As a post-menopausal woman whose bones are leaching calcium, I am mindful of my every step. I hold onto stairway banisters, avoid ladders, and long ago hung up my ice skates, fearful one bad spill could end in bone-breaking calamity.
How ironic, then, that I continued to turn a blind eye to the biggest risk of all—taking a tumble from my high horse. Time after osteopenic time, I saddled up, lording my wifely hi-ho know-it-all attitude over my poor husband. But I may have finally learned my lesson after being hurled to the ground a few weeks ago.
My husband and I were on our way to Boston for Christmas with our daughter’s family. Approaching the security checkpoint, we each reached into our wallets to retrieve our driver’s licenses. That’s when my husband let out a loud gasp.
“What’s wrong?” I asked with concern.
“Oh, no, I don’t have my driver’s license!” he exclaimed. “It’s still in my other wallet.”
Cue my high horse and let me climb up. Over my rather, ahem, vocal objections, my husband had recently adopted a two-wallet system. He’d begun carrying his regular one with every bank card, receipt, and small appliance contained therein on workdays and his slim, essentials-only one on weekends. I had warned him repeatedly that a disastrous mix up was bound to occur at some point, but would he listen? No, and now there we were, trying to board a plane without I.D. Hi ho, Silver!
As it turned out, I had to dismount rather quickly because getting cleared through security without “regulation” I.D. is not as big a deal as I had imagined. My husband produced a photo I.D., an agent searched his carry-on bag, and just like that we were off to Boston. Of course, that didn’t stop me from letting out an exasperated “I can’t believe you forgot your license” every so often, just for good measure.
Such pride surely goeth before a fall, doth it not? And this fall nearly killed me. The next morning, I reached into my purse and this time I came up empty handed. I found myself not without my driver’s license, but, to my utter horror, without my migraine medication. The medication without which I suffer violent, completely debilitating migraine attacks several times a week.
It was my turn to gasp. “I don’t have my migraine medication!” I cried. But my pragmatic husband, no high horse rider, didn’t so much as cluck his tongue at me. He just handed me the phone to call my pharmacy at home.
The fix was easy in theory. I only needed to go to a pharmacy, transfer my prescription, and get it refilled. In practice, however, there were complications. My husband and I were babysitting the grandchildren while our daughter and son-in-law were at work, so we had no car. The pharmacy was about a mile away in town, a walk we often take when we’re visiting, but not on a day when it was twelve degrees outside, with ice-covered sidewalks and streets.
I figured I could hold on until our daughter and her husband came home from work. The minute they walked in the door, however, all of Christmas chaos entered with them, completely derailing any semblance of routine. I was lost in a whirl of holiday parties, napping babies, diaper changes, cooking, cleaning, and gift-wrapping. Before I knew it, it was our last day and I had gone four days without my meds and, miraculously, without a migraine.
I began to hope I might finally be rid of the headaches that had plagued me for fifteen years. The sudden appearance of flashing lights and squiggly lines before my eyes ended that hope. Within minutes, the migraine aura gave way to a full-blown attack, complete with explosive headache, a blind spot in my vision, overwhelming nausea, and loss of balance. It went on without pause the entire day, during which time I helped cook dinner, entertained guests, played with my grandchildren, made coherent conversation, and every so often inconspicuously slipped upstairs to throw up, take another useless Advil, and add or subtract a layer of clothing, depending on whether I was having the chills or the sweats.
Only my husband had any idea I was close to collapsing from this Herculean—and unmedicated—performance. By the time we arrived at the airport for our 10 p.m. flight home, he had to drag me like a ragdoll all the way to the gate and onto the plane. People were likely taking bets on whether I was drunk, drugged, or dying. When the captain warned we were in for a turbulent flight due to storms, I let out an audible whimper and, to the visible discomfort of the woman on my left, grabbed for the “airsick bag.” I clutched it tightly through every bump and jolt all the way to Atlanta, but, to the relief of all, never had to use it.
Upon deplaning, my husband hijacked a wheelchair, pushed me to baggage claim, and stuck me in a corner while he went for the car. I finally crawled into my bed at 3 a.m. and stayed there for the next two days, trying to recover. The first thing I did when I was able to stand on my own and see clearly was put a listing on eBay. “Free to Good Home: One carefully maintained high horse. Migraine meds optional.”
No more hi ho Sliver for me. I’m keeping both my feet, with their thinning heel bones, firmly planted on the ground from now on. And double checking my purse before leaving the house.