I don’t always remember the magic word “focus”-but it is helping. Now, I try to think “focus” when I recognize and react to anything that might negatively interact with my balance problems (mild vertigo) or my problems with three dimensional perception. I have been using it, but sometimes I do not either because I forget to pick it up or I don’t want to go in a store with it and forget to pick it up before I move on. So I bought a “flower-power” quad cane (see photo) when my doctor told me to start using a cane on a regular basis. All I could visualize was a motor in a car.

I finally thought of the word “focus.” My sister who works with special needs children tells me they teach those who cannot accurately judge where their body is spatially located to “plan their motor.” I tried that. So, I have been trying to discover a way to remind myself to “think” before I try to do something that seems relatively easy for the body I used to have and, most importantly, to pay attention to my balance which has emerged as a major culprit in my tendency to fall. Being a diabetic I am most grateful for the slow healing the alternative would have been much worse. I’ve had to cushion the wound all this time so that I would not bump something and open it back up. My wound has still not fully healed even though October and November have come and gone….but it is very close to being so.

The doctor said I was very lucky I did not break my leg. The doctor who saw me in the emergency room “sewed me up”-–it took 35 stitches, some of them internal. I realized that I just might be going into shock. My blood pressure was something like 82/64-weird enough and low enough to scare this retired nurse who usually has hypertension. They started an IV and measured my vital signs on the way there. The responders were wonderful, and they got me to the emergency room. The bleeding would not stop when I applied pressure so I ended up calling 911. I had discovered that concrete edges can be very sharp. Instead, I found a bad cut that would not stop bleeding. I hit hard enough that I thought I would look down and find a bad bruise starting to develop. But what happened instead turned out to be a real nightmare. I probably escaped a concussion, broken hip, or broken back (I have osteopenia, the pre-cursor to osteoporosis). I had a choice-I could land on my back on the hard ground or I could stop my fall by hitting the flower bed edge with my left calf. My body no longer has the balance or strength it used to have, so in trying to climb up I started falling. This was were “judgment” or “critical thinking” should have stepped in but did not. I wasn’t fully awake, and just started to climb up to the window’s height like I have always climbed up on things. I had just awakened and needed to see if my window was damaged from something I heard hit it the night before. Since about mid-September my leg has been trying to heal from a bad fall that resulted from trying to climb up on the concrete edge of a flower bed that runs the length of my house. That must sound like a very strange thing, and you may be wondering what does that mean? I will try to explain. For several weeks now I have been trying to think of the word “focus” whenever I go up or down steps.

Hocus focus 64 bit