Friday 13 July 2012

whack and crack

So, Monday morning I get up to make C a cup of tea, and after three seconds, I'm flying. Unfortunately, after four seconds I'm landing; halfway down the stairs, on my coccyx. Probably not the worst pain I've ever had, but it's up there, and still pretty potent, and intermittently sickening, 96 hours later.

This led to a bit of role reversal, with C, feeling better every day, looking after me, although I can still get about. On Wednesday, we even had a couple of hours in a rare sunny garden, until C felt a pain in her side and went indoors. I soon followed, and we followed the time-honoured ritual of falling asleep watching a recording of Homes Under the Hammer (we know how to live!).

Around seven, I roused myself, woke Chip and went to fetch a meal: when I got back C was screaming in agony as the pain in her side went exponential. I'd seen this before, when my pal Bill cracked a rib, but I kept my counsel and did my best to mitigate what C described as the worst pain she ever felt (and she's had pyelonephritis, a fractured skull, tooth abcesses and recurring shingles with the ME) until Devon Doctors got there. It is a rib injury, they decided, although I do not think it can be broken because it has settled over the last 36 hours into a relatively dull pain, so I assume – hope, really that it's a crack. She's gone to Day Care for the first time today (she got a lift!), theoretically a chance for me to play music and do the heavy, noisy or noisome housework that I can't really do when she's here, but I can't really face making or eating breakfast,  let alone Extreme Dysoning.

As someone on my internet forum suggested, I'm going to have to stop dancing under ladders and breaking mirrors over the heads of black cats...