You all remember Murphy, don't you? He's that infamous lawmaker, decreeing whatever can go wrong, will, and in the worst ways possible. I met him yesterday. I would have written about him then, but, well, I was kinda busy and in pain.
The plan had been to go to work, just in the afternoon instead of early morning. After a rainy/snowy weekend, I figured I needed a bit of a thaw to be able to open iced car doors so I could get scrapers out to clear off windows, and if necessary, splash window antifreeze on stubborn ice rather than antagonize my shoulders by scraping them. Everything I needed to do that was inside the car I needed to be able to open. Because of course. Late morning I looked out and saw snow had slid down the hood and parts of the windows. It was time.
It started with sweeping off the porch steps to avoid falls, especially if Steve had to use them. Not that he was planning on coming out for anything. The sidewalk and much of the parking pad had cleared from morning sun, while the grass still had enough fresh snow remaining for clear mouse tracks to lead the way to the garbage cans when I took bags of trash out that had stacked up over the weekend.
Then I approached the car, keys in hand, to unlock the doors. No ice left! The windshield snowpack released the wiper blades easily, so I let them stand up while I shoved snow away by hand. More needed to be done, but I wanted to go once around the car before returning with the broom to clear the top, using the best combination of hand and tools to do the job comfortably.
There was still a large deposit of snow on the rear hatch door window, it being the north side of the car, with that wiper blade holding it securely in place. After lifting that and clearing loose ice from it and pushing snow down, I stepped over to continue my preliminary circle and suddenly found myself on the ground, painfully so, landing mostly on my left hip. I considered myself very lucky I hadn't hit my head on the way down, falling so fast with no time to react.
It seems there was a single small piece of very slick, wet ice behind the car, formed by drips, disguised under water running off toward the street and a bit of freshly knocked off snow. I tried to roll off it but my hip disabused me of any desirability in pursuing that particular activity. OK, time to call Steve...
I immediately discovered I hadn't bothered to put my phone in my pocket. I was only going to be outside for a few minutes, right?
It was just the day before when Steve and I were laughing at how we grew up without the neurotic fear of going anywhere without that phone. Phones stayed in the house, attached to walls. How the world had changed! We take them into the store so we can talk to each other and/or find each other to discuss shopping from different locations. They are in the car with us in case we needed something, or somebody wanted to contact us, or even to announce to the store we had arrived and could they please bring out our groceries? Yet, because I was only going to be out a few minutes, here I'd left mine in the house. Where Steve was. Where help was, if I could just get his attention so he could make a phone call for me. IF I could just get his attention... by calling him... on the phone I didn't have... and could have bypassed him with entirely by making my own call from my spot on the ground.
Thanks Murphy!
OK, so you're wondering why I just didn't get up off the ground? Even though the hip hurt - still hurts - nothing seemed broken. Just slide off the ice and get up? Seems simple enough, except, like Steve, these days when either of us goes down, we pretty much have to stay down. First hurdle is our knees. All four have been replaced, meaning we no longer have kneecaps, and kneeling is exquisitely painful, even on soft cushy surfaces or in gel kneepads. I bought a pair of those a couple years back. They are a great help to those who don't need them. Kneeling is to be avoided whenever possible. Age has robbed us of muscle mass. Steve's back barely allows him to move at all, and my shoulders, after years of repeated rotator cuff injuries followed by arthritis, don't do much of anything useful including lifting a cup of water up inside the microwave over the stove. I can manage but not happily, and always with at least some winces. It's maybe a pound and a half to lift, cup plus water, no problem as long as it's under shoulder level. So where to people build in their microwaves? Riiiiiight.
My first option was to check who along the street is out and about. It's a senior community here but anybody would have a phone, either with them or back in their house. It was just that time of day - and year - where the ones who weren't snowbirds were out somewhere, or maybe inside with the TV on or even napping. At any rate, nobody was out walking or even shaking a rug off their porch. Scratch that for help.
I still had some option for movement. I was sitting on wet ice, so the first thing was to sit elsewhere. I learned to butt-walk as a kid and could still do that - probably a good indication that the hip I landed on was not broken, only bruised. As it got colder from still frozen ground, it was harder to tell its actual condition, but butt-walking was possible. 15 feet away was the little porch. I'd shoot for that. Maybe I could get myself up a step or two so I could manage to stand from there. Ten minutes later, including a few pauses and after figuring out how to turn myself around so I could sit on the steps, I discovered I'd put myself down in a hole. My shoulders wouldn't lift myself up and out by themselves, and the pavement was covered in formerly invisible sand, just enough to forbid any traction from my supposedly high-traction shoes. I already had given up on being able again to wear the new knit slacks I had on, thinking them likely full of snags and holes, though much later close inspection impressed me with their sturdiness. Final decision awaits laundry results.
