I started seeing Carol right after my MS diagnosis. The MS news strung me out some; I thought I’d be dead soon. Well, years later and far from dead, I look forward to many more cranio sessions where Carol beams her light into my cranio-sacral parts and my soul. Also the sessions where she thumps and stretches and rearranges my bones and muscles and tendons so they’re right.
I consider myself a citizen of the world, not of the US and I think the Dalai Lama should be Prez of Earth, because he’s so happy. I’m mother of a just-married son. I like to cook and to eat and to do laundry. Scratch the last one, just kidding. Totally kidding. I’ve been a tech writer/pubs manager for leventy-leven years.
And that’s enough of that.
On NPR the other morning I heard a woman say, in a strong but somehow desperate voice, “I’m afraid of falling!” I didn’t hear the rest of her story. My brain had immediately responded, sending out messages: Danger! Run! Bad! Grab hold! Tuck and roll! I didn’t do any of those things. I turned off the frantic messaging and started thinking.
I’ll bet you my social security stipend for the rest of my life that fear of falling tops the heap ‘o worries, real and imagined, in the minds of everyone over 60.
Not the “Vertigo” kind of falling, with James Stewart watching you plunge past the belfry window. The losing-your-balance-in-your-bathroom kind where you’re standing up pulling on your shirt and in the next nanosecond you’re on the way down, thinking “(expletive of choice!), how the (expletive) did this happen, I am (expletive!)” Then you’re on the floor, trying out legs and arms, waiting for that sharp pain, going through the litany in your head of people you heard about who fell, broke a hip, arm, rib, shoulder — some bone, any bone — went into hospital, AND NEVER CAME OUT!
But nothing is broken. A scrape on one elbow, some bruises on your upper arm (not broken! lucky!) where you hit the edge of a chair…. No hospital. Not this time.
Cynthia 8/26/2010