My friend Cap is traveling in Russian Siberia and I've been following his (almost) daily posts. In today's episode, he laments about falling down a couple five inches elevation changes in the hallway and reception area of his hotel.
Cap has traveled extensively, and does so frugally, blending in with a country's citizens. He stays in modest accommodations and uses mass transportation. Every day he faces situation that are--or have the potential to be--dangerous to his health.
In the photo above, which I took of the photo he showed on his blog, the transition between the white tile floor and the yellow flooring in front of the reception desk involves one of the five inch steps downs that he missed.
The photo below, again snapped from the photo of his blog, shows another five inch step down right where he exits the hallway from his room. He missed that one, too.
In fact, he missed these two steps twice.
Now, you might ask why someone would post something like that on his blog.
Well, two years ago, Cap stumbled over his untied shoelaces after clearing the security line in the Dubai airport. He broke his hip in the fall. Soldiering onward, he then flew to Hong Kong, stayed a couple days, then on to Seattle and Phoenix where, finally after six days with a broken hip and a useless left leg, he had hip replacement surgery.
He was 80 then. He is 82 years old now and back to international travel. Hence, Russian Siberia in the winter.
There are dangers everywhere out there for senior citizens, who might not be quite as aware of their surroundings as they should be. We are certainly not as spry, our reflexes operate in slow motion, and our healing takes much longer.
Sometimes, we are on certain meds that compound our injuries in fantastical ways.
In my travels, I have certainly come across dangerous situations, places where I could have been hurt or killed.
I might have tripped over this broken sidewalk in Mazatlan, Mexico, and broken my neck.
I might have fallen into the polluted Ganges River while walking on this narrow, flimsy bamboo ramp and died of some horrid infection.
This lioness in Kenya was hot on the trail of dinner. She might not have stopped.
This sow and her cubs might have decided I was too close.
Or this sow coming right at me....
When I stopped to pet this young bull on a train platform in India, I might have been gored, or crushed, or stomped. (You'd have thought it had already happened, the way my tour guide acted.)
This elephant in Jaipur, India, could have picked me up and splattered me on the ground.
The driver of the vehicle I was in could have run off the road to avoid this herd crossing, and killed us all.
Who knows what gruesome end awaited me in this hotel room bathroom?
Why, I could have died from an embolism after falling while standing still on a remote road in Mongolia. This is where blood-thinner meds contributed to this fantastic bruise.
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| This bruise is on my upper thigh. By the time it finished spreading it was all the way down to my knee. |
Hey, dangers lurk in my own home. This is my woodstove.
This is the door I open to put wood in it, which I attempted to do a couple nights ago when the temperatures were minus 15.
This is what I see when I squat to fill the stove. Except for the night in particular, when the fire was roaring with all the air it had access to with the door open.
This simple little gadget is what I use to open and close the door.
Thus:
So the other night, quite late and hardly any lights were on, I filled the roaring stove, and set a knee down on the hearth while I felt around for the innocent little gadget to close the door.
However, my knee came down on said innocent looking gadget and my leg rolled forward. Of course, that put me off balance and my head was propelled forward--right towards the open door/roaring fire.
I caught myself in time and I am un-scorched and alive.
Can you imagine what might have happened? All the blubbery particles in my body would have fed that fire. My house would have burned down, and me with it.
The Fire Marshal would be clueless, never for a moment suspecting that innocent looking gadget that lay in the ashes of me and my home.
And the medical examiner, having removed my skull from the open woodstove, would have no option but ruling that my death was a result of self-euthanization from placing my head into a roaring fire.
I am not making fun of Cap's falls and trips and stumbles. Dangers lurks everywhere and only The Shadow knows where they are. But, for bruises. Any bruise Cap can get I can get bigger!