Time for plans B, C, and D.
There was a bed of rocks next to the porch. With metal siding, maybe I could make enough noise that Steve could hear... if he was in this end of the house and the TV volume was down. I started hitting the siding, first in single loud taps, then in threes, then in S-O-S. He's a former military guy after all, right? Of course there's usually some kind of outside noise around, somebody roofing or building a shed or making a repair or who knows what all. We're used to it. We pretty much ignore it, at least as far as going to look out the window to see what's happening. No results to my tapping. Steve might even have gone to take a nap and be in the wrong part of the house.
Plan C was to take my keys and use them to make the car horn beep. You hit the lock, then hit it a second time and it beeps to let you know you did... or where your car is in the parking lot or whatever. I found if I hit it 4 times in a row, the last three beeped. I did that for a while. Nobody noticed. Or nobody around here knows that three somethings is a distress signal. Lost and need to be seen from the air? Lay out three visible equal things spaced side by side - driftwood for example along a shore. Big sticks or bright clothing in an open field. It's not natural so it stands out. I guess don't count on deaf neighbors to hear car horns though.
Plan D was wait for SOMEBODY to come by. Eventually they would, either driving, or walking on their way to get their mail. The only question was when? Mail probably wasn't due for another hour. I'd already been down half an hour.
By now my butt was really cold. The rest of me had sun, but it soon would be blocked by the house.
I finally heard an approaching engine. I could stick my arms out past the stair railing and wave them to draw attention. As it turned out, it was the FedEx driver, and he was delivering a box to our house a day early! Take that, Murphy!!!! He called 911 for this "elderly lady", and within 5 minutes there were two squad cars and an ambulance here. Of course everybody waited for the paramedics to lift me up to a stand, and only after a consult with me to understand why I couldn't get up and whether lifting me might, say, further injure a broken hip. Once they heard I'd butt-walked my way over from the car, broken hip concerns vanished, though we all realized things might change once I was standing, putting weight on it. Leaving me on the ground rather than yanking my shoulders was also common sense as well as a kindness, and the paramedics wound a sheet around me under the shoulders to put the strain on the torso instead. After sitting so long and being so cold, my first steps were a bit wobbly, but they supported me to the car to sit down while lots of questions were asked and vitals taken. Yep, my blood pressure was way up after all that, but eventually they let me go.
The cops left, after one of them taking the broom I had outside, pushing the remaining snow off my car, and spreading the salt, which I'd stupidly left up on the porch, over the ice patch hidden behind the car. Every person who approached had wanted to step right there, and I had to keep warning them. A dog-walking neighbor stopped by to check things out, and the paramedics prepared to leave, after having me sign that I declined a ride to the hospital. I told them thanks, but they'd given me something much better than a ride.
They'd given me a lift!
Once back in the house, it turned out Steve had been close to where I'd been stuck. He hadn't heard any of the noise I'd made, and hadn't worried that I hadn't come back in because he'd thought I was heading straight to my job rather than just clearing the car of snow/ice and coming back in. When the ambulance pulled up in front of the window next to him, he just figured some neighbor needed something. It happens around here. The squad cars were out of his line of sight, and no sirens were used, so logically, no real emergency, whoever it was.
I'll be making sure in the future to keep my phone on me, rather than laughing at our paranoia about having them handy at all times.
For the rest of the afternoon and early evening, I dosed with ibuprofin, and huddled under my double-polar-fleece lap blanket trying to warm up. Sleep was a whole 'nother issue. The sore hip is on the opposite side of me than my worst shoulder is. I'm a side sleeper. There was no comfortable position, both were wrong. Somehow I managed almost 4 hours, despite aggravating the hip in finding out just how unforgivingly hard toilet seats are and how perfectly positioned to hit the bruise.
Murphy may have taken a break for a while, but refused to be ignored for long. This morning even the cushion in my recliner is too hard in all the wrong places. At least walking reassured me that there was no bone problem, but I'm taking a second day off from work since I never made it yesterday. Of course, the weather forecast calls for the same rain/freezing rain/snow combo that started this in the first place. And that's no April Fools!
