…Or toward whatever normalcy is around here. There’s a reason we call the the ol’ ranch The Funny Farm. 😉
Come the past couple of days, I’ve realized that I’ve got to get myself up off my duff and I’ve got to start acting a little bit more like myself and a little bit less like a 93-year-old woman who’s afraid to dodder across the the floor.
That literally is what I’ve been doing: doddering. Taking tiny little cautious steps and inching around the house lest I fall again and hurt myself worse. Or end up on the floor again and not be able to get up. Again.
Truly I don’t even have to sit down on the floor to be stuck. All I need to do is it squat down next to the dog, as I just did a few minutes ago to unbuckle her collar, and lo! I can’t get back up on my feet! This time I contrived to use the coffee table as a platform to climb up, saving me another butt-walk into the family room. But seriously: this stuff is scary. No wonder I’m mincing around the house, too cautious to take a normal stride.
First step — heh… as it were — is to get off my duff and get back to walking the dog a couple of times a day. I had kind of let the doggy-walks go even before this little fiasco happened, but once I was hurt, I felt like could not manage Ruby, who is not what you would call sterling obedience-trained. Indeed, a walk around the block with Ruby is actually a drag around the block behind Ruby. So, if I wasn’t already fully converted to Jell-O, the last three weeks of hunkering in the house have completed the process. Even Ruby has put on weight!
Instead of trying to make our usual 1 1/2- to 2-mile walk, I decided to take two shorter walks, one in the morning and one in the evening. Just got back from the second of those today. And it seems to be a pretty good idea. This should allow me to build up a little strength in the legs again, which seems to be in order. Over time, I can increase the length of the walks, which also should help some.
Next Wednesday, a friend is driving me to my first physical therapy session. Number-one order of business will be to ask them if they have any techniques for getting back on one’s feet after one ends up on the floor. Apparently I have habitually used both hands to press against the floor or some object in order to shove myself upright. One hand does not suffice for the job!
Even though Ruby did not drag me around the neighborhood tonight — I’ve learned a leashing technique that discourages that — the shoulder still hurts like hell. So exactly how this scheme is going to work remains to be seen…
“ask them if they have any techniques for getting back on one’s feet after one ends up on the floor. Apparently I have habitually used both hands to press against the floor or some object in order to shove myself upright. One hand does not suffice for the job!”
This is one of the things I need to know! My hands have gotten weak from arthritis, carpal tunnel or something. And it is a long, aggravating job to get up. It’s almost not worth getting down for any reason.
Another thing is if you get down to look inside your lower cabinet or get something off the lower shelf at a store, if you raise your heels off the floor, you then have to pull yourself up with your hands somehow.
Ever so slightly crazy-making, isn’t it? Yesterday afternoon as I was scooting myself across the floor toward the drop-off into the sunken family room where I can heave myself up, it occurred to me that…. duh!!! Obviously, the thing to do when you need to shuffle through a bottom drawer or a lower shelf is to drag a chair over it and sit on the chair for the purpose of rummaging. Is there an IQ point left after the age of 65? Why does it take two or three major hassles for this to dawn on us?
If I get an answer to the “how to get off the floor” question, I’ll pass it along here at FaM.
I look forward to the answer to that question too! ;o)
I’m glad you and Ruby are walking again. When I was snow bound for a week last month, lack of exercise made me so depressed. I didn’t realize how much I looked forward to daily exercise/walks/fresh air until then. For the first time, I actually wanted a treadmill or exercise bike! Who’d a think it? ;o)
The doggy-walks appear to be all that stands (or walks…) between me and permanent infirmity. I’m turning into a bowl of Jell-O, sitting around the house all day, 24 hours a day, with no relief from it and no place to go. The treadmill/exercise bike gambit also occurred to me, believe it or not . And I have an allergy to exercise for exercise’s sake.
Last night we had to cut it short because Ruby had an episode of reverse sneezing — that is, collapsed trachea. It apparently isn’t life-threatening, but you couldn’t prove it by me or by the dog. It terrorizes the dog and just about does the same to the human. Normally I would pick her up and carry her home when that happens, but of course now I can’t lift her at all. So that made for about 10 minutes of fun on a dark sidewalk under a dinner-plate moon.
I’ve never heard of collapsed trachea before, sounds horrible. Poor Ruby!
It’s very common in corgis. Other dogs sometimes display it, too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3N7G2Ti53k it’s sometimes called reverse sneezing — some sites claim that these are the same thing, but some make a distinction. https://veterinarypartner.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=19239&id=4952493
With Ruby and Cassie the corgis, these are always passing episodes. They look alarming and sound very alarming, but they don’t seem to harm the dog.