Life Changing Experiences - Part 2

Just to be different and buck the normal trend, my second life-changing experience actually happened before the first.  Well, who wants to be predictable?

Back at the end of last November I had a little tumble.  I was just walking down the pathway by the side of the multi-storey car park in Welwyn Garden City having done some early Christmas shopping when my llife changed.  A bit dramatic you may say, but not from my point of view.  I tripped over the uneven pavement and most probably because my hands were full of shopping bags, I fell awkwardly and couldn't get up again.  My body just seemed to have stopped listening to me - especially my right arm.  I thought I was moving it to lever myself up, and it felt like I was, but nothing actually happened.  Yep, I'd broken my arm.  It was an incredibly weird experience, though, because my brain was telling my arm to move, and the muscles/nerves etc were doing their job and sending back a message to my brain to say 'Yes, the arm has been moved'.  However, when I used my eyes I could see nothing had happened.

This was a day for firsts - first time I've ever broken my arm, the first time I'd been the subject of a 999 call, the first time I'd taken that f*a*n*t*a*s*t*i*c gas and air mixture to dull the pain,the first time I've had to have my clothes cut off me and the first time I've been to the emergency ward of a hospital.  And after each of those 'first times' you can add 'and last' (apart from the gas, of course).

I'd broken my humerus - and as the kind ladies kept on saying as they were plastering me up "That's the worse bone in the body to break because gravity is constantly pulling it apart".  But at least I hadn't broken my shoulder.

After the first week they found that the bone was being moved sideways by the bottom plaster, so gave me just a small slab between my shoulder and elbow.  But that didn't work, the bone ends were still not meeting, so they took me into hospital for an operation to pin them together.  And this is where the life-changing experience really started.  I spent 4 days in hospital and they never did the operation.  Children and hips came before arm pinning, and though each night they put me on 'nil by mouth' in case there was a gap in the morning theatre schedule, everyone seemed to be breaking their hips that week.  The only day there was a gap, was the one day they'd moved me to another ward, and the new staff had given me breakfast so they couldn't operate.  That's life.  On a glass-half-empty note, I lost quite a lot of weight over those four days.

Anway, I spent three days in a general ward and that is an experience I would not recommend to anyone.  Since it was a trauma ward, it was mainly filled with old people who had had falls.  Firstly, I noticed that the majority were widows - I knew men had a shorter life expectancy, but this was physical proof.  All these lonely old women, and it would be even worse for me because we have no children.  I got very scared about being left on my own.  So, I made my first life-choices:

• I made John promise he wouldn't die before me.
• I promised myself I would not follow the usual south-of-England habit of being totally insular - wherever we eventually live in France you can bet we'll join all the clubs and societies we can and actually talk to the neighbours.

And then there were those patients who appeared to be suffering from Altzheimer's, and one patient definitely had some version of Tourette's.  This latter was a lady who would curse and swear as soon as any of the staff came anywhere near her, and her poor husband sat by her bed trying to placate her all day.  That scared me, I can tell you.  No way do I want John to have to suffer if that ever happens to me.  So I made him promise if I ever deteriorated in that way he'd put me in a home and get on with his life.  In fact, I'd rather commit suicide than end up like that. More than ever now, I wholeheartedly believe:

It's the quality not the quantity of life that matters

So from now on I'm going to make absolutely sure I get the quality right.  And that brings me full circle to my first post on life-choices.  All those things I have been meaning to do but not getting round to, and starting another chapter of my life over which I have total (virtually, not counting the lack of money!) control. 

So roll on tomorrow. . . life's going to be sooo good.