Falling

This morning, I woke up at 4 as I usually do, what with the time change and having gotten up so early to wash water buckets at the track since June. So, I read. And then finished the last of the grading. And then got ready for work, but wondered whether I should just try clipping another bit of matted hair from Tulip. (I'd finally learned that when she was rescued she was skin and bones and so matted that she couldn't walk ((could that be true?)), and that she had to be sedated to have her hair clipped.) So I sat down on the bed, and then I thought about her having bitten me and decided not to chance it. My thumb is finally better.

But when I got up, my foot got caught in a quilt and I fell, heavily, five pounds more heavily than when I started at the track. And it hurt. Skinned my knee.

When I got back this afternoon, I read a Sunday Times article, 'Watch The Walk And Prevent A Fall,' that says that "more than one-third of people ages 65 or older fall each year. About one fall in 10 results in a serious inury, like a hip fracture..." You can guess the best of the bad news.

This morning, on the way to work, when I went in to Starbucks to get my coffee, in my reusable mug, I told a couple of friends that I'd fallen and one said, "That happens," and the other said, "That's not a very good start to the day."

Opposite the article about the dangers of falling and the studies about walking, there was a hopeful article by Robert H. Frank, 'Maybe a New Day For Doctor's Pay,' that starts with "Even without a robust public option, any of the health care reform bills now under consideration would expand coverage greatly. But they would also start a competitive dynamic that would eliminate the fundamental conflict of interesting that has made American health care so expensive.

     The United States spends twice as much per capita on health care as many other nations, yet achieves inferior outcomes by such varied measures as life expectancy, preventable deaths from specific illnesses, and infant mortality."

I wanted a ROBUST PUBLIC OPTION, but I'm at the point of settling for something that increases competition. I was particularly glad that this writer again mentioned the Gawande article in the New Yorker that made it so clear what a difference there is from for-profit doctoring and a plan like that of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. I know that lots of people who are further left than I am, though I don't like to think that possible, are furious with Obama. And one of the friends in Starbucks who is further to the right is also furious. But the factions in this country represent constant quagmire. And I'll settle. A bill, please. Let's get started on this.

I did ask whether Krissy or Chris had heard any loud noise this morning and both said, "Oh, yes, what was that? Something fell down?"

What I don't like about falling is that it's sudden. Unstoppable. And I take a long time to recover. I fell in New York, in mid-May. No ill effects. I fell down a few backstairs at the end of May and I've finally started walking up the stairs with both feet in the last couple of weeks. This slowness of recovery if I've hurt a muscle must be from the fibromyalgia. But it's tedious. I'll find out by tomorrow or the next day if this fall did anything else. We'll see. Who knows?