Help! I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up!

Some days just don’t go as planned. They start out great but then the unexpected happens and your day takes a different turn.

I had one of those days last week – Monday to be exact.

It started out like it was supposed to. Promptly at 6:45 AM I pulled the school bus I was driving into a line with four other drivers. We were headed across town to drive a group of teenagers on an activity trip.

My favorite of the year, the trip is four days of long hours, hot temperatures, sweaty teenagers, and fun conversation with the other drivers.

Each day the drivers have a four-hour break. We have to stay close to where the kids are, but we don’t have to stay with them. (They were painting houses for folks who can’t afford it.) I decided to drive to the nearby mall and find a cool place to wait.

I parked the bus at the far edge of a large department store. There was a barbecue restaurant next door and I knew from past years that they wouldn’t care if I occupied one of their booths for a few hours. A small median of grass separated the department store’s parking lot from the restaurant’s driveway.

It took a minute to get organized. I secured the bus and began to gather my stuff.

Kindle – check

Magazine – check

Purse – check

Phone cord – check

Bus keys – check

 Shutting the door, I turned toward the restaurant. I could smell the barbecue cooking. Pushing my glasses to the top of my head I stepped over the yellow curb onto the grass.

SPLAT! Just like that my day changed!

One moment I was standing. The next…I wasn’t.

I was instantly aware of two things. The ping of pain that shot through my arm and the realization that I was face down in the grass.

I’ve had a few falls in my life but I’ve never hit the ground face first.

Oh great, everyone can see me, I thought as the dirt settled in my eyes.

I was imagining restaurant customers, faces pressed to the glass gawking at me.

Feeling stupid, I pushed myself up and rolled over. Seriously nauseated, my head felt like it was spinning round and round. Worst was the pain in my left arm. It was throbbing faster than my heart was beating. When I moved it I had pains all the way to my wrist.

Oh God, what have I done?

Cradling my arm, I began to do what I always do. “Lord don’t let me pass out.  Help me right now. Calm me down. What do I need to do?” (I think I was really praying a lot more HELP ME’s than anything.)

I kept thinking that someone from the restaurant would come soon. But when I rolled over and sat up I had also changed directions. The bus was now in front of me, the restaurant behind me. I couldn’t tell if anyone was coming or not and I hurt too bad to turn around and try to wave for help.

Eventually my head stopped spinning and I started trying to evaluate the damage to my arm. “Are you broken?” I asked, poking it with my other hand. (At the point I didn’t have anyone else to talk to, might as well talk to my injury.)

The worst of the pain was in my forearm, near the elbow. It didn’t look broken, there was no dangling bone sticking through my skin. But I could tell by the swelling that I needed ice. I couldn’t bend my fingers or move my wrist.

I need help, I need to call someone. Where is my phone?

I looked around…

My purse was to my right lying about an arm’s length away. The sunglasses that had been on my head were about a foot beyond that. My magazine was about four feet behind me – I guess I tossed it forward as I fell.

It was then I realized why I fell. There was an eight-inch-deep narrow hole, kind of like a divot, that I must have stepped in.  I couldn’t see it because the grass was mown evenly across it. I had stepped and fallen instantly. Apparently so fast that no on one saw me fall. I was on my own.

I had three hours until I needed to drive again. Ice would be good, I thought. I need to get off this curb. 

That’s when the thought flashed in my head…my next book title, “Help! I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up,” I said spontaneously. “Wait, that is already a commercial. I totally understand it now.”  (Even in pain I could recognize the absurdity of the situation.)

I leaned over and nabbed my purse. Pulling the phone from its pocket all I could do was stare at it. I need to call another driver. I knew I had Mary Ann’s number; I had just entered it in my phone. One of the drivers, she was close…she would help. Staring at the phone, I realized I couldn’t remember how to look up my contact list.

Just call the restaurant and have them send someone out. (Again, my brain was blank.) Instead, I dialed one of my best friends. I knew her number by heart. (Her name is Mary, too.)

