Credits: My Story byDandelion Dust Designs with additional elements from My Lucky Star by Connie Prince
Journaling: David left Thursday night for a long weekend; only three nights, three days. It was very early Saturday morning when I fell out of the recliner I spend most of my time in, including sleep, for the first time. I'd usually holler for help and David would come running down to push me back in the chair before I fell but this time Disabled Me was the only one in the house.
I had slept for a little bit but awake because my legs cramped up and needed to stretch a little bit. I can't walk. When I'm not in the recliner, I'm in the wheelchair. Although they don't listen to my brain, I can still use the lift recliner to apply some pressure to my legs which helps stretching and circulation to cut down any pain. I know it was about 3 o'clock in the morning because I remember looking at the phone just before I started moving the lift in the chair up to angle me so that I could stretch my legs. When I sometimes feel like I’m losing my balance, I grab the controller and lower the chair so I can get my balance back. But this time I was losing balance and couldn't grab the controller. When I realized that there was no way I was going to NOT fall. I let my muscles go and let myself fall. (MS has made me such an experienced faller that I usually know how to do it without hurting myself… too much)
I landed on my knees keeping my head from coming down too hard on the side of my face on the hardwood floor. I screamed and I cried for a while. Then I started to get my wits about me and assessed my situation. Nothing hurt like it was broken I took a deep breath and I could breathe without pain, so there was nothing life-threatening. Then I started to scream and cry again. I remember that I yelled, knowing it was sometime around 3 o'clock in the morning, that if there was anybody on the sidewalk walking a dog, to please call 911. When I'm lying flat on the ground and basically talking to the floor, I'm quite certain no one walking a dog in the front of the house could hear me anyway. The air conditioner was on so there were no open windows anywhere.
I think there was mental fogginess from shock in dealing with falling. I fallen on top of my right arm holding my grabber. I wasn't sure why I had the grabber, but my right arm being under me gave me a great appreciation for the work my aides do moving my large crippled butt. While my lower body doesn't listen to my brain my upper body is pretty conditioned all things considered. I was able to tilt my torso enough to pry my right arm out from underneath me after taking a rest. I used both arms to do a partial push-up of my upper body so I could take a long deep breath. That actually did feel pretty good. Then I let myself down my cheek resting on the hardwood floor again.
Between the fall, the screaming, crying and panic, in my efforts to pull my arm out from underneath me and draw that nice deep breath, I was exhausted. My friend, Lillian was going to be in for coffee at 8 o'clock. If I could just make myself fall asleep I wouldn't even notice the time that I was spending laying on the floor. As part of my brain was starting to try to force myself to drift off to sleep the other louder part of my brain screamed at me "you cannot be laying here on the floor having been there all night when Lillian gets in. Leaving her in charge of calling 911 and making sure I'm okay and having that picture of her friend laying on the floor is an awful thing to do to someone you call a friend."
Now, with renewed strength, I was able to move my body around wrestle the grabber out from underneath me. I reached back behind me as best I could to grab one bar on the table on wheels where my phone was. I pulled it close to me and used the grabber on the frame to shake the table as best I could. A lot of things fell off the table but the phone wasn't one of them.
Then a light bulb went off on my head. Thankfully I didn't crack that lightbulb when I fell. I just loosened it a little in my head’s socket. When I’d fallen before I used the “Hey, Siri” function to get help and make other phone calls for a meeting. The table was behind me and I yelled “Hey Siri.”
Nothing.
Half of my face was smooshed on the floor and facing the opposite direction of the table. I drew as deep a breath as I could and tried it again yelling as loud as I could “hey Siri!”
This time I heard a comforting “ping” from the phone. “Call 911!”
