It didn’t happen when I retired. It didn’t happen when I started getting Social Security. It didn’t happen when I started Medicare. Nope.

It happened when I fell.. and couldn’t get up.

In my defense, I had been drinking wine. In fact, I was on my way to the kitchen to refill my glass when I slipped. So yes, I was somewhat inebriated. Hey! It was Friday night and I was celebrating my successful endoscopy/colonoscopy earlier in the week.

It was a strange feeling, not being able to pull myself up. I couldn’t believe that all of a sudden I was that old. A chair was nearby so I tried pulling myself up, but I couldn’t get my legs underneath me. So I got on my knees and tried pushing up that way.

Eventually, I made it but was not easy. For some reason, my right ankle didn’t want to cooperate and bend. I ended up breaking my favorite pair of sandals. Granted, they’re about 30 years old, but that’s why they’re my favorite. Or they’re my favorite because they’re 30 years old. (Okay, from the pictures, they’re really old. I’d gotten caught in a deluge last summer and thought they were ruined then. I guess they were, but I continued to wear them. Because they were my favorite pair of shoes.)

Aha! So in my other defense, I’d injured my ankle. It didn’t appear to be swollen, so I didn’t think it was broken. And I was damned if I was going to go to the hospital two days in one week. So I elevated it, put ice and compression on it, and took copious amounts of ibuprofen.  But after 3-4 days I decided I better go to the emergency room.

Turns out I broke my “distal fibula.” So technically not my ankle, but the small leg bone near the ankle. It was a clean break and didn’t require surgery, but it did require two weeks of crutches (evil things!) and four weeks in a boot.

The biggest inconvenience was that it was my right leg and I couldn’t drive. Plus, getting up and down the stairs to my (walk-up) condo was difficult because the boot was bigger than the steps.

The break happened mid-June, the boot came off in late July, and I was back to driving. The ankle was a little tender (hadn’t healed completely yet), but I had a few ankle stabilizers on hand. So yay. The summer wasn’t a complete washout.

Or was it? Stay tuned…