I have been damaged.
I have (had) this bad habit of jumping down the basement stairs from near the top, using the banister as support to both elevate me and slow me whilst landing. It's one of those flimsy banisters that you commonly see used on basement staircases, made up of three glued together pieces of cedar.
This past Friday was an average kind of day (I didn't go to school though and, thinking about it, if I had been there I would not have had this accident.) I was having a good ole stay at home day, getting a lot done and such. I had just returned from picking up my brother from school. He missed the bus and his school is too far to walk from in the winter so I obliged. Almost immediately after I returned (I had already gotten comfortable) my other brother asked me to take him to the store to get an adapter to hook his MP3 player up to his stereo. I was sick of driving for the time being and said "no." Then I decided I wanted a ginger ale. It's funny cause I don't usually drink pop unless it's diet - this ginger ale was not diet.
At any rate, I opened the basement door, took two steps and leaned forward. I braced my left hand against the white-washed drywall just above where it ended and grabbed the three-piece cedar banister with my right hand (it felt sturdy enough at the time.) Then, with the unchallenged confidence of a young male and the grace of an armless pole-vaulter, I launched myself into the air - my hands using the wall and banister to gain extra height. As I descended, like every other time I had done this (which had to be on a daily basis), I held tight to the banister and kept my hand firmly planted on the wall. Every day prior to Friday the banister and wall would together slow me down just enough so that a safe landing awaited me at the bottom of the stairs. I would land and, bending at the knees, allow my legs and body to absorb the impact. Then I would rise, triumphantly and march away from the bottom of the stairs, ready to jump again when the time came.
What must have happened on Friday was that I didn't distribute my weight evenly between the wall and the banister. Or the banister had gotten tired of the abuse and had simply given up. Or perhaps God saw right through my adolescent illusion of immortality and had decided to remind me of my place. Maybe the conditions in my basement are too dry to support a banister, perhaps it became too brittle and could not possibly support me if it wanted to. Whatever happened, the wall was my only friend at that moment and even it could not save me.
The moment I began my descent, the banister snapped out from underneath my right hand. The resulting sound was a loud, sharp "snap!" Instantly my thoughts were of how my parents were going to react to me breaking their banister doing something they so often told me not to do.
After the snap and the brief flurry of worried thoughts about busted railings I remember nothing but incredible pain. I now know exactly what people mean when they talk about a white-hot pain. I landed directly on the heel of my right foot, fell and wound up rolling over the vacuum cleaner and landing on my back. I must have yelled because immediately the house was alive with pounding footsteps and shouts of "What happened?"
My brother Lucian was the first on the scene. He immediately began mending the broken banister. My Dad and Mom came next. Then D.C. then Lara then my Grandpa and finally Reuben who later told me that he was hesitant to come see what had happened because he did not have a doubt in his mind that I had died. He said the way I screamed ended with a terrible sigh like some dramatic Hollywood death.
After a tortuous forty minutes of driving we arrived at an ambulatory clinic (just a fancy term for a small hospital.) They told me I broke my heel. More specifically my calcaneus.
I have an appointment tomorrow with an orthopedic surgeon to see what exactly needs to be done but as the above site mentions, it could take six months to recover from this. Funny way to go down eh?
I have (had) this bad habit of jumping down the basement stairs from near the top, using the banister as support to both elevate me and slow me whilst landing. It's one of those flimsy banisters that you commonly see used on basement staircases, made up of three glued together pieces of cedar.
This past Friday was an average kind of day (I didn't go to school though and, thinking about it, if I had been there I would not have had this accident.) I was having a good ole stay at home day, getting a lot done and such. I had just returned from picking up my brother from school. He missed the bus and his school is too far to walk from in the winter so I obliged. Almost immediately after I returned (I had already gotten comfortable) my other brother asked me to take him to the store to get an adapter to hook his MP3 player up to his stereo. I was sick of driving for the time being and said "no." Then I decided I wanted a ginger ale. It's funny cause I don't usually drink pop unless it's diet - this ginger ale was not diet.
At any rate, I opened the basement door, took two steps and leaned forward. I braced my left hand against the white-washed drywall just above where it ended and grabbed the three-piece cedar banister with my right hand (it felt sturdy enough at the time.) Then, with the unchallenged confidence of a young male and the grace of an armless pole-vaulter, I launched myself into the air - my hands using the wall and banister to gain extra height. As I descended, like every other time I had done this (which had to be on a daily basis), I held tight to the banister and kept my hand firmly planted on the wall. Every day prior to Friday the banister and wall would together slow me down just enough so that a safe landing awaited me at the bottom of the stairs. I would land and, bending at the knees, allow my legs and body to absorb the impact. Then I would rise, triumphantly and march away from the bottom of the stairs, ready to jump again when the time came.
What must have happened on Friday was that I didn't distribute my weight evenly between the wall and the banister. Or the banister had gotten tired of the abuse and had simply given up. Or perhaps God saw right through my adolescent illusion of immortality and had decided to remind me of my place. Maybe the conditions in my basement are too dry to support a banister, perhaps it became too brittle and could not possibly support me if it wanted to. Whatever happened, the wall was my only friend at that moment and even it could not save me.
The moment I began my descent, the banister snapped out from underneath my right hand. The resulting sound was a loud, sharp "snap!" Instantly my thoughts were of how my parents were going to react to me breaking their banister doing something they so often told me not to do.
After the snap and the brief flurry of worried thoughts about busted railings I remember nothing but incredible pain. I now know exactly what people mean when they talk about a white-hot pain. I landed directly on the heel of my right foot, fell and wound up rolling over the vacuum cleaner and landing on my back. I must have yelled because immediately the house was alive with pounding footsteps and shouts of "What happened?"
My brother Lucian was the first on the scene. He immediately began mending the broken banister. My Dad and Mom came next. Then D.C. then Lara then my Grandpa and finally Reuben who later told me that he was hesitant to come see what had happened because he did not have a doubt in his mind that I had died. He said the way I screamed ended with a terrible sigh like some dramatic Hollywood death.
After a tortuous forty minutes of driving we arrived at an ambulatory clinic (just a fancy term for a small hospital.) They told me I broke my heel. More specifically my calcaneus.
I have an appointment tomorrow with an orthopedic surgeon to see what exactly needs to be done but as the above site mentions, it could take six months to recover from this. Funny way to go down eh?
posted by Rephiscohrt at 7:27 AM
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