My World Part XI

I fell today. In the basement, with a basked of laundry blocking my vision, I stepped on a plastic hanger my middle daughter must have dropped on the floor and went for a slide that ended with my right knee twisted, my left knee planted firmly on the concrete, and now, two hours later, a sore neck and the beginnings of a headache.

When I landed, the first thing I did was lie down on the floor, on this strip of carpet scrap that forms a path through the laundry room and if the hanger had been lying on, would not have made me slip. I thought about my grandmother who died in December 2016 and how her final day at her own home was on the basement floor with a bloody broken ankle that our family's DO orthopedic surgeon couldn't fix. 

My second thought was about how that surgeon, who had done my parents' knees, my left knee with the necrosis, my grandfather's knees and back, my uncle's shoulder...had retired in March. Good time to exit health care. But who was going to do my next knee surgery? The knee I twisted has junk in the joint, and each morning I walk like Frankenstein until it all settles again and I'm functional. I figure it's either a chewed up meniscus or it's more dead bone. 

My third thought expanded on the lack of surgeon I trusted and I wondered how I would find someone and also how I would afford said surgery. But I know I need it done, within the year or so if possible.

So then I got up off the damned floor and carried the laundry upstairs a step at a time.