Falling on one's head — a short observation about being old — with no lesson attached

© 2019 Peter Free

 

15 August 2019

 

 

Fall on your head, did'ja?

 

The aftermath of too-numerous concussions gang up on me these days. Along with the added impairments that partially compromised nerves and a damaged vestibular system contribute.

 

In short, I fall on my head a lot.

 

Sometimes I vary the pattern by butting it into concrete walls. (There's nothing like variety to keep the injury spice going.)

 

Like many elderly people, I have become victim to long-standing weaknesses in the way genetics and life experience put me together.

 

 

There is no lesson to gain from this observation

 

You're not missing something.

 

'Cept (maybe) that you'd better make friends with your vulnerabilities — 'cause you're gonna get to know them intimately, if you live long enough.

 

 

The mechanics of a representatively eventual smack in the head

 

A few days ago, I was collapsing an awkwardly constructed folding portable workbench. It was in the too-near vicinity of a cold-air kinked rubber garden hose.

 

You know how those get. Upward facing loops, just waiting to ensnare a passing human rabbit.

 

Inevitably, one or the other (or both) latched onto my left leg and wouldn't let go. Down I went. Headfirst into the concrete walk.

 

Looking back, I recognized that too numerous mild TBIs meant that I had not recognized the potentially harmful spatial situation that the hose and collapsing bench posed.

 

And a damaged vestibular system routinely ignores my learned compensations, when my head is moving fast and has lurched 25 to 30 degrees, or more, out of vertical.

 

Unhelpfully, spinal nerve root compression sends my left leg (and sometimes my right) into spasms, whenever I even mildly lose footing.

 

This gang of three physical traits does me in every time.

 

 

Reaping the result

 

There is always the moment in which adrenalin-focused clarity recognizes that things are going awry.

 

The instant in which one knows pain and breakage are unavoidable.

 

I fall more from my mountain bike than my feet. Those bike-caused arcs into the air are understandably forceful. No surprise then, when I reap that impactful harvest on the ground.

 

What surprises me, though, is just how much momentum one gains, even in teetering off balance from a normal standing position.

 

This last fall (with the work bench) was typical of that.

 

There was the cartoon moment, when I slapped both arms forward onto the walk (martial arts style) and successfully stopped my torso from full impact.

 

"Yay!"

 

Followed by the "oh shit" one, when I noticed my speedily moving skull continue on past stopped shoulders and torso to crunch and bounce off the unforgiving deck.

 

I apparently forgot a step in a sensible person's "save my ass" sequence.

 

Can I blame previous brain damage for this oversight?

 

My wife hates it when I do.

 

But what'cha gonna do when your "best" just doesn't work anymore?

 

 

There is a surprising amount of pent up force in these simple impacts

 

The clarity that sparks, mid-fall, notices the "pow" with which one's affected body parts impact whatever object they do.

 

That's the part that consistently sticks in my memory. At least when the impact is not so great, that I forget everything.

 

 

Going down the road — psychological effects

 

Perhaps the only point to this weak tale is the sense of unavoidability — even inevitability — that it engenders.

 

The reduced levels of proper function that get me into these situations are not going away. Which means that there will be more such. And nothing, really, that I can do about it.

 

 

Sense of futility — an example

 

One of the consequences of my brain "situation" is its damaged inability to recognize objects. For instance, when I am looking for them.

 

I can look for something all day. Only to have my wife come home and find it for me within a few seconds. Yes, there it was. Literally right where I searched for it, multiple times.

 

With a record like that, one can never be certain of anything to do with accurate recognition.

 

It is a humbling thing.

 

If I were not seasoned by so many decades, I would probably be frustrated. But by now, I consider it to be just one of those personal realities that eventually corral most of us, one way or the other.

 

 

The moral? — the "hammer of trivial doom" is out there, Pete . . .

 

I amuse myself by trying to imagine how unimpressively ordinary my demise will be.

 

 

"Smashed hisself all to bits, just picking up a plastic bottle. Clumsy bastard."

 

 

As one of my friends said once, facing his beloved wife's coming death, "We go on, until we can't anymore."

 

That has always been my philosophy. From childhood. Also generated by painful circumstances.

 

We are creatures of our pasts and our genes. And I am not much of a subscriber to idea that meaningful free will — and the control that it implies — exists.

 

Be compassionate, always. And try to stay upright.