On Fragility

Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall

King James Bible, Proverbs 16:18

This is not the blog post I was planning to write at this stage. But in some ways it is similar to the ‘Day of Fear’ post which I wrote before we set out to walk Land’s End to John O’Groats. Then I was assailed I think by the unknown, and the consequent fear that physically, mentally, organisationally, the mad enterprise would prove too much for me. Today, in a body that is much closer to 60 than 50, I am reminded of the absolute necessity to be mindful of physical fragility.

Early yesterday morning, I unaccountably slipped over on the polished boards of our bedroom floor, and smashed spectacularly to the ground. I caught (I think) my right hip and forearm on a linen chest as I went down, and along with the pain and the noise of things crashing about was a tremendous sense of physical and mental shock.

I lay on the floor for a while, reorienting myself. Recovering a sense of which part of my body was where. What hurt. Had I obliterated all the work that I had done to support the wrenched complex of physical structures in my right knee? Had I, in less than a second, wrought destruction on this entire walk?

My still-healing right knee didn’t seem to have been involved. I hadn’t hit my head. But my right arm and shoulder were really painful, and my right hip. I know how these kinds of blows ripple through the skeleton. This was all horribly reminiscent of the fall on the first day of the Anglesey Coastal Path, and the second fall when I had almost reached the Menai Bridge on the long walk from home to my brother’s.

I got the Traumadol arnica cream out of my packed rucksack (I haven’t even left the flipping house yet!) and left a tearful message on the answerphone of our Osteopaths down in Gloucester. The chances of being able to see anybody were vanishingly small, but not zero. Then… I don’t know what I did. I can’t remember. Pottered a bit, I suppose. I could definitely walk without any pain, so that was something. But I was not at all sure about my arm, which I couldn’t lift above shoulder height without real discomfort, and I kept getting hit with fresh realisations about how the shoulder is surprisingly involved with the business of walking: the rotator cuff, in the putting on and taking off of a rucksack; the elbow and muscles of the forearm, in the use of walking poles.

Miraculously (and I do mean miraculously), the Osteopaths phoned with the news that they had an appointment at 12:30. I was immensely, immensely grateful for the opportunity to get the injuries assessed and treated.

Claire wondered whether I hadn’t chipped a bone in my arm, as she gently felt along it. She worked on my wrist and elbow, into my shoulders, clavicle, all up my neck and into my skull. Down through the hips and knees, rebalancing them, and on to the ankles. Everything felt so sore and fragile, and I couldn’t feel past the systemic shock to work out what was going to be the impact on my walk. But she said that my body had responded to the treatment, and recommended I rest as much as possible, and take arnica for the next few days, and a hot bath or two.

She had seemed (although she didn’t say anything) somewhat dubious about the idea of carrying weight and starting this walk so soon. On the way home I started to plan some mitigations. How grateful I was that Stephen was going to be with me, and how thankful that we are staying with my cousin Frances until Sunday morning. I can walk without a pack at all for the first day, and on the second and thereafter as long as necessary, maybe Stephen can swap some of my weighty items for his bulky but light ones. He can help me on with my rucksack so I don’t have to twist or rotate. And the first couple of days at least are quite flat, so I don’t have to use poles.

Although I couldn’t drop everything, I did manage to rest for the remainder of the day. Fellow walker Jane provided not only moral support and sympathy but also practical suggestions from the point of view of an expert (and sometime-injured) walker. Stephen bought me some arnica on the way home, and I took my usual tablets, glucosamine, and magnesium and calcium. I had an early night and fell almost straight asleep.

And this morning — I awoke feeling tremendously better.

The shock has completely left the system and what remains is some stiffness — but not even as much as I would have expected. Claire had done an extraordinary job, and I am sure a good night’s sleep, and the arnica and the minerals and amino acids also helped my system to support itself. My friend Jenny had texted last night that she was sure I would recover quickly and reminded me (with tongue somewhat in cheek) of how tough I was. I wasn’t at all sure she knew what she was talking about.

But it turns out she was right. And golly, am I amazedly grateful. Today is going to be another day of as much rest as I can manage, in between cracking on with one-armed chores and ticking off items from the to-do list. The Via Francigena awaits this walker, who is newly aware of her physical fragility and her toughness, of her ability to go it alone, and her need for support.

As I said at the start, this is not the blog post I was planning to write. There is another (exciting!) one that is all ready to go … but for technical reasons I need to wait on publishing it.

For now I will just leave this gnomic series of emoji here:

🌱 🪴 🌴