December 30, 2001: slip sliding
I'm not quite sure how I came to be sliding limply down the one long set of stairs in my house at 4:15 in the morning.
Ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk I went, headfirst, on my back. I was dazed and limp, wondering how the hell I'd gotten there when the last thing I'd known I was...
...looking through the cabinet at the top of the stairs for the Motrin I knew was in there.
Oh.
I fetched up at the bottom of the stairs, lying awkwardly with my head against my front door. I thought, I must have scared the living daylights out of the neighbors and took stock of myself. My right calf hurt, my shoulders hurt, but I didn't feel like anything major was broken. I picked myself up and climbed up the stairs.
I'd woken up with a crampy feeling in my gut of the sort that generally presages the onset of menstrual cramps. I remembered on my way to the bathroom that I'd run out of my favorite pain drug a month or so before, and that I was going to have to make do with Motrin, which I try not to take at night, as it has caffiene and keeps me awake.
The cramps came on unusually strong, waves of pain radiating outwards. I found myself on my knees a few seconds later, clinging to the bathroom doorframe, noticing, oddly enough, that I could hear the neighbors' voices through the wall. The world swam. I closed my eyes for a moment, then pushed myself upwards, opened the cabinet, and--was suddenly halfway down the stairs, too dazed to fight the fall. (Had I fought, I would have hurt myself pretty badly. Thank goodness for small blessings.)
I fainted. That's what happened. It wasn't a seizure; I recovered much too quickly for that. (The one time I've had a seizure, I was out like a light for about a minute and a half--I couldn't have been out more than five or six seconds this time.) Later, when I was back in bed, I remembered that severe pain can cause a sudden drop in blood pressure, which causes fainting.
But that was later.
I managed to find the Motrin, finally tearing open the blister pack with my teeth when it proved too tough for me to deal with with hands that shook and shivered, not under my control. I hitched up my nightshirt and dealt with the long, deep scratch that now ran from about two inches below my knee to the bottom of my foot and was bleeding quite freely all over the place.
Thinking about it now, I must have crumpled instead of falling over backwards. I didn't hit my head, as far as I can tell, which surprises the heck out of me. I have some very minor bruising on my shoulders and butt, a nice deep bruise on the side of my knee (I think I whacked it on the wall on the way down), and no other injuries.
The thought of what could have happened scares me. Had I been at all concious, had I fallen face-first instead on on my back, had I hit my head and given myself a concussion, I probably wouldn't be writing this right now.
I'm not willing to give up my independence just yet. But it's enough to make me worry a bit more, and be a bit more careful.
And keep some ibuprofen in a container *away* from the stairs.
Fortunately, the rest of the day has gone much better. I went for brunch with Chris this morning, talked and hugged some. He was very grounding for me, which I needed--near-diaster always makes me shaky.
I dragged him around as I bought some more ibuprofen, a new CF card for the camera (all mine! all mine!), and a new hard drive. We went up to Highland Park for a bit and he took some pictures, both of the scenery and me.
The rest of today has been spent messing with my new server. I'm doing a lot of compiling programs at the moment, and expect to be working on this for another couple of weeks as I get it tweaked into the state I want it to be in.
Mmm, new servers. Life is good. 40 GB hard drives are even BETTER.
This morning, as I sat doing a quick post in my LiveJournal, I noticed the fog had crept in. It was all fuzzy out. When I woke a few hours later and drove over to Queen Anne to pick Chris up, the sun was shining at my house. I swing down the 45th St entrance to I-5...and looked out on a landscape changed. Fog roiled just underneath the Ship Canal bridge, breaking in slow motion over the roadway, tendrils reaching for the cars. To my right, Queen Anne shouldered out of the bright whiteness; in front of me, the Needle had its head in clear blue sky and its feet in the fog.
Stunning. Just stunning.
On the way south to brunch were some more awesome vistas. The sun shining through fog and trees on a hill was particularly memorable.
I feel lucky to live here, still, where it's so beautiful most of the time. Even in winter.
