A Fall From Grace (a/k/a Walk A Mile In My Slippers)

 Oxycodone. Oh boy.

In what has irritatingly become an annual winter ritual, I found myself yet again answering questions as to my date of birth, address and other particulars. The emergency room now becoming my home away from home.

I don't know why they call slippers slippers. They are manufactured for the very opposite effect when one descends the stairs. Socks on the other hand (or actually both feet) were not built to avoid this particular calamity. So why, you may well ask, were my slippers resting comfortably at the bottom of the steps. I  would swear I heard a small snicker from them as they stared up at me resting, very unhappily, on my laurels in the middle of the staircase.

The other noise I now recall was the distinct popping sound my shoulder made during the latter part of my acrobatics.

Home alone. Hunched over. Half stumbled to the couch. Instantly shivering. Dialed the phone. Think I dislocated my shoulder. Door opened. In here I said. Car pulled up. Car dumped me out at the hospital entrance. Another snicker as it watched me move away, this one maybe a little louder than that heard from the slippers.

In this Covid 19 life, the last thing I wanted to contend with was sitting in a hospital wondering what brought the others to that room. Contemplating the possibilities. But today good fortune, at least this version of it, gave me a wide berth, as no other patient was anywhere in sight.

Examination. X- Ray. Cat scan. No evidence of a dislocation, fracture or anything else that would warrant me getting the sympathy I so desperately request.

My arm was put in a sling and I was given directions for my care, including the aforementioned oxycodone if the pain was persistent and unrelenting. Which it wasn't, but even if it were, I would be looking for a different narcotic, thanks anyway.

And a list of orthopedists I could follow up with. The sad reality that I had seen all of them in the past. It seeming clear to me that after awhile it becomes less a matter of coincidence and more a declaration of who and what I am.

And what I quite apparently am not.