“Mary, you have to pray for me right now. I’ve fallen and hurt my arm and I have to drive in a few hours and I need to finish this trip and I don’t know how I can.”

“Where are you?” she asked. I gave her the details.

“Can you get up?”

“I don’t think so. I’m afraid to try.”

“Call 911. Right now.”

“No, I just want you to pray for me first.  I can call Larry, he is home today. I just need prayer first.”

She began to pray out loud for me just like she always does when I call. (Everyone needs a prayer buddy like her.)

After we hung up I dialed my husband. “I think I might need you to help me with something,” I said calmly.

“What’s that?”  he asked.

“Well,” I said taking a deep breath. “I fell and I need you to bring me some ice.” I  proceeded to give him the details. “If you will just bring me some ice and some Advil and sit with me for a while I might be able to drive later.”

Looking back I realize that he didn’t need to bring me ice, the restaurant would have provided it. In fact, I should have just had him call them to send someone out to help. But I wasn’t thinking clearly and I was making it sound not as serious as it was.

He was at least twenty-five minutes away. I was nauseated and in pain. The minutes were stretching long.

I can’t drive this bus. I need to get the keys to someone.  A bit more coherent by then, I was finally able to look up the bus office number.

“Jennifer, this is Claudine. I might need you to find another driver for this trip,” I shared the details again.

“Let me call another driver to come help. Who is on the trip with you?” she asked.

I had to think for a minute before I began listing names.  “Mary Ann… Avon…Patricia…and…Daryl.  Oh, maybe you should send him. I’m a big girl and he can help Larry stand me up.”

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“I don’t think so but I still feel sick and I can’t move my arm.”

By that point I’d been sitting on the grass for about thirty-five minutes. No one had stopped as they passed by. No one had even noticed. I felt invisible. (I told Larry that maybe they saw me facing the bus and just thought it was the driver sitting in the grass; they couldn’t tell I was hurt.)

Ten minutes later, I saw a big yellow bus pull in the parking lot and make its way toward me. Daryl had arrived.

He stood and talked with me and reassured me that I wasn’t stupid. “These things happen,” he told me.

Minutes later, Larry arrived with the ice pack and Advil. Two painful attempts later, they got me to my feet.

It was then I realized that I wasn’t “not hurt anywhere else.” I couldn’t walk. My left ankle could not hold weight. The doctor told me later that the pain in my arm was so great that I was not even noticing the ankle. But I should have…it was four times its normal size.

The only time I lost it was when the nurse at the clinic handed me a wet towel. “If you smile at me again I’m liable to burst into tears,”  I told her.

“It’s okay honey. You can cry if you need to,” she said, patting my shoulder.

It was then, wiping my face, that I discovered that what I thought was a black eye was really a ring of dirt from where my face hit the ground. I felt really silly again.

Needless to say, my day was not going as planned.

Three hours and a trip in a wheel chair later, Larry went through the drive-thru and got me that barbecue sandwich. My day ended with meds that didn’t work and a pain level that I had never experienced before.

The next day, after an MRI, we learned I had fractured my arm.

In the scheme of things, arm pain is not that big a deal. But that day, it felt monumental.

Since then I’ve learned that a drive-thru breakfast is not a good idea. (Can’t eat and keep my hand on the steering wheel at the same time.) Doctor appointments are always slow. It isn’t a good idea to flick my wrist when I see a bug on it. (That one hurt.) And, there is no comfortable way to sleep when your arm won’t move.

I’ve discovered a few perks, too.

• I can’t fold laundry.
• I can’t clean pots and pans.
• And, at the grocery store, I have an excuse to drive one of those sweet little carts! (My ankle is still black and yellow.)

Life is good, just slower.

It could have been much worse.

Mary told me, “God is telling you to sit still.”

Maybe He is.

The good news is…I have plenty of time to listen.

 

Have you ever had a day that didn’t end as you planned?