Hawaii K-O

Note:  Read "Legends of My Falls," "One Flew Over the Basement Stairs," "Snow White Falling on Cedar," "Down, Down and Away," "The Accidental Tourist," "The Latte Show" and "Up the Downed Suitcase" before reading this post.

After 22 years in our Port Orchard home, our family moved to Hawaii in 1998 due to my husband's job transfer. This move was to be for one to two years, but as it turned out, we lived in Kailua, HI for nine years. During that time we had so many amazing experiences. The move turned out to be the best thing in the world for our family, but it wasn't good for my back. Let me explain.

I turned 50 just a few months before we moved. I doubt any fall prior to that had any lasting effect on my health. Perhaps I should have paid attention to what happens to your body once you hit your 50's. Maybe I would have been more cautious about my activities. Before the big fall I call "Hawaii K-O" I did two things that I ended up being scolded for. I guess I should have been more careful, but who knew? I sure didn't.

First, I got a call from a friend back in Port Orchard who wondered if I had a copy of a certain song. I told her I would check and call her back. All my music was stored in an old buffet in my living room. I sat on the floor, legs spread out, pulling music books out of the buffet, then stacking the books on the floor in front of me, between my outstretched legs. That was fine for most of the time, until the floor between my legs was all full of books and a few stray books remained in the back of my buffet. I could hardly get on my knees to get those books, not with all the books between my legs. I was in a pickle of my own doing. I hadn't found the requested music yet. I had to check those last few books, but how to get there...and a 'bright' idea came to me. I lifted my body up and stretched forward as far as I could in order to reach the elusive music. In the process of doing so I felt something snap in my back. It was the oddest feeling. It was not long before I felt some numbness in my scalp. I tried to get up to walk, but first I had to twist and turn and move all the books to the side. The upshot of the whole deal is that I had to spend the next week flat on my back, all day every day. I would feel the numbness creep up into my scalp. It was scary. I don't like staying down, but we were flying to Seattle a week from then, so I had to get better for our trip. That week is all it took. The numbness disappeared. Our trip went off as planned. Problem solved.

A few years later I was bugged by the foliage growing up past the top of our board fence separating our yard from our neighbor's. One day I decided to do something about it. I had a window of opportunity between my morning and afternoon piano students, so I got busy and really went to town on the whole thing. It was very hot outside--it was, after all, Hawaii--and the sun was beating down on me. The fence was six feet tall. I'm short, so I had to reach as far as I could while on my tippy toes, and the vines were so thick I most often had to twist them in order to cut them. All of the trimmed yard waste was thrown on the ground until it was time to fill the garbage bags. This included having to bend down every time, and I could tell my back wasn't liking it. But once I started this project, I really needed to finish it.

I found out later that after 50 your should never get up on your tippy toes. No one had ever told me that. This is where the sciatica began, and that is where it stayed. There were two major events that same week that further aggravated my little problem. When I should have spent the week resting on my back, one day I was on my feet all day at a hospital, walking all over several floors with no chairs available to me (long story). Another day we had tickets to a concert I didn't want to miss. We had to walk a long way from the parking garage to the arena, and our seats were at the very top of this cavernous venue. We sat in those small bucket seats for four and a half hours. Then came the long walk back to our car.

I don't mean to be melodramatic, but bear with me--it's all part of my story. This all led up to my fall walking downhill in the dark at 4:45 A.M. This is back when I could still get myself up off the ground, but I didn't want to. It was amazingly comfortable down there on the ground. I fell because of a torn up sidewalk. If I had been walking in the daylight I would have seen the unevenness of it all, but it was not light yet. This is when my husband and I liked to walk. We put in two and a half miles almost every morning, and we weren't walking on flat ground. We lived at the top of a steep hill, and the course we laid out for ourselves took us up and down other steep hills. This did wonders for our weight and my asthma. Falling was the furthest thing from my mind when it happened, and it happened so fast. Like I said, it was comfy down there on the ground, so comfy that my husband was afraid I was knocked out (hence the K-O). I knew that once I got up I would have to deal with my bloody knees and other damage. Down on the ground, I was feeling nothing. It was quite surreal.

For our remaining months in Hawaii, I was not quite as enthusiastic about our walking as I had been. I still did it, but going downhill took on a new, sinister vibe. To this day, I'm hesitant even walking down stairs.

That was it for Hawaii. Four months later we moved to Virginia. After living in three different one-story homes during our 31 years of marriage--one in Port Orchard, two in Hawaii--we moved into a townhouse with very steep stairs leading to the second floor. That's where our office and my music room were located, as well as our guest room and guest bath. The movers dumped all our tall boxes of belongings on the first floor, and while my husband was at work, I did the unpacking and moving in. I carried so many boxes up those steep stairs---and down again when we moved two years later! Most memorable: LP's and music books. Oh dear, my poor back.

And the next move we did ourselves. We packed it all up and headed across the country in a 26-foot U-Haul towing our van behind on a trailer. We were 60. After many weeks of fetching and packing and carrying and loading, we spent seven days sitting in that U-Haul. For me, it was quite a fete to make it up into the cab and also back down out of it. I'm thinking my back probably didn't like that. And once we got to our destination---Port Orchard!!---what did we do but move into a two-story house. More carrying and unpacking and putting away, up and down stairs, up and down step stools.

So in spite of "Hawaii K-O" I was able to handle that move quite well, although I remember complaining about my "right hip, left foot. Prior to "Hawaii K-O, that was not an issue. Who knows what I did then, but really, when I look back, all I think about is how truly comfortable it was just laying there in the street, which is where I ended up.

Firstelle, a street person. I never saw that coming. I was down for the count:

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