Wednesday 21 November 2012

The tale of the elegant elephant, the evil staircase and the good drugs...

On Wednesday I got ready to go to work. I woke up, had a shower, even made the bed! I actually had something quite exciting to work on in the office so I was rather perky (which I now believe was a contributing factor to later unfortunate event)

After doing my hair and putting on my navy vintage M&S charity shop find, which I would be very happy to show you on, however I don't feel I would do it justice in my current state, I changed my shoes twice, another factor which might have had something to do with my current sorry state. I was debating these:

But then settled on my black favourites:

I must say I feel incredibly betrayed. I adored those shoes! It's a second pair of the same model I got within a year (I do tend to wear shoes out rather quickly, something to do with me walking like an elephant, as both my boyfriend and father never fail to remind me).

Nevertheless I always stood by those shoes. People asked me how I could walk in them, to which I arrogantly laughed saying they are the most comfortable shoes ever, and I could run and jump in them, not to mention doing cartwheels (apparently they also give me super powers because I haven't done a proper cartwheel since I was about 12)

To give you an idea of how much I wore them: my colleagues in the office were surprised when they realised how short I actually am when I came in in pumps one sunny morning.

But I digress.

I chose the black shoes, my phone rang-which meant K is waiting in the car downstairs after his morning gym session (I have no idea where he chisels out enough enthusiasm for physical exercise at 5AM) and I was off...Then back in for a lunch bag (would have been better if I forgot it really...) and down the stairs...

We live in an old Victorian building, the stairs were one of the features I loved about it. Long and windy, with iron balustrades and hardwood railings. Because of their age (and perhaps the side extension) the stairs dip a little inwards. The ironmongery has been covered with lashings of white oil paint and the stairs in a thick and now rather grubby looking carpet. But I am all about beauty of the potential and beauty that has been (which is very apparent in my furniture collection-but more about that later).

So I run, I run down those stairs with my handbag and the lunch bag in either hand.

And then I slipped.

First I tried to regain balance, then I tried to stop myself on the beautiful iron stair decoration (there is absolutely no safety or practical properties to it so I will no longer call it a balustrade), but hey! Have you seen an elephant which already gained momentum? The words to describe one would be: unstoppable and petrifying. What I did manage to do is go over my own head, so I'm in fact quite thankful my teeth are intact. All this would have been much harder to digest if my face was irreversibly mutilated by the evil staircase.


That's how I remember the demonic staircase looking like during my fall:



And that's how it looked this morning, I think it calmed down now

While falling, my mothers number pocket dialled, or rather staircase dialled (I really am not sure how this happened on an iPhone with a passcode on it. I am starting to believe there is an evil spirit living in those stairs-a Horksus Harry missed perhaps?). She was of course alarmed by me calling her at 8am and continued to call and text for the next couple of hours as I was laying in the hall crying.

She wasn't the only one alarmed either, upon my fall I started swearing a lot and loud...which resulted in many a neighbours heads popping out of their doors. All very concerned and caring, no one laughed, not while their doors were still open anyway...

K finally managed to get in the hall, we briefly attempted to get me up but with no success, as the pain was agonising, it became pretty apparent I ain't going anywhere unless on a stretcher.

I really wish K took some pictures, which I of course wouldn't have appreciated at the time but would love to have a look at in retrospect.

He called the ambulance and two girls came after about 40 mins. I was a little reluctant to call at first. When I came to London years ago I called an ambulance for a women who was having chest pains. I vividly remember one of the paramedics telling me, after arriving on the scene 'unless you see guts and stab wounds take a cab....'. In my pain induced delirium a thought passed my mind to tell K to rush upstairs and grab a butter knife and stab me a little to avoid yet another ambulance faux pas in one lifetime.

The first thing paramedics did was cut my tights open and hand me gas and air for pain relief.

I liked that. Gas and air is good.

At one point I caught myself thinking: 'pass me a cigarette darling and let's talk life...'

The whole situation seemed less tragic, until they assessed I am merry enough to try to lift me again.

It went back to tragic pretty quickly from there. There was no way I could get up, it was incredibly painful-at this stage I was sure something is broken cause I never felt pain like that before.

So the lovely ladies from Kingston Hospital called for support.

My knight in shining armour, equipped in what they kept referring to as 'the good drugs' showed up, apologising for his rather sweaty appearance (we heard a lady on the radio announcing he is peddling for his life) and proceeded with the morphine.

He gave me a small dose and tried to move me, with no luck, so he followed up with generous seconds. By that time I became very aware of not to coming across as a junky, who 'falls down the stairs' on the way to 'work'. I was scared that they noticed me enjoying gas and air a little to much.

I had a moment of clarity though: paranoia alongside with overwhelming warmth spreading around my back means the drugs are working, and therefore world is a beautiful and fuzzy place.

Does that make me sound like a junky...?

After strapping me on to a weird little metal chair as if I was a mental patient, which I very much felt like at the moment having been high, I was put in an ambulance and rather slowly driven to the hospital.

There I was put into this:

Which was then changed into this:

And that is why, I decided I finally have enough time to start a blog...

 

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