Day of the Iron Gate

According to my model of Punctuated Aggregational Destruction, our bodies decay not in a linear fashion as we age, but in a series of abrupt downward steps. For many old people, those downward steps are triggered by falls.

My mother recently took a fall in the Day Room of the Nursing Home she's in. About half of her forehead is now black and blue, but the good news is there was no bleeding in the brain. She had a small, non-surgical fracture of one spinal vertebrae, but that could have been from some other, older trauma. She's now back in the Nursing Home.

Gravity's a killer, man. If cancer and heart disease don't get you, if you survive sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, a fall's gonna get you.

The other day, I was walking back to the house after taking out the trash. As I was climbing the brick steps to the brick porch of my brick house, my foot tripped on a lower step sending my falling, face first, toward the brick stairs. Reflexively, my hands reached out and broke my fall with my face mere inches from the edge of  step. If my reflexes were just a tad bit slower, or my hands were busy carrying something, I probably would have broken my nose, or chipped some teeth, or otherwise injured my face in some manner. I'd have survived, probably, and the complications from recovery wouldn't have killed me either, but it would have been one more step in the downward cycle of PAD.

Gotta watch my step.