I’ve had falls before, but this was next level. It was even more shocking than when I shattered my wrist a couple of years ago. On that occasion, I fell outside a hospital on my way to visit my brother-in-law and spent eight hours in Emergency, including a closed bone reduction. By the time I reached the patient’s room, his failing health and exhaustion left him unaware I was even there. An open bone reduction and the insertion of a metal plate was performed at my local hospital two days later.
This time, there was no surgery but an equal eight hours in Emergency, lots of blood, possible injuries to be ruled out – scans and other tests that day and the following week – and horror stories that made it clear how much worse the situation could have been and just how lucky I was.
Our day began early. We were deep into sorting and culling throughout the house as the first step of downsizing, when we decided to organise a house-sitter to care for our sassy – but special and much-loved – feline for five days while we attended a family celebration. Time caught up with us and the house was not quite ready. The sitter’s arrival day had dawned, and we had a matter of hours to modify our last tasks.
At 7.30a.m., we stripped the bed and Ron hurried down the hallway on his way to throw the sheets in the wash. I followed him through the bedroom door, took a couple of steps and realised I was falling towards the bathroom door jamb on the other side of the hall. I hadn’t fainted or tripped, just overbalanced.
‘Ron! I’ve cracked my skull!’ I yelled, as I slowly pulled myself up using the door jamb and shuffled backwards towards the bookcase against the wall behind me. I slid down the shelves onto my behind, so I wouldn’t fall full force onto the floor if I blacked out.
Ron came running. ‘Geez’, he muttered, ‘don’t move’. He grabbed his phone and dialled 000. While he waited for a response, he found cloths to mop up the blood running down my face and dripping onto my pyjamas.
All I could do was rest against the books, hope I wasn’t ruining them with blood, and listen to Ron’s phone responses to the ambulance service. ‘Yes, a deep cut.’ ‘Long? Yes.’, and so on. I tried not to think about the genetic disorder that means I am a bleeder, the possibility of surgery, brain damage, or what might have happened if I’d been closer to the jamb when I fell.
I knew I was in trouble, but it was a matter of waiting patiently and accepting whatever was to be.
‘The ambulance will be thirty-three minutes’, Ron said beside me.
‘Okay’, was all I managed as I wondered how to keep calm. I switched to thoughts of our plans. ‘What about the work we’re doing? And the house-sitter?’ I mumbled, tiredness seeping in.
‘Leave that to me. I’ll sort it later.’ In answer to my questioning look, he added, ‘I’m not sure how, but I’ll think of something.’
Eyes closed, I started to drift. Ron pulled me back with, ‘I’ll feed Tiger-Girl in the meantime’.
I looked towards my furry companion who sat close-by, eyes wide and fixed on me. Her alertness was palpable. I reached my hand towards her. ‘It’s alright Tiger.’ She came a little closer, sniffed the air and retreated to her safe distance. This was not the calm and smooth transition to her first stint with a minder, we had hoped for.
When the ambulance arrived, the cat took off to one of her hiding places. She was more traumatised than I was. She would not even surface when I was leaving.
I was safe in the hands of two very professional, efficient and caring young women officers taking obs, washing my wound, lifting me to a standing position and then onto a trolley at the front door. The trip to hospital was smooth and, while the pace we travelled must have been much slower than was necessary for their response time to our home, the journey passed quickly. I was under constant observation. The attentive officer beside me, took blood pressure readings, temperature, sugar levels, and so on. She typed notes onto the computer and carried out an ECG, necessitating a short pull off the road.
Our arrival at the Emergency Department caused much consternation, largely due to the size of the gash on my head (from halfway up my forehead to the crown), but also blood pressure reading 198/155, low potassium levels, and so on.
A “fun” day of tests, scans, assessments, reports and much waiting amid other patients’ more urgent scenarios culminated in having my head scrupulously cleaned, shaven, semi-numbed and held together tightly by three nurses (including a burly male nurse) while a doctor shot sixteen staples into my forehead and scalp. I was bandaged and set free.
The most painful part of the day (and since) was the numbing process… multiple small, but excruciating needles spaced around the injury. I barely managed to maintain my composure during those minutes, especially as each time I thought they were finished ‘Just one more’ was announced.
