I finally wound up calling my wife, who was inside about 50 feet away. 

Many of you might be wondering why I didn’t summon her sooner.

Well, I’ll thank you to mind your own goddamned business, but since you asked, whether it was out of vanity or instinctual self-preservation I could not make that call.

I’ve read that being married to anyone with Parkinson’s can strain even storybook unions.

Our marriage is already freighted with challenges that come from being wed 57 years.

Now some of you may be wondering how a 62-year-old man can be married 57 years. Was I 5 when I walked down the aisle?

I was not. No, I calculate married time differently than calendar time.

See, for long stretches, Val and I have both worked from home. We lunched together, saw movies and lavished our daughters with our full attention.

I know some men who say they’ve been married 50 years who in total haven’t spent 4 together.

She works nights. He drives truck. They never see one another.

Then there’s this: by any standard fiscal measure, my entire career has been an enormous bust, a huge strain on a relationship.

I don’t look at it that way. If I did I’d probably throw myself in front of speeding locomotive. 

But I press on convinced that one day my ship is bound to come in.

Yet, it’s looking more and more likely that when my ship does come in, it won’t be some grand yacht, it’ll just be a little dinghy.

That’s bound to disappoint.

See, I already have a little dinghy. She’s seen my little dinghy. Played with it even.

She now has no interest in yet another little dinghy. 

And as my decrepitude accelerates, I can tell there are moments she wishes she could unsee, a fashionable term for anyone who wants to erase an image from their mind.

Moments like me being unable to pull a sweater over my head or, say, elevate myself out of a moonlit flower patch.

I fear she’s going to unsee so much of my life, I’ll cease to exist.

So eventually I made the call.

I chose to consider the flower patch fall as a fluke, something I could avoid if I became more careful about my steps.

About 8 weeks later, came the unassuming fall that would lead to radical reconsideration.

The next fall might do more than embarrass.

The next fall could kill me. 

This one happened when I was home  all alone. My daughters were in Pittsburgh and Kent, Ohio.

Val was in Florida tending to her aged father in the hospice phase of his mortal conclusions.

We live in the woods. Our seclusions impenetrable.

It was just me and the stupid dog, the 15-year-old Chihuahua/terrier mix with the bladder control issues.

He was right there at the door. I tripped right over him. I fell, slid really, to my knees.

It was the last time I’d be even semi-verticle for the next 9 hours.

I’d fallen and could not get up.

And the worst night of my life had just begun.

                                     -- << Intermission/Part II  >> --

(1,211 words)

I was about 5 hours into my 9-hour ordeal when I began to wonder if I was on track to break my inert endurance record.

Merriam-Webster defines “inert”  as “Lacking the power to move; an inert and lifeless body.”

The previous record was achieved some time in, oh, 1987, at a bar called The Junction in Athens, Ohio.

My inertness began at noon and ended at 2 o’clock — and I’m not talking two hours.

No, we were there from noon til 2 a.m. Fourteen hours. We barely budged. I don’t remember even speaking.

I was with legendary drinker George Armington, one of my all-time best buddies.

This was a day was unlike any other. We were deathly hungover. I remember thinking, “I don’t believe I’m going to die, but I now know what death feels like.”

But we survived. A young admirer asked George about the 14-hour shift we’d put in. Was it difficult?

“The first 9 hours were rough,” he said.

Forty-one years later, I succumbed to inertness after tripping over Snickers, a rom-com mix of Chihuahua, terrier and some other high-strung strains. Living with Snickers is like living with a squirrel that barks.

His bark is ballistic, like that of a machine gun triggered like an inch from an ear.

He’d the only animal I’ve ever known to have barked himself deaf, a situation analogous to a chronically unemployed man masturbating himself into lifelong infertility.

He can’t see either. Once lively eyes are now clouded with aged obstruction.

Never the brightest hound in the harem, his walnut-sized brain seems to have checked out.

I’ve vowed to start calling him Tommy if we ever go to the arcade and learn this deaf, dumb and blind dog can sure play a mean pinball.

