My mom took a fall on Friday. She’s okay.
She fell in front of Shopper’s Drug Market (Canadian version of CVS). Two people picked her up and one of them took her into the drugstore. The pharmacist was able to mostly stop the bleeding and bandage her scraped nose, but my mom was shaken up and her lip was swollen. She might have been in shock as well. The woman who picked her up off the ice said that she would drive her to the nearby Urgent Care Clinic. My mom said she had to go to the bank first.
The kind stranger followed my mom to the bank, thinking that she should really go to Emergency. She waited with my mom in the bank and then said, "OK, let’s go to the clinic." My mom said she had an appointment to get her nails done. She headed over to the nearby nail salon where her manicurist looked at her bandaged face and bruised lip and said, "OH MY GOD," and phoned my mother's helper, Janine, who comes on Friday to clean.
Janine phones me at 10:00 a.m. yelling: "YOU’VE GOT TO TAKE YOUR MOTHER TO EMERGENCY. SHE FELL!!"
I said, “Where is she?”
Janine: “She’s at her manicure.”
I said, “Janine, I'm asleep, I'm a 10-minute drive away, and I have to scrape the snow off the car. You are around the corner! You have her car. (My mother gave Janine her car.) Go to the manicurist and take her to emergency. I’ll meet you there."
Janine, “I’d better phone the manicurist back and tell her I’m coming.”
Janine phoned me back a few minutes later and said, “I’m taking your mom to emergency, but she says she has to wait for her nails to dry.”
I said, "#$% Look, - either she has to go to emergency or she has to wait for her nails to dry. You can't have it both ways!!"
By the time I arrived in the neighbourhood, my mom was ready to go to emergency and I spent the next several hours with her getting her checked out and cleaned up.
When we got past triage and into the nursing area, the nurse who was taking her vitals saw that the chart said she was 91. The nurse said, “What’s your secret for long life?”
Without missing a beat, my mom said through her swollen lip:
“Love others, let yourself be loved, and help people.”She's so cute.