skepticlawyer

A friend from uni dubbed me “illjury prone”: meaning illness and injury prone. I can’t really defend myself from this claim with any confidence. I do have a tendency to get into scrapes of one sort and another.

Anyway, unfortunately, I’ve had a bit of trouble with my legs and hips over the last two weeks because pregnancy hormones have loosened the ligaments in my hips too much. Coupled with pre-existing difficulties from childhood, this meant I was in a lot of pain and a bit wobbly on my pins. In fact, I had to stay sitting down for a few days because I had a couple of falls. They didn’t hurt Baby, but I did get big bruises.

Thanks to physio and rest, along with lots of TLC from my dear husband, my legs got a lot better. So much better that I ventured into a shopping centre to cash a Medicare bill (a whopper from the obestetrician). All went well, until I got on the escalator to go to the carpark. At the end of the escalator, as I stepped off, my shoelace got caught in the step. I’ve had trouble with shoes; my feet have swollen up, so most of my shoes don’t fit, apart from ones where I can loosen the shoelaces. But I can’t reach down very well to do up the shoelaces, and obviously one had come undone.

I had visions of being sucked into the escalator. I was hopping on one leg and couldn’t get my shoe off. The escalator was dragging my foot. It was quite horrible. Some nice lad from Safeway helped me take my shoe off, and then ripped the shoelace from the escalator. Thank goodness my daughter was at home with my in-laws. Otherwise she might be having nightmares about Mummy getting stuck in escalators.

I tell this story as a form of therapy. I have enough distance from it now to laugh, and to wonder if this kind of thing could happen to anybody but me? I also wanted take my hat off to the Safeway fellow, he was fantastic. It really warms your heart when a stranger helps you like that. I might have just written a rant about manners, but this proves that there are still good people in the world.

Still, I think I might avoid escalators for the foreseeable future; at least until I have the baby! Only a few weeks to go now…

P.S. My naughty daughter is taking advantage of my immobility and increased girth by hiding behind her cot when it comes time to get dressed. I can’t get to her and she laughs maniacally. I just warn her that I’ll be back to crawling behind the cot in no time. Gee, children are clever at assessing your limitations!

Update

My mother-in-law has the same size feet as me, so has given me a pair of sneakers with no laces. They’re elasticated and I can just slip them on, so I should be safe from now on.