~a column by Colleen O’Brien
The beginning of my old age did not start until I was pushing 80. I’d had skirmishes with it, of course – so much gray hair all of a sudden! I let it go from dyed blond to whatever color showed up after I quit “Clairol,” and my favorite, “Manic Panic.” I let my hair grow, and my witchy-looking locks turned several colors – leftover brown and blonde and brand-new gray and white. My daughter complimented me on how professionally streaked it looked right before she said, “And wear it up, Mom, instead of whatever it is you’re doing with it right now.”
At the age of 78, I was sailing along toward a comfortable antiquity with one manageable ill, rheumatoid arthritis, which I kept at bay with what I called by the name of a 1950’s TV ad: “Better Living Through Chemistry.”
I did 20 sit-ups a day (in bed). I rode my bike to get the mail and cruise around the park. I walked to the store for groceries a couple of times a week. I strolled with a friend every Tuesday around a huge oak-studded park and along the Bay.
Chatting with my daughter on my cell phone one late evening, I stepped up on the couch to fix the louvres at the window, mis-placed my left foot between the cushions and fell off the couch.
I think I was out for a minute. When I woke up, cell phone still in hand, I said to my daughter, “Hey, time to hit the hay. Call you tomorrow.” And clicked off. It was only a minute or two since I’d been walking on the couch.
I didn’t hurt until I sat up. The excruciating pain from my neck and head nearly had me screaming. Or maybe I was screaming. I had a faint recall of someone screaming, reminding me of when I had given birth to my son and fainted right off the toilet to a screaming sound echoing off the bathroom walls. That time it had been I; this time, I only suspected so.
But 60 years later, I simply stood up with the help of the coffee table, clenching my teeth against pain, and walked to the sink. I filled a glass with cold water, took two aspirins and walked normally (so I thought) into the bedroom. Where I laid myself down carefully, gritting my teeth against the neck pain, and relaxing inch by inch, still gripping my phone.
My head pounded. The pain increased. An inch of panic crept in. I decided that perhaps I wasn’t okay and called my friend. Later, she told me that my voice sounded like a little child’s – “Will you come over here for a minute.”
It seemed to me that she was there that second, but it was 11 at night, and she lived five blocks away, so I’m sure it was a few minutes before she appeared in my bedroom doorway, took one look and said, “I’m calling an ambulance.”
I protested, of course, stalwart stoic that I’d always been, but she simply shushed me and told me not to move. I explained to her what happened, and she got a panicky look on her chubby little face. It made me laugh, but that made me hurt.
Within a very short time there were three handsome husky boys in my bedroom. And then I was on a gurney, and then I felt I was sliding off the gurney as we went down the back steps and then I was in an ambulance and within seconds lying under brightly lit klieg lights with nurse types fussing over me with serious eyes, no noses, no mouths.
Soon I was in a bed in a circular room of beds with a nurse tucking my legs in rather roughly. “You could be paralyzed, you old fool,” she said with a final yank.
She seemed a bit of an alarmist, which started me laughing. Her face suddenly very close to mine, she stared at me fiercely. “You have no right to laugh,” she hissed. “You should be dead.”
