Tip of the Day....

Here's my tip for the day:  Do not fall down in New York City. Our Mother's Day dinner. was completely spoiled because I tripped over a raised sidewalk edge, which had been pushed up by a tree root, as the family was walking to the restaurant for our special family dinner.   It took me 15 minutes to get up off the pavement, and I was bleeding from a head gash.  One of those cold, unfeeling New Yorkers came out of his house with a bottle of cold water, iodine, and a gauze bandage. He got the bleeding slowed on the head gash while Sarah got their new electric car and drove us to the Emergency Room. Let's just say, it was not pretty, and I scared the whole family.  Cedric took a proactive stance.  He went home and put a selection of band aids on his stuffed animals to show me my band aid choices.  

I was actually very lucky. My hard head hit the pavement first, then my hands, and my right knee.  When I finally sat up, I was bleeding (gash on my forehead), and the knuckle on my longest finger (yes, the 'fuck you finger') was sticking up and the finger was at a 45 degree angle.  I also did a number on my glasses. My left lens went skidding along the pavement; I was so MAD!  

Now I have been traveling for almost 15 years. I have never, ever, ever forgotten my extra pair of glasses. For some crazy reason I took my extra glasses out of my backpack when I returned to Sun City in August, and I forgot to repack them. In all that traveling, I've never even opened the extra glasses case. Now I'm inconveniencing my daughter to pick up my new lens ($475), and FedEx it to me in Greenville, NC, our first stop this summer.

Thanks to those titanium glasses nothing was broken. I have a skinned nose not a broken one, and black eyes instead of broken orbital bones.   I have seven stitches right above my eyebrow, and I have a sprained left wrist.  Worst of all, I dislocated the knuckle joint on my right hand, but at least I didn't break it. 

I never wanna see a dislocated bone ever again. Forget those TV shows and movies that depict the hero having some body part dislocated, popped back in, and he jumps up and runs right back out to fight.  Pure fiction.  So not happening. My hand looks like the top of a blueberry muffin with the swelling, the discoloration, and the bruising. 

 Feel sorry for Drake not me. He's reliving our days when I had back surgeries.  He has had to bathe me, and dress me as well as do 1003 other things for the past two weeks. I'm having trouble. picking anything up. Fortunately my sprained wrist isn't terrible. And I can take the brace off to eat with my left hand. I relearning how to write using my left hand, and its given me empathy for Cedric who is just learning how to write.  I'm getting better doing stuff with my left hand; maybe I'll be ambidextrous when this is all said and done. And believe me I am ready for it to be done, done, done.  Drake was ready for this to be over 13 days ago.

Other than the stupid fall and spending seven hours of Mother's Day in the emergency room, our trip to New York was wonderful. [Actually, the silver lining was we got Sarah Lynn all to ourselves at the hospital.  I enjoyed that even under a morphine haze.]  We saw ten one act ballets spread over four nights,  We to the Metropolitan Art Museum, my favorite place, as well as we ate dinner in the dining room one night. We also ate soft shell crabs at my favorite Italian restaurant in the Financial District. We went to a museum I've never been to called the New Museum. Of course I have pictures of all of it.

Here's one day post accident:

Fortunately, my right hand is now totally out of the ace bandage, and mostly out of the splint.  I'm only wearing the brace on my left hand a few hours a day.  My right hand is less functional than I'd like, but I'm getting better.  What would have been best would be not to have fallen.