Thin Ice

Last week, my beloved, aka the LG (Little General), took a tumble on the stairs. I was upstairs at the time but when I heard a little YELP and a big THUMP, I ran down to find her on the floor in considerable pain. Our staircase is narrow and makes a sharp turn about halfway down (just below or above the burglar step, but that’s another story), so it’s easy enough to slip. And slip she did.

You realize that neither she nor I are doctors, but we both play one on TV. Our initial diagnosis was that she had pulled a muscle or worse, wrenched her back. She gingerly made her way back upstairs and we went to bed. But by morning, the pain was sharper; “it feels like it’s burning,” she said. To be safe, we headed to the Emergency Room at our local hospital where a team of skilled health care professionals listened to her story, checked her vitals, and gave her a CT Scan. Good thing they did: they found an L2 transverse process fracture. That was the bad news; the (relatively) good news was her injury did not require surgery. She just needed a few prescription meds and some rest, but otherwise, Mother Nature will provide relief in her own good time, about 6 weeks. I gulped.

Since that day, my wife has been making great progress. Each day, she moves a little better, does a little more. Sitting still does not come naturally to her, but she’s being a good, albeit reluctant, patient. As is her wont, she went straight to Amazon and ordered a claw, one of those handy contraptions that picks up anything one drops on the floor so one doesn’t have to bend over to retrieve it. She lets me help with all the little movements we all take for granted, like adjusting the shower head or settling into bed at night. She even lets me make our meals and to be a nudge about taking her medications! All this is good for me: I’m learning to be a responsible care-giver, a skill that admittedly does not come naturally to me. We’re each doing the best we can, and in the end, isn’t that what marriage is all about?

But here’s the rub or better, maybe the window that has opened in the aftermath of her tumble: we’re reminded that neither of us is as young nor as spry as we used to be. What if she had fallen an inch or two to the left or right and done worse harm to her spine? What if I were to take a spill and injure myself to the degree that I couldn’t go up or down our steep stairs. All of a sudden, we’ve arrived on the doorstep of that age when we need to consider a different lifestyle, one centered on a first-floor owner’s suite. We love our little historic home, but it’s quirky and very vertical and we’re close to being beyond quirky and vertical. We’re on thin ice.

Assisted living may be the right option for some folk, but I don’t think it’s for us. We’d rather age-in-place with all that entails. (For us, that would include an easement from the Maryland Historic Trust so we could put an addition on the back of our home.) Whatever the solution, the future that once seemed far-away has suddenly become much closer to home. Literally.

When I came downstairs that night and found my wife in pain on the floor, I didn’t consider her, or myself for that matter, lucky. Now, a few days out from that scary moment, I’ve come to the conclusion that this accident was a shot across our marital bow. We’ll figure it out, but the grandfather clock that once ticked slowly in the corner, just got a lot louder.

I’ll be right back.

Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine.

His new novel, “The Tales of Bismuth; Dispatches from Palestine, 1945-1948” explores the origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is available on Amazon.