And now he’s stricken with bladder problems. With Val assisting her father in Florida hospice, it’s often left to me to care exclusively for Snicker. That means me with my recent back and foot surgeries and my Parkinson’s up at 3 a.m. to locate and mop up scattered puddles of pee.

How bad is it?

Remember that scene from “The Shining” where crimson blood comes gushing out of the grand elevators in the Overlook Hotel?

Envision that’s happening to me, only instead of blood, the flooding substance is canine urine.

I can’t prove it was intentional but he was cunningly positioned right where I’d  trip over him. As falls go it was no Nestea Plunge. It was a gentle stumble. I reached out to steady myself on a hip-high end table. 

All my weight was now in my hands. And on the hardwood floors, the end table was sliding away.

I went down on my knees. 

The upheaval seemed to summon my Parkinson’s which is activated by duress.

Within seconds I understood I was in trouble. 

I was sitting on my ass with my back against the front door. On the hard wood floors, all the furniture was prone to sliding, the floors also caused sharp joint pain no matter how I positioned myself.

I told all this to a friend and he said, “Here’s a thought: Did you ever even think of trying to just stand up?”

If it only were that simple. He looked me over. He saw a reasonably fit 62-year-old, 189-pound man whose driver’s license declares he’s a strapping 6-foot-2 (in fact, I’m only 5-foot-7, but I was bored the day I got my Pennsylvania driver’s license renewed and just felt like fucking with the DMV).

He asked if I was capable of doing a single pushup.

In fact, it was once my custom to do the equivalent number of pushups as my age

But I figured what’s the point and quit the practice when I was 6 …

Kidding! I did the pushup thingie till shortly after I turned 50. But when I tried to push-up my way to vertical salvation the lactic acid would flood my limbs and render me useless.

The problem was not a lack of will. The problem was a surplus of won't.

He asked why I hadn’t just call someone to come assist.

The phone was the first thing I reached for at the start. I thought it was dead.

Spoiler alert: It was not. It had about a 30 percent charge. So either my distress had so disoriented my thinking I overlooked simple solutions or else the phone drew energy from my inert ass.

But who would I have called anyway?

The feelings you experience in a situation like that are primal.

There was no one in the world I felt comfortable to call and have them see me laying face down on the floor of my living room, unable to rise from the floor and manage a sitting position on the recliner, a lazy man in a Lazy Boy.

I’d gotten myself into this mess, I thought, and, by God, I’ll get myself out of it.

That’s incredibly flawed thinking. People are more generous and understanding than we ever are with ourselves.

Yet, the feeling persists. 

I did not want anyone to see me so absurdly helpless.

But as hour after fruitless hour passed, I realized I needed to take action. I knew it could be days before anyone happened by.

I never panicked, but it was becoming clear it was a panic-worthy situation.

I thought I could lure rescue by using the fob for my wife’s car in the driveway (the fob was still on the end table next to my phone and wallet).

I thought I could arrhythmically honk the car horn and nearby neighbors would become suspicious of the commotion and rush to be heroic. 

It was not to be. Maybe the neighbors are well-versed in Morse Code and I’d inadvertently honked out a message that all was well and it was okay for them to return to their stills and meth labs.

But having the high-tech fobbie in my hand reminded me there was a miracle bestowing phone nearby. I decided to check it again. It was functional and sufficiently charged.

I figured it was time to summon the lifesavers. It was time to dial those three magic numbers.

It was time to dial 911.

That led to the second thoughts of panic. Because my hands were shaking so badly I was unable to dial 911.

Instead, I dialed 912, 914, 933, 9211…

I thought briefly about hurling the phone out the big picture window.

I’m glad I didn’t because on my very next try I nailed it.

911

After the boys came and got me and convinced me a trip to the ER was prudent, they asked how long I’d been rolling around the floor.

I told them I’d hit the ground at 9 pm.

“That’s 9 hours!” Josh said.

How long do most people wait before calling for help?

“Fifteen minutes”

So I’ve got bragging rites.

Now with every single step I take I realize I’m one careless step from catastrophe.

If my demise can happen in my living room what chance do I stand on an icy drivewaythe front porch? At a crowded bar? Crossing a busy city street?

The first 9 hours aren’t what worry me.

It’s the next 9 that do.