The Other Day I Fell Over and Instantly Embraced Old Age

...and I'm not ashamed to admit it

Sep 06, 2024

Last week I fell over in the street. Not just a trip or a stumble. I went flying.

Face down, flat on the floor, arms outstretched. SPOILER ALERT: I’m fine, as in, “nothing broken, no lasting damage” fine. What did happen, however (while I was lying prostrate on the hard pavement), was my transition into official old age.

(Also, WARNING: this article contains a description of a nasty injury. If you actually like mild blood ‘n’ guts descriptions, read on, because this is for you.)

I’m writing this with my arm in a bandage covering a large dressing on my elbow, my shredded palms having only just healed over from what looked like the aftermath of a fight with a cheese grater. Last week I was coming back from walking the dog (Suki is a very large, very strong 37 kg/82 lb greyhound), and although she doesn’t generally pull on the lead, she gets excited when we’re nearing home. When we reach the upward slope of our driveway (it’s on private land shared by eight homes so it’s like a mini car park) she’s effectively dragging me up due to her excitement over the post-walk snack she knows she’s getting at the other end. If I’m tired I quite like her giving me a hand up the small hill, like being a kid and you ask your mum to take your hand and drag you along because I’m soooo tirrrrrred, Mahhhm, helllllp meeee.

Except this time, I tripped on the kerb. Normally you’d stumble forward and save yourself, maybe even coming down on your hands and knees if you’re (un)lucky. But when you’ve got your hand looped inside a dog lead that’s taut and you’re being pulled by a strong, excited dog who is capable of a scary 40 mph at top speed, you don’t stumble. You don’t “trip”. You have your feet taking out from under you as she pulls you through the air like a middle-aged Superman. All my weight came down hard on my palms and my right elbow. I barely have any recollection of quite how or why I tripped; it was the classic “it happened so fast” scenario.

I know GIFs in a post can be annoying, but this is a pretty accurate depiction…

Now, I would normally say I was left lying on the cold, hard pavement, but it was not (a) cold (day). It was one of the only sunny days last week warm enough for a long-sleeved T-shirt that I had (with hindsight) stupidly pushed up and past my elbows. In other words, my arms were completely unprotected. If it had happened on a day like today, I would have been wearing at least a couple of layers, maybe a hoodie and a light jacket. When I hit (scraped along) the ground, quite a lot of the pavement decided it would embed itself within me, much as I’d left much of my skin and blood on it.

The unsympathetic dog

And just to paint an even more elaborate picture for you, my darling dog did not come over and lick me or offer any sort of sympathy. No, she is a diva of the highest order and kept the lead taut, looking back at me with a look on her face that said, “What the hell are you doing down there? Can we just get home already?”. So much so that, with my arms outstretched and my hand still in the loop of the lead (and my palms in a tremendous amount of pain), I had to yank her back towards me to gain some slack on the lead to get some leverage and stand up.

(Greyhound owners reading this will know that there is NOTHING on earth harder to move than a grey that doesn’t want to go that way. I swear their legs turn to lead, driven into the ground and rooted there for all eternity — or at least until they’ve decided where they want to go next.)

I couldn’t let her go because 1) our neighbour owns a cat who regularly patrols the driveway, and Suki (the ex-racer that she is) will go after it like a canine possessed; and 2) she has zero road sense or spacial awareness, so if a person/child was walking around or a car was coming out the driveway she’d still head for her own house as the crow flies, mowing down anything in her path — or get mown down herself.

No one came to help

And herein lies the rub: It was at this point that I thought, Is no one around? Did no one see me fall? Can anyone come and help me? And those thoughts were swiftly followed by, Oh my god I’m officially old. I am on the ground and I need help.

I WANTED someone to come rushing over, saying Are you okay? Can I help you, old woman?

(Honestly I wouldn’t have minded being called an old woman if a young person came along at that point. I was in so much pain they could have called me Betty White for all I cared.)

But would you believe it: I was outside my house, in a residential street just off a main road, and NO ONE saw me. Not one person was around (I looked). No one was walking up the road. If any of my neighbours were in their house they still wouldn’t have seen me because the pavement is quite a bit lower than our driveway and houses and I was hidden by a fence. No cars turned into our road to drive past and see me go over or see me lying face down on the ground. And no one driving on the main road would have seen me because I would have been hidden by the parked cars. What were the chances??

