A couple of weeks ago, I was in a mad dash to get somewhere. I was in such a hurry to get to my car, that I didn’t pay attention, tripped over the curb and landed face down in the street. At my age, falls can be a death sentence. Fortunately, I did not break anything. But the landing was hard and I think I pulled the Achilles heel tendon muscle in my right foot and definitely bruised my right shoulder bone.
Now I am a hard-headed woman. I admit it. So I didn’t go to the doctor immediately. Instead I decide that, for me, moving so that my joints didn’t stiffen, was the best way to deal with the pain/injuries. I finally decided to visit the emergency center two weeks later because the healing pain is something that I have never experienced before. It would come in waves and radiate the pain. After a number of X-rays, the doctors didn’t see anything wrong other than old bones and arthritis. So I’m grateful for that.
One of the mistakes people make in aging is to stop moving because of the pain. My philosophy has always been “no pain, no gain.” So even though moving the right arm and shoulder were a challenge, I still climbed the ladder and hung a couple of pictures. For me, keeping mobile is the way to heal.
I recognize that my healing will probably take twice as long as someone half my age. But the more I move, the more I keep flexibility going for my body. I am also noticing that I prefer to use my left arm more to compensate for the pain in my right shoulder. So I am now more conscientious about moving the right arm and just doing things a lot slower.
I’ve written in the past about my attempts to get my basement and first floor in order. And it is truly coming along. I had a number of cedar closet liner planks that needed to be installed. So I took everything out of my first-floor closet and am slowly putting the planks in place. But because that closet is probably just 2 feet wide, it’s a slow go. Plus I didn’t want to bring or I can’t bring the saw upstairs, so every cut I make, I have to mark it, take it down to the basement, cut, and then come back upstairs. It’s a slower way of getting something done, but my philosophy is that it’s movement. And moving is the secret to keeping an aging body functioning.
Although I still probably have three-fourths of my million things still to do, I’m seeing minor progress. My defense has always been that if I got everything installed I wouldn’t have so much stuff lying around. And it’s true, especially when one organizes as part of the process.
I recently decided to put all of my board games in one location. And boy do I have a bunch of games. So now when I look for them, they’re all in one spot. And I even found duplicate games, so I gave away the extra ones.
I will be alternating between taking things to Goodwill and donating reusable building materials to Habitat for Humanity as my quest to get things organized comes to fruition. The light at the end of my tunnel right now is barely a pinprick, but I know over the next couple of months I will make significant progress.