My Embarrassing Morning

It's 8:00AM, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, cars are starting, feet are shuffling, and I can now hear the clock chiming in the distance. Outside is organization and everything is right on queue. Inside, however, I'm in a world of hurt and confusion with a swelling toe while I try and remember my fall out of bed.

Sarah and I have recently talked about "moments". How, in a moment a life can be changed. You make a choice that could take anywhere from seconds, to hours, to weeks, to months to complete, but once it's done you are left with the consequences, good or bad. Those instances where something is done in seconds, with a lifetime of consequence, are of most appeal to me. I don't consider myself a very dramatic person, but this morning I thought I experienced one of those seconds. It's quite the embarrassing story and not one you would expect to bring on the pain it did. But, in my morning disorientation I thought my legs were done for, and I felt queazy with fear.

I woke up as naturally as can be considering all the noise mentioned above, and this is where everything get's hazy. I remember waking and quickly, with no reason, throwing my legs off the bed putting both feet onto the floor, standing, then immediately hitting the ground with a loud thud (we're upstairs) as if my legs were not even there.

I laid down wondering where I was and what had happened. From my view and my fuzzy memory, my legs crumbled like you see in those slow-mo videos of skaters eating it hard on the cement. I think one of my ankles twisted and my knees sort of went in different directions. I felt a lot of pain in my right foot that has now more centered in on my 2nd toe only. There was so much that I wondered about that moment, and so little that I was certain of. I knew my toe had hit metal, and I assumed I hit those metal, wheeled, feet of the bed. I also knew the backs of my knees felt weird. The only way I can describe it is a feeling of hyperextension leaving my knees sore and unable. Or, a feeling as if I was holding heavy weights and hanging over, keeping my knees straight, stretching out behind my knees beyond comfort. It's now only weird feeling when straightened, so you can imagine walking isn't a confident procedure, when you extend one foot forward, just before it meets the ground and you know the leg is about to take on the weight of the body. I look like I'm sneaking around everywhere I go. I'm cautious and slow and almost tip toeing because of my swollen toe.

Sarah woke to my moans and groans, and me rolling around on my back holding my knees to my chest, a combination of pain and fear, and I explained to her the best that I could what happened. We were not communicating well. Mind you at this point, I've only been on the ground, and awake, for a couple of seconds, and she had just woken up, we were both very groggy and squinty eyed still.

I then made it to the living room and walked some circles to test out my legs and analyze my body to try and investigate what could have happened to me. Sarah got me water. I went back to the room to try and reinvent the incident but there was something wrong. There was no metal meeting the floor. We have our bed lifted and it would have been those plastic risers I hit, but I was certain my toes felt metal, and was certain the metal went between my toes. So I had to look around. Now it get's weird. That metal border that your box spring rests on, we all know it, sometimes we rest our feet on it when sitting on the edge of the bed because it's closer than the floor. Well, that's the only metal, and it would explain exactly what I remember feeling. When I rolled off the bed, my left leg extended to meet the floor, and my right leg was still bent to aid in the roll. On it's way to the floor, my 2nd toe wedged between the mattress and that metal border a foot above the ground, and my left leg, with whatever is wrong with it, could not handle my weight alone. The combination of my right toe stuck in the metal border and my weakened left leg led to a nasty fall where my ankle and toe were bent as my body lowered. This also explains my carpet burn on my left knee where it must have impacted the ground before the rest of my body.

The Culprit

The only part I don't know now: why do my legs feel this way? This is where the fear came in this morning, I couldn't explain it well, but it felt like they would never work again (again, this morning I was confused, groggy, and had just fallen to the ground). All I can think of is that our mattress is the worst mattress in all of Laie and causes a "hyperextension" feeling if I lay on my stomach at all, legs straightened. But even that doesn't sound plausible, so this is still a mystery. I can still feel it, and must simply wait it out.

If you have any ideas (heat, ice, stretch, rest), or have experienced something similar, please do tell and ease my embarrassment of dropping to the floor this morning causing injury. I feel elderly...