When we trip in the street when we’re young, we’d rather break our legs and crawl home rather than have anyone see us. It would have been mortifying if I’d done this aged 18 or so. But there I was, picking myself up off the pavement, dog desperate to get into the house, blood pouring out of my elbow and palms stinging like a bitch. I staggered up the driveway, opened the front door to let Suki in and then just dropped everything in the hallway. Thankfully we have a downstairs loo so I sat on the toilet where I could reach the sink and alternated putting my elbow and palms underneath the cold running water.

It was at this point that the pain started, as did the shock… I think to get yourself home or to wherever you need to be to be safe, adrenaline kicks in and you just drag yourself there. Once you’re effectively safe the reality dawns on you. My hands started shaking as I tried to negotiate getting my elbow and my hands under the water, all the while trying not to think about the stinging pain.

At this point I will cut a long sob story short and say that I called my husband (whose work is five minutes up the road thank goodness) and, bless him, he was able to come straight home and take me to the MIU (Minor Injuries Unit) at our local hospital. Unfortunately it was shut that afternoon due to staff shortages (anyone my age or older remember early closing of shops on a Wednesday afternoon? It reminded me of that, fuckin’ boo) so I went back next morning and got it seen to. I’d soaked my elbow in salt water the previous evening and then put wet kitchen towel on it and wrapped it in cling film to keep it wet overnight — I was teacher’s pet and did all the right things, apparently. Go me.

Thankfully the skin on my elbow wasn’t painful (fun fact: pinch the skin on your elbow as hard as you like, it won’t hurt) and the nurse got the tweezers out to pick out all the big black bits of pavement from the wound. But 48 hours later it reeeeally started hurting, and has hurt like buggery for the week or so since. However, I’m on the mend, and in hindsight it was a good thing that Suki was pulling: I think it was only because the lead was taut (and so, therefore, was my arm) that I didn’t try to break my fall with my wrists, because I may well be in double plaster casts by now.

Back to the point about old age

Coming back round to the old age point, I still maintain that I wished someone had seen me. Whether they’d seen me go over or seen me afterwards and just lying on the ground, I soooooo wanted someone to come running along and say, Can I help you, are you okay?? And I would have mopped up the attention, played my best Ouch my back hurts/ouch my legs hurt/ouch my arms and hands hurt card and gone with it. I’d forgotten to mention that I hit the ground so hard my glasses came off my face and the frame is now scratched where it hit the ground, but the lenses are fine — as was my face. Sadly my eternity ring is a little scratched too but good news is it’s not missing any stones.

And check out my phone (cover):

I thought my phone was a goner, but miraculously only the glass screen protector got smashed… the *actual* screen didn’t have a mark on it

The whole thing was bizarre. I wasn’t embarrassed about falling over. At all. This was the first time I can remember falling over in public since… I was a kid? I don’t actually remember doing it as an adult. You live in fear of tripping and someone seeing you, then you reach a certain age and you WANT the help, the sympathy, the nurturing from someone younger than you. I’ve gone full swing to being a kid again, devoid of embarrassment.

Furthermore, I’ve had two more appointments to get the dressing on my elbow changed and have three more booked. I’ve quite enjoyed the sympathy I’ve had from the medical staff to whom I’ve recounted the story… I always follow it up with a “Do you want to see a picture of the fresh wound?” question, because so far everyone who’s seen it has recoiled in horror due it being “so much worse” than what they expected. I recounted the sorry tale to my family WhatsApp group, and one of my nieces actually said,

Let us know when it’s acceptable to giggle at you being dragged across the ground by Suki though

Thanks, family.

Second, and last, fun fact: I was wearing white trousers when this happened. Now, you’d think that they’d have been ripped to bits and filthy at the knees, wouldn’t you? Incredibly, they weren’t. Apart from a few drops of blood from my elbow, there wasn’t a mark on them. Not even a dirty smudge from the pavement.

And as each day goes by and I’m desperate to itch my wound, I can’t help thinking about my attitude towards this fall.

I’m so glad I didn’t break my wrists

I so wish someone had been there to help me

I wouldn’t have cared if people had helped me rather than laughed

If I fall like that again I may well break a hip

I’m not sure how old this makes me exactly. Maybe I’m on the cusp of old age? I’m totally at peace with it, so it’s all good.

I’m already picking out fancy walking canes. Even just to have to wave in the air so I can be seen next time I go flying, especially because I’ll have attached a flag that has HELP ME painted on it. I’m not taking any chances.

Accurate artist’s impression of the episode

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