Fall Risk

During my initial PT evaluation in rehab, my therapist noticed a yellow bracelet from Acute Care on my arm with the words "FALL RISK" and gave it a disapproving look.  "You're not a fall risk," she said.  "Those are for people who forget they can't walk and try to get out of bed on their own.  You're weak, but you're conscious enough to know that and not get yourself into trouble."

That, plus the fact that I couldn't have rolled myself out of bed if I'd wanted to and didn't anticipate that I would suddenly forget my physical limitations, did make the bracelet seem a little unnecessary, but I left it on anyway, if only because it made people laugh who knew my preexisting condition of poor coordination and tendencies to trip and run into things.

Over the past few days, though, I've started to see myself becoming a legitimate fall risk under Jacki's definition.  One afternoon, frustrated while trying to back up in the wheelchair, I caught myself preparing to stand up and walk behind the wheelchair to move a cord out of the way. On another occasion I had to stop myself when I realized I was halfway off the toilet and plotting the best route around the walker and wheelchair to the sink, having forgotten in both cases that the very reason I was in the wheelchair or surrounded by strange equipment in the bathroom is that I cannot stand and walk on my own.

Riskiness aside, it feels good to sense my limbs remembering the effortlessness, the nonchalance of instinctual actions like standing up to move something out of the way or maneuver between obstacles, which in the past month had become foreign and unnatural.  And it is astonishing to think that soon I will be free to carry out these complex motions on my own without a second thought.