Any bets on whether the PT evaluation will finally happen tomorrow morning? More importantly, what are the odds I’ll see John McEnold again? That’s the name I’ve privately given a frail, elderly man who optimistically shows up to physical therapy dressed like John McEnroe at Wimbledon circa 1981 — right down to the red headband — despite needing both a walker and the moral and physical support of his younger, stronger wife to shuffle more than two steps at a time.
His pointless resolve probably maddens and upsets his family; you can plainly see it’s neither safe nor practical for him to use a walker. That was also the case for Papa during the many years he refused his doctor’s entreaties, and his family’s pleas, to use a wheelchair. In his fifties, he glumly consented to using a cane, and after years of being a menace to himself and everyone around him (particularly my grandma’s cat, Waldo), he grudgingly traded it for a walker that was only marginally safer; like John McEnold, his limitations were too extensive for it to be a reasonable compromise.
Eventually, Papa was taught how to safely fall. The lessons worked; he was a large man who sustained surprisingly few serious injuries across years of frequent falls. My tiny grandmothers (both of ’em) and great-aunt fared much worse during their tumble-prone descents into dementia, and if there’s anything I learned from watching all of this unfold over a period of decades, it was that every younger or healthier person thinks older or ailing people are impossibly stubborn as they rage, rage against the dying of the light — but few behave any differently themselves when theirs is the weakening flame.
In theory and in practice, I’ll go along with whatever the physical therapist says about fall prevention tomorrow and at any future appointments. If nothing else, I hope she teaches me how to plunge with pizzazz on the occasions when gravity has the last laugh. My deference to her expertise won’t stop frustrated murmurs of judgment from friends, family, and maybe even readers when I inevitably fall again weeks or months from now, but there must be a happy medium between the John McEnold approach and wrapping oneself in cellophane.
Regardless of the anxiety it might provoke in those who worry about me, I can’t not eat just because I choke sometimes. And walking as much as I can in the present, even if it means risking the occasional fall, will only help me in the future. Aiding and abetting your problems by rolling over for them doesn’t make a lot of sense, so I’ll put on my (metaphorical) red headband tomorrow and try to be enthusiastic about something I continue to dread. The only way to beat Björn Borg, or whatever else is troubling you, is to face it.