I am 77 years old and overweight, both of which call for caution. From March 15th until I get vaccinated against Covid – 19, I am staying home most of the time. I only leave the house to pick up groceries put into my trunk by great Kroger workers, and to get necessary health care. Every few weeks I run my Prius around the Athens perimeter highway to charge the batteries and round up the tires and get me out of the house without contacting other people. I diligently wear masks, wash my hands and socially distance when I absolutely cannot avoid other people. So, I’m a scaredy cat who believes in SCIENCE.
The Fall
The first week in April, 2020, I fell on some water on my kitchen floor and broke both lower leg bones right above my ankle. Luckily, I was able to reach my cell phone to call 911 and to call my daughter and ask her to send my grandson Anthony over from Roswell to help me. He returned home from Spring hiking in various National Parks and was caught in GA by the quarantine. He agreed to become my caretaker for the duration.
The first day the ambulance took me to St. Mary’s Hospital emergency room. The next day I saw a Dr. in the Outpatient Orthopedic Clinic. He took one look at the x-ray and shook his head. The day after that the surgeon put a plate on my fibula and a dozen screws in my tibia in Athens Piedmont Regional Hospital and sent me home without an overnight stay. Thank goodness I still had the wheel chair I bought in China when I separated my tibial growth plate because I now faced no weight bearing on my left leg for two months. Anthony took the wheel chair to the local gas station to pump up the bicycle tires and it was ready to go more than a decade later.
What can you do when you are stuck in the house and can’t even walk? Well, you knead bread dough, play gin rummy, read lots of books, and try novel recipes and crossword puzzles from the Sunday New York Times. You also watch TV and watch the birds and squirrels fight it out over the bird feeder through your back picture window. You learn to hop a lot from bed to wheelchair to bathroom to wheelchair to sofa and back again. I lost 10 pounds with hopping as my only exercise.
Anthony heroically pushed the wheelchair and drove the car when we had to go to the doctor. He picked up groceries, cooked our meals, scrubbed the kitchen floor, painted Easter decorations, and fetched things I had left in the bedroom. In addition, he yelled with me at the politicians on TV and beat me mercilessly in cards and answering Jeopardy questions. In the last week, when I had finally graduated to a walking boot and started to take Physical Therapy, Anthony helped my cousin Terry mount a beautiful cedar screen door to replace the old wrecked one.
The meager wages I paid Anthony could never compensate for his kindness, patience, strength, and persistence. He is now driving to Oregon to seek his future. I wish him all possible health and happiness.
With physical therapy and a boot came my first tentative steps outside. For 8 more weeks at home, I did PT exercises every day for my ankle and for my wasted-away muscles supporting knees and a dodgy hip. All that sitting and laying around really makes one go to pot. I practiced walking to my mailbox using my Hurrycane, then walking to the corner (my house is the corner house so it wasn’t far). Then I walked one drive way further every two days until I could walk to the end of my street and back.
The Aftermath
Today, six months after I fell, I walk about a mile every morning around my subdivision without a cane or a limp. I also bicycle 5 to 10 minutes every hour on my stationary bike to keep my knees and ankles flexible and earn my weight watchers activity points.
I’m still watching a lot of TV, baking bread, reading Scandinavian mysteries, and watching birds, as seen below. Like most people, I Zoom with family and my book club and I take a few Olli courses by Zoom as well. During a recent rainy period, I took a series of photos of interesting fungi along my local neighborhood walks. I don’t have a book to ID them so they have no name labels.
I have very carefully, with masks and social distancing, had two visits from family members. My granddaughter picked up her furniture I stored over the summer when she returned to UGA while I hid in the other bedroom. Also, my cousin Terry and his wife Diane came back and mounted the second screen door outside then came in for an individually packaged lunch eaten 6 feet apart. Diane told me how much fun she had painting and urged me to try it. So now I’m beginning my first painting by numbers canvas. The numbers and spaces are much smaller than when I did this as a child. Even using my mother’s lighted magnifying glass, I’m terrible at it with trifocals and hand trembles, but it looks OK from a distance. It’s not art but it is fun.
What a life! I’m sticking with it even through the isolation. I mailed in my ballot to vote in the primary and in the November election. My Voter page said both arrived safely and had been accepted. I expect to mail in a ballot for the congressional runoff in January too. Being a hopeful person, I postponed our family reunion in Helen GA from July 2020 to July 2021. I hope we can all get a vaccination against Covid-19 and meet safely by then. I’m really longing to see my children, grandchildren and great grandchildren in person and exchange real hugs.