Otherwise, the hospital experience was nowhere near as trying as I thought it might be. The staff worked with tenacity and care in their pressured life-and-death work environment. They showed compassion and support, and made sure I was comfortable and feeling as important as any other patient. The nurses dropped in to say goodbye when they were going off shift, as did the cleaning lady who had stopped for a chat in her lunchbreak. And those two lovely ambulance officers checked how I was each time they were in the vicinity to deliver new patients.
The bandage on my head lasted less than an hour. Ron came to the rescue and gave me the Mummy look, which I wore to keep the wound completely dry until the staples were removed. I expected much heckling over this, but instead there were just a few endearing and amusing comments. ‘My Mummy’s a Mummy!’ ‘Who’s the Mummy then?’ and ‘I’ll just say one word, “Frankenstein”’.
Ron had indeed sorted a way for us to move forward. He’d worked with our generous and flexible house-sitter, to find a solution that worked for her as well as covering our enforced delay. She was about to board her flight for her journey south when Ron called her, and by the time she was on board her second flight she had organised another sit locally for the first two days of our agreed dates. What a woman!
On the day in between, we managed to finish most of what we had hoped to do the day before. Ron did the bulk of this, with me supporting him by doing whatever I could while sitting down and not bending… and by having plenty of rests.
The sitter arrived the next morning, Tiger warmed to her in a very short time, and we left home satisfied we’d managed to put things right and they would be comfortable and happy while we were away.
Ron dropped me at my niece’s home an hour and a half later. By then we’d decided the longer trip would be too much for me and this allowed Ron to still have three days with his family, some of whom had travelled from the North Coast and Hong Kong. I was disappointed to miss the celebrations but pleased to spend time with this beautiful woman. She gave me the space, care and companionship I needed to begin my healing journey.
We both almost had hysterics when I pulled out the book I had dropped in my case weeks before the fall, ready for my few days away. The title? The Mummy at the Dining Room Table (!) We jokingly made comparisons between the Mummy on the cover and my Mummy headdress, before the real difference struck us: that Mummy was, in fact, dead – and I wasn’t.
This was a sobering thought, given that I’d been left in no doubt that if I’d been as little as one step closer to the door jamb when I fell the outcome could have been vastly different. It seems I would almost certainly have lost an eye and possibly broken my neck.
I teared up. We discussed synchronicity and related it to this and other situations we’d experienced, before going to bed. I slept like a baby all night and well into the next day.
When Ron and I returned home, we learned Tiger’s initial closeness with the sitter evaporated as soon as we left and she hid most of the time we were away and ate very little. Her response when I first reached out and spoke to her was unique: not the usual over excitement of a normal animal greeting, but more a questioning look, akin to a double take of surprise and disbelief. I was sure she thought we weren’t coming back. This was accentuated by the news that she was particularly distressed at night – she had never seen anyone else sleep in our bed.
Our sitter did all she could to pacify our girl. She is a Zen person – gentle and caring with a love for animals. She coaxed her, encouraged her, talked softly to her (as I do), but the situation was too much for Tiger, especially after the horrendous couple of days we all had beforehand. I am so grateful to this woman for her patience, persistence and professionalism.
Tiger-Girl has settled back into her usual routine and seems to have matured a little through the experience. She stays close when we are home, but there are no theatrics when we leave for appointments as there had been sometimes in the past.
Seven of the staples in my head were removed at my doctor’s surgery on the eighth day after the fall, and the remaining nine on the eleventh day. These extractions were smooth and painless. The scar has healed well, and the shaved hair has started to regrow. My final CT results confirmed my eye sockets are intact, and no facial bones are broken.
There are only two things left to do; follow up about my knee, which was mildly hurt but set aside in favour of the more dramatic head wound… and learn to live with the nerve damage to my scalp. The former is likely a non-event, the latter not so much.
Time will tell how this pans out, but experience of sacrificed and damaged nerves in other areas of the body predicts on-going issues. Already my scalp feels thicker, tighter, sensitive, burning, and numb all at once. When I touch certain areas of my face, spots on my scalp shoot needle-sharp pain to a depth that feels deeper than the actual gash was.
While living with this is going to be the reputed pain in the neck (eh head), I see this as a small price to pay for the providence that made me fall that one step earlier than I may have.
This episode highlights what we all know – that anything can happen to us at any time, even though we sometimes feel we are invincible.
This reminds me to invoke one of my favourite sayings to live by, which is particularly useful to writers who find it difficult to stay on track… including me.
Don’t count the days, make each day count.
c. Kathryn Coughran ~ 16th September 2026
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