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stepping into a void
Saturday, July 29 2023
location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY
At some point in the night, I awoke on the couch in the great room and decided to go back to the bedroom I normally sleep in and join the dogs. I turned off all the lights as I was leaving the great room, causing the cabin to fall into utter darkness. Occasionally there are pools of dim light cast by a smoke detector LED, but these aren't evident in the hallway leading from the bedrooms to the great room. I went into the first floor bathroom to take a piss (something I do sitting down when it is dark because I am comfortable with my gender) and then, in the complete blackness, walked out of the bathroom southbound intent on turning right (west) in the hallway to go the the bedroom I intended to sleep in. Evidently, though, I walked too far south and one of my feet went out into a void, a place where there was no floor. In an instant I realized I'd walked into the open doorway of the basement stairway, which is directly across the hall from the bathroom. I knew that now there was no stopping my fall. Had I been able to see anything, I could've grabbed for the handrail. But I didn't have time for a grab and a miss. So I stuck my arms out in front of me to absorb the impact of the lower stairs. Remember, I was standing at the top of the stairs and falling face-forward down the stairs.
Then came the impact, which affected my whole upper body, first in the arms and then in the head. At the time I remember feeling like when I hit my head that I was knocked unconscious, perhaps because the pain to the rest of my body ceased. But then I rumbled down the stair to the bottom and hit my head a second time, a blow that felt at the time like it had awaken me from unconsciousness. I lay there at the bottom of the stairs for a moment judging how injured I was. There was a lot of pain in my arms, but they weren't broken. And my head seemed intact too. If I was bleeding, I wasn't bleeding much. I was able to painfully pull myself to my feet, walk up the stairs, and collapse on the living room couch. I wondered if I should call the rescue squad, especially for my head injuries. Not knowing what else to do, I fumbled for the nearby Chromebook to do the Google searches to determine if my head injuries were something I should seek medical attention for. [I later checked my Google Activities and saw a search for "i hit my head and it hurts when i touch it" at 12:41 AM.] My search turned up a bulleted list saying that if there were open head wounds, if experienced a seizure, if I was having trouble thinking, or if I vomited more than once, I should definitely seek medical attention. But there were no open wounds, I knew what day it was (assuming it was after midnight, and it was), and the closest I'd come to vomiting was a wave of mild nausea. Despite having just endured what was probably the worst kinetic trauma of my entire life, I was not going to be needing medical attention. Eventually I ate a couple ibuprofens and settled back into the couch, where I eventually managed to fall asleep. (Had it been very easy to fall asleep, that too would've been a bad sign for my brain.)
I was feeling pretty beat up when I awoke into daylight. Just getting off the couch was an ordeal, as the shoulder of my left arm was too traumatized to allow me to push myself up. I had to wriggle around until my feet were on the floor and then get to my feet using only my right arm and abdominal muscles. I had pain from many parts of my body, including pulled muscles in my belly, lower back, and neck. I had a two-inch-long abrasion on my left arm an inch below my elbow on the ulnar side and a thick bruise (but no surface injury) in the middle of my right ulna. Somehow a small amount of a surface layer of skin had been pealed off the sides of my second and third smallest left toes. And something was a little off with my left hip joint too. When I went to do basic things with my left hand, I found that its thumb was now sprained and incapable of more than very gentle use. I went back to the back bedroom and joined the dogs for awhile. And then I shambled to my feet, made myself some coffee and toast, and tried to have a normal morning at the cabin. I found when I was eating the toast there was a little pain associated with chewing, as the place where I'd hit my head most severely was on the right temple near where the muscles powering the jaw are apparently attached. That's one of the most-cushioned parts of the cranium, so getting hit there was another stroke of good luck.
Eventually I was able to resume digging out at the west end of the north foundation wall despite my injuries. I found that my right arm was working at 100%, which was good when trenching with my big mattock. But then when I would go to lift up a payload of dirt on its blade (which can be a substantial amount), I couldn't do much lifting with my left arm. Something about the fall down the stairs had wrenched it in its socket bad enough that using it to lift anything heavier than a Chromebook would result in pain. Nevertheless, I was able to do a fair amount of soil removal. I was collecting it all in a five gallon bucket and using it to fill in the trench just west of the Bilco doors. (The soil removed to make that part of the trench is still in a pile just north of the Bilco entrance.)
Another task I was able to complete despite my injuries was the installation of yet another sheet of Wonderboard to the outside of the east foundation wall. That would be the last sheet of Wonderboard installed in "portrait mode" (five feet high and three feet wide). Further south along that wall, there were slots for two sheets of Wonderboard in landscape mode (three feet high and five feet wide), since I intended to refill the trench there completely.
This evening after a long period of rain that had me doing a little more electrical work in the basement, the clouds parted and the sun came out. I took advantage of the conditions by walking down to the dock by myself. It was little too cool for immersing myself in the water, so I kayaked instead, just going into the outflow bay. I was finding that the injury to my left shoulder was not impacting my ability to row.
Clouds above Woodworth Lake, seen looking southeastward from beind the rocky islands at the entranced to the outflow bay.
Click to enlarge.
Mist over the lake northwest of the dock, viewed from a kayak.
Click to enlarge.
A white-tailed deer wading in the water on the lake's northwest shore.
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Looking west at the woods from the cabin near sunset.
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