Four Weeks

22 May 2020

There was nothing about that day four weeks ago that would have foreseen what was going to happen that night. It had just been another frustrating Cape Town total lockdown day.

I went to bed at my normal time and fell asleep almost immediately, as is normal with me. I woke in the middle of the night, lay for a time thinking, then got up for a sip of water and a visit to the bathroom. Again, nothing strange about that; for as long as I can remember, even as a child that has been my routine almost every night. But that night, four weeks ago, was different; instead of returning to bed, I found myself on the bathroom floor, half-propped up against the cupboard, with Lotta shouting at me to raise my arms and to tell her my name.

It appears that I had aroused her when I got up and a few minutes later she heard a thump and some moaning. She went to the bathroom and found me lying on the floor, jammed between the toilet and the wall, with a lot of blood on the toilet bowl, sprayed across the wall and a pool of it under my head.

She dragged me out and propped me up against the cupboard. She said that my eyes were white and rolled up in my head and she immediately thought that I was dead. But I regained consciousness and eventually responded positively to her stroke tests.

With some difficulty, she managed to pull me to my feet and half-carried me to the bed. There she took my blood pressure, which surprisingly was not any immediate cause for alarm. I had a nasty gash on my forehead, which she patched up with some surgical tape, and cleaned up my face, which was apparently quite bloody.

By this time, I felt somewhat recovered, so she decided not to call an ambulance, and instead, to contact our doctor first thing in the morning. At that date, Cape Town was under curfew and with the virus circulating, she wanted to avoid the hospital if at all possible. But she was concerned that I might be concussed, so for the remainder of the night she would not let me sleep; if I started to doze off, she would ask me questions to test my awareness.

Our doctor was able to see me at 09:00, so leaving ample time to descend the 600 meters down the hill, we arrived rather early at the surgery and were seen immediately.

Lotta explained what had happened. The doctor took my blood pressure and spent what seemed like a long time listening to my heart. He wired me up to an electrocardiograph and then called the pharmacy to get details of my prescription.

He said that my heart was very irregular and he decided to replace one of my four pills with a beta-blocker. He said that the pain in my ribs would take four weeks to clear up and as to my concern about my leg being numb, he said that it was not connected to my fall; it would be connected to my lower back.

He then cleaned up my head wound, stapled it and sent us off with instructions for me to have complete rest for two days and return in ten days to have the staple removed. He also complemented Lotta on her nursing skills!

And four weeks later, with no scar on my forehead, on the 29th night since my fall, I finally managed to lie on my injured side for the first time and with no discomfort.

We think that our Dr Waynik is magic. We have had nothing but excellent experiences with him and if we were to leave Cape Town, he would be a very hard act to follow.

Now perhaps I should have him to take a look at my numb leg.