Me Fall Down, Go BOOM!

I probably should've known better.

Last night was our Christmas skating party for the kids' classes (Royal Rangers and M-pact) that meet on Wednesday nights at church. And, despite the back muscle spasm-type problems I've been having lately, I put on skates and skated.

I skated quite a bit when I was younger and was reasonably good; falling is a rare thing for me. But I had some problems with the tracking on the rental skates; the trucks felt kind of loose. I tightened the laces up after a couple of turns and then worked at figuring out the best way to handle them. I had two close calls, which made my back twinge, but I figured as long as I was careful I was ok.

I still don't really know why I fell. I was coming around the far corner, no one was close to me, I didn't trip or misstep, I didn't feel the skates do anything funny. I didn't even really have time to register that I was losing my balance and fight for it. Just suddenly my feet were going up in front of me and I landed so hard on my backside that I went full out flat on the floor for just a minute. It felt like all my innards were jarred. Unbelievably, no one really saw me fall. Slowly, I kinda rolled over to hands and knees and managed to stand up and skate off to the side, step up onto the carpet. I was heading generally towards the bathroom, because, well, the innard jarring made me feel like I might really want to be in the bathroom before something really embarrassing happened.I made it about 8 feet to the lockers and suddenly got so dizzy that I had to stop and lean against the lockers.

Sounds got distant, my pulse raced and I kind of remember thinking 'I really should sit down,' and I think I started to. Again, I'm not sure what happened, but I fell again...to my knees, and my face hit the floor nose first. Ow. When I sat up, my eyes were watering and my nose was running and I dug through my little fanny pack and pulled out a wad of kleenex, having a bad feeling about the volume of nose-running that was going on. Sure enough, my nose was bleeding profusely. I managed to prop myself leaning against the lockers, holding first one and then another kleenex up to my nose and pinching it hard to try and stop the bleeding. When I was down to one kleenex left, My Sweet Baboo happened to come around the far corner of the rink and I managed to get his attention and he came over. In all that time (maybe 5 minutes?) no one had noticed my distress (One of the other adults commented ironically later, 'Well, I guess we were all really watching those kids well, huh?').

Well, My Sweet Baboo happened to have some cotton balls in his pocket (in case the music had been turned up excessively loud), so I stuffed cotton up my nose and he took off my skates and fetched my shoes. By this time a couple of the kids had noticed that I was behaving abnormally and had asked if I was ok. My head had cleared and I no longer felt in imminent danger of, well, seriously embarrassing myself and others so I felt more foolish than anything. I had My Sweet Baboo walk me down to the other end of the rink where the tables and snack area were so I could sit properly with some back support. I was still holding paper napkins (I'd run out of Kleenex) under my nose...as much to hide the cotton balls in my nose as to staunch any blood that leaked through. I sat there for the last 15 minutes or so, explaining to the folks who now realized there was something wrong that I'd fallen on my nose. When my kids came over after they'd put their shoes on, I got much hugging and sympathetic, 'I love you, Mommy!'s.

I'd worn a black t-shirt over a long-sleeved white t-shirt; there's some blood on the black t but you have to look very closely to see it. Miraculously, there was no blood on the white shirt. I put a ratty pillowcase on my pillow last night so I wouldn't get any blood on the nice new flannel one I'd just finished. I didn't sleep too badly, considering I had cotton up my nose on one side (the left side was the one that was really bleeding so badly). I have a small scrape on the bridge of my nose that apparently was caused by my glasses, some pretty bad bruises on my right hand from catching myself on the first fall, the joint between the bone and cartilage on my nose is sore and swollen, but I don't think anything's broken and there's no visible bruising (yet, anyway). My nose is still seeping just a teeny bit of blood so I'm going to have to be very careful about not blowing it for the next couple of days. And my seat's a bit sore.

So, all in all I'm shook up but ok. However, having a stopped up nose that I can't blow means I'm breathing through my mouth, so I'm going to have to reschedule this morning's dentist appointment. I had planned to work some more on the Christmas shopping today; I think I'll go out tomorrow instead.

Now...can I stand to sit at the sewing machine today? Hm...maybe I'll do some tracing/cutting instead...or, maybe I'll just lie around and forget about trying to be the least bit productive ;).