Downfall

Like a lot of people I've been unemployed for quite some time. I'm now counting my unemployment in years now somewhat like a bad relationship. And hand in hand with extended unemployment goes feelings of shame and self loathing, as well as the more common symptom of not being able to buy coffee and one of the most important but often overlooked - no health insurance. For many people this means they just skip the yearly checkup that they don't want to go to anyway. In my life this has much more dire consequences.

I do live in a state which has a health care plan for the poor and unemployed, but unless you're a child, (I'm not,) there are so many applicants that all new applicants are put into a lottery system and chosen like letters at BINGO. However, I do know someone that this actually happened to. So unlike the lottery the state health care plan seems to have better chances than being hit by lightening twice, but then if you do get hit by lightening you can get treated. So there are resources available to me, but only by odd strokes of luck. So I need to psychically make my name come up or pick the winning lotto numbers. So currently I'm not taking advantage of these wonderful resources.

I figured that right now my main job was just not getting hurt. Unfortunately, I am very, very, VERY bad at my job. I am one of those people that can injure myself just standing around. And walking, wow...the perils of walking for me cannot be underestimated. I once fell off a curb and broke my ankle, while walking, not extreme fast walking, or even jogging - just walking. And I never get a good story out of it either. I meet people with casts and bandages and it's always, "I was snowboarding down a mountain and an rabid albino elk was heading right towards a preschool. So I ran it down, but it broke my leg while I was wrestling it humanely to the ground. You?"
"Oh, I tripped over a curb while I was trying to walk and talk at the same time."

So by now you can tell that the story of how I actually injured myself is going to be fairly uninteresting, you can stop reading now, but the next post is going to be about the ER and will contain several references to the actual injury, (just warning ya.) Now you would think that after living in a relative's basement for over a year that your mind would internalize how many steps there are in a staircase. At least for my brain, this is not the case. Have you ever walked up or down a staircase and thought that there was one fewer or one more step than there actually was? Usually this causes you to take a giant step or knock up against that last step. Nothing bad usually comes of it. USUALLY. Well, my brain miscounted THREE steps. Yep three, triplets, one more than two, and way too many to recover from. I actually went over the side of the staircase. My right foot hyper extended underneath me and made a sound like a giant Rice Crispy. I have no idea what my left foot did simply because my right hurt so much. It was like my own foot filled with broken glass came up and kicked me directly in the brain. I was carrying my breakfast which ended up half on me and half on the floor.

So falling is bad. A fall that you can't get up from is worse, and a fall that you just end up writhing on the floor crying while covered in breakfast is even worse. To his credit my husband didn't even giggle at my Jackass type stunt gone horribly wrong and was right there trying to assess the damage. My dogs quickly showed their mettle. Our troublemaker of a girl was quickly trying to snarf up as much breakfast as she could off of the floor and me. She's not picky as long as food is involved. Our concerned boy circled for a bit and then tried to lie down on my legs. Good intentions, poor execution. I seem to vaguely remember repeating "It hurts," over and over again. Apparently I become a master of communication while in the midst of a painful injury, and almost throwing up. That I know was communicated with hand signals and grunting. Yes, I know that grunting is not permitted in charades, but neither is bodily fluids so we're going to allow it.

Once I crawled over to the couch I spent a little time in denial trying to convince myself that I hadn't really injured myself badly at all. Unfortunately rapid swelling, bruising and the feeling of things moving inside of my ankle that shouldn't be moving were rapidly convincing me otherwise.