Instability

The first day I felt free to take the car after my open heart surgery I went to a very nearby cafe to have brunch with a friend.  I was early so I looked into the back seat to get a book I had with me to read.  But instead of going into the cafe I stood there stupidly next to the car in the parking lot reading.  (I somehow feel I have told this story before; that is one of my greatest fears of aging, repeating oneself, and if you knew the number of close friends who will tell you the same thing six or ten times in the hour--oh, Lord, deliver me!)  Well, the people in the next car returned and wanted to leave but were afraid of bumping me.  They delivered some ever-so-discreet tiny beeps on their horn, I looked up, saw their dilemma and turned to get out of their way.  Of course, I did not gauge the pivot and fell to the ground, injuring my wrist. Despite the intense pain in my wrist I could only think of the fall.  Only the second time, I swear, in twenty five years!  Well, before my surgery I had been dutifully surrendering to my former trainer who was now embarking on a series of exercises to train me to walk more securely.  I had also enrolled in a balance clinic where three days a week I trained myself to stand on a cushiony pillow sinking into the foam and try to maintain my balance.  Or walk along putting my feet into discrete squares and at the same time looking at the ceiling or at the floor or to the right or to the left.  The trainer at the clinic was an exceptionally handsome young man with the most perfect balance, erect carriage, coupled with a gentle manner and shoulder length hair--he could not have been nicer in dealing with me, the clumsy oaf. You are going to improve, do not surrender to a cane, he sweetly said, since then the walker is just around the corner. So, now here I am, the surgery is behind me, I am ever so gently taking up my workout of old, with my trainer checking to be sure I keep the weights low on the machines and avoid those that would pull even a tiny bit on my still sore and very slowly healing severed sternum.  I am encouraged to walk, and I spend a tolerable amount of time on the treadmill which I like because I can hold onto the railing. But two days ago I ventured forth to a lovely park which had a half mile walk through it, curving and winding in ever such gentle gradations, a macadamized path that is laid down onto the landscape and seems of a piece with it.  I parked my car and set off, crushing the sensations of vertigo that panicked me and almost sent me reeling.  But as soon as I was too far to go back, whatever that means, I realized that I was completely off balance.  With some inner steel that I mustered from who knows where I made this nightmare journey around the park, sure that I would fall at any moment, summoning again and again a precarious balance that I did not know I had.  Nightmare!  Pure nightmare!  Today I went to see the orthopedic guy about my wrist.  The x-rays as we both discussed showed a split in some bone which normally they might pin.  But because of the heart surgery another round of anesthesia is out of the question.  He was marvelous.  Let's see what will happen over time (you actually might die in the interval and resolve the problem.)  The pain has diminished, right?  Good sign.  The pain that remains is your arthritis; nothing to do about that.  Yes, the fall was a terrible thing.  And, I quite agree, you want to avoid falling again.  Use a cane--or a walker; it's even better.  Don't consider more falls;  that is definitely not the way to go.