Another fall

Okaasan fell again yesterday.
Seems ok. Maybe. But badly shaken, of course.


We're not sure the details - because Okaasan told us about it and her story was all very muddled.


But maybe she fell at our local subway station, on the sloped walking area up to the doors. Obviously people helped her, and an ambulance was called? She scraped both her knees and has a bandaid on one knee. And maybe hit her lip/face?
She went to her room with no dinner and sat quietly and then slept. We'll check her condition today...and I'll pop into the station to ask the station staff the details and say thankyou...


These falls are becoming more frequent. The slips and falls in winter, now trips and falls on the front door step, now a sloped surface in daylight. So far she has always bounced back within 24 hours and hasn't injured herself beyond scrapes and bruises. Lucky,


I'd got home late afternoon...kind of planning that I'd cook dinner for Okaasan, leave it for her and run away to have dinner alone. Bad Oyomesan!!! He was working late again and I really couldn't face another dinner with Okaasan after a day at work. So, I was planning to be a bad Oyomesan and lie that I had an evening class and had to go out again.
But I met someone I know, my bike needed a repair...and I finally got home at 6.30 pm with no energy to go out again. 
Okaasan was still out for her late-in-the-day walk.

I made dinner, played with cats...admired my blossoming roses, put some of Okaasan's clean laundry back in her room...and hovered.
Okaasan's telephone was on the kitchen table, so I couldn't track her. Yujiro not expected home till later.


So at 7.30 pm I ate dinner alone in the kitchen. Read the newspaper. Relaxed.
He came home at 8.30 pm. STILL no Okaasan. Strange. Slightly worrying. But nothing much we could do, as she didn't take the telephone.
JUST as I was heating the dinner for him - she arrived home.
Looked terrible. Tired, old, crazy looking.
WTF????? She sat with a crash down on the entrance hall chair and gulped water from a bottle. Told us a very jumbled up story about fall - ambulance - people.
In her story she had fallen going INTO the station, people helped her and the ambulance took her downtown?? And then she walked around downtown until 8.30 pm????
All very odd. But actually probably true. Maybe someone took her downtown on the train? Surely NOT the ambulance. 
And why didn't she come home and rest after a fall? Not sensible. But I can imagine that after all the fall drama she was still determined to continue on her plans for going downtown. It's the kind of decision she would make - despite the advice of station/ambulance staff.


But, she seems ok.....we hope.
One of my students said this week that her 91 year old mother fell and hit her head WHILE WEEDING in the garden! At 91 years old!! A large cranial blood bruise developed and has now slipped down thru her face and to her neck...like some horror film inside-the-body creature.
We are so lucky that Okaasan's accidents, so far, haven't resulted in serious injury. Although...as I've said here many times...if she injured herself enough to go to hospital then maybe THEN she would get assessed as having dementia and maybe THEN we would get outside help/day care arranged.
All maybe.


This week is hard on all of us, as he is working late and my evening classes too. His regular taxi customer goes back to Tokyo tomorrow and we'll get back to our routine.