Frostbite and Broken Necks

[queerbychoice]

My mother tells me that she spent most of today in the emergency room after my father was taken to it in an ambulance because while he was out running he tripped over a dog and fell on his head on the asphalt. His head is all scraped and bruised, as is the rest of him, and apparently he just laid there on the pavement until the people whose house he fell down in front of came home and found him laying there, and he told them who he was so they called an ambulance and put a blanket over my father because it was a cold winter morning, and he said his neck hurt so they thought he should not move in case it was broken. Anyway, then they walked down the street to get my mother and announced, "Hey, your husband is lying in the street bleeding in front of our house! We called an ambulance to see if he broke his neck!"

Yes. Er. So my mother came, and the ambulance came, and it turns out there are no broken bones and he'll be fine. The biggest health threat was that since he was laying out there in the cold winter morning for half an hour or more, the cold lowered his body temperature something drastic, like fifteen degrees or somehing, and he was all numb and the doctors spent two hours trying to warm him up with warm IVs and such. It all sounds quite horribly unpleasant. The things is, I've fallen on asphalt twice in the past year and yes it is horribly unpleasant and I did go to the doctor one of the two times and I still have scars from both of the times, but I was always able to pick myself up and hobble inside within five minutes or less. I am disturbed that my father just laid there. Of course, his head was bruised and scraped whereas my head was not hit that hard either time, just enough to knock my glasses off and smear dirt on my chin. Possibly that made the difference. Also possibly he is just old and is not able to get back up the way I can anymore. But I hope it is not that, because that explanation is more disturbing to me. I'm clumsy, see, and I fall down on asphalt more often than my father does. If by the time I'm 58, all my falls on asphalt are going to leave me lying in the street for half an hour unable to get up until some passerby comes home asnd finds me there and calls an ambulance, I think I shall never live to be 60.

Comments

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Eyes in my family have a bad habit of massive failure as time goes by too. Late-onset glaucoma afflicts nearly everyone in my maternal grandmother's family, including her, and my mother has the early stages of macular degeneration already. Since glaucoma works by blacking out one's field of vision from the outside inward, and macular degeneration works by fuzzing out one's field of vision from the inside outward, I anticipate that in my old age I shall have a little narrow ring of vision with a big hole in the middle of it and another big empty space outside of it. That should be interesting. We can make such a cute blind couple, too.

As for osteoporosis: by some accounts, calcium alone is very little use against osteoporosis without equal amounts of magnesium, which I know I do not get enough of. However, none of my relatives seem to have been afflicted with osteoporosis so that still isn't high on my list of fears. Mostly I just do not want to acquire my maternal grandmother's health, which consists of having had cancer about 30 different times over the past 30 years. I know nearly everybody gets cancer of some kind or another if they live to be 80, but 30 times? I mean, at least she's always lived through it, but . . . several types of skin cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, more types of cancer than I can keep track of. Every year she has a new kind of cancer. My other grandparents have had cancer too but not that often. Did she go sighteeing in Hiroshima or what? I don't know if I'd want to live that long if I had to spend 30 years getting a new type of cancer every year.

[deadinmotion.livejournal.com]

isn't milk fortified with magneseum though? maybe i'm wrong. i thought it was.

or somethin'.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Not according to the label on mine.

[deadinmotion.livejournal.com]

mine contains 14% per serving of the daily requirement, apparently. i guess that makes me...sean?

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

you mean you wouldn't be sean if not for the label on your milk?

that's quite disturbing.

[deadinmotion.livejournal.com]

it is. =(

[elfbabe.livejournal.com]

Macular degeneration runs in my family, too - my great-grandmother only has a little bit left at the edges, and my grandmother's starting to get it. However, she's been getting some new treatments for it, which can stop it before it gets bad, apparently. So by the time MY mother gets it, and definitely by the time I get it, it should hopefully be relatively easy to treat.

[roses-rejoice.livejournal.com]

Another argument in favor of it being healthier for me to pursue my current physically unfit lifestyle.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Oh my... well I'm glad he's going to be okay.

This is yet more proof that dogs are a hazard! Dogs should not be free to roam our streets and trip aging men!

[sapphiretrance.livejournal.com]

Aw, I'm sorry Gayle. :( I'm clumsy too, and I trip over myself a lot, but I haven't fallen down in many many years. I always end up flipping in mid-air and righting myself, like a cat. I figure that when I get old, if I get old, my reflexes will eventually be too sickly to manage that and I'll fall all the time.

[ex-infidel.livejournal.com]

Oh geez, that's so scary. :( I hate being reminded that my loved ones are mortal.

[transliberation.livejournal.com]

That is way scary. Perhaps your dad was frightened he had his neck broken, so that's why he didn't want to move (for fear it would worsen the condition) (?). But, at any rate, I'm glad he's OK!

P.S. Our dads are the same age. My dad just turned 58 last Sunday. ;-)