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Yesterday, I stumbled while walking up my stairs.
My front door opens at the foot of a classic set of New England Death Trap stairs, very steep and very easy to stumble up or down, even for people who aren’t typically clumsy. My apartment is approximately one-third of the top floor of a 200-year-old Victorian mansion, built in an era where people were shorter and building design priorities were different.
These stairs are a challenge, in part because I am exceptionally clumsy. My proprioception is significantly below average. This results from a combination of factors, including my limited hearing, consequences of massive head trauma (approximately fifteen concussions in my lifetime), and semi-frequent attacks of vertigo—not debilitating or anywhere near it, but just often enough that the possibility is never out of my mind.
Yesterday’s stumble made me laugh. It was funny in part because I had just finished saying to someone, no more than ten seconds earlier—my friend Josh was here, helping carry heavy things upstairs—how clumsy I am. We were discussing the best method for handling the shopping he had just helped me with; I was explaining that I could deal with the heavy things once they were at the top of the stairs. Using my left arm to do most of the work, the once-the-stuff-was-upstairs part would be fine.
Context for newer readers: My shoulder was mangled by domestic violence when I was a mouthy teenager and pissed off my dad. A car accident a few years later injured it again, leaving me with two bone spurs. Inflaming or aggravating one will often cause issues with the other one. Combine these complications with the natural results of using my arm differently than I would without these issues, and my shoulder never doesn’t hurt. If I aggravate it through overuse, or particularly with sudden intense use, like catching myself, the pain can cause serious limitations of mobility until it’s rested enough to calm down.
The risks being avoided by having him help were twofold: the risk of an overuse injury by carrying multiple things up the stairs in quick succession, and the risk of injury in the process of getting the heavy things up the stairs.
Carrying heavy items upstairs, particularly stairs like mine, is a task during which I am highly likely to stumble and try to catch myself. This presents a huge risk because my bad shoulder is attached to my dominant arm. To stumble on the stairs while carrying something heavy sets up a scenario where, in an instant of immediate reaction—without conscious reasoning processes involved—my only way to avoid injury would be to simultaneously not drop the heavy thing, not fall up or down the stairs, and to manage not doing either of these things without using my dominant arm.
Generally, I live with this limitation fairly well. Now that I have a good job, I pay a teenage neighbor to do things like re-arrange furniture, shovel out my car, or carry groceries upstairs. (Josh helped me out yesterday because my neighbor is out of town this week.)
I did not always experience this limitation with anything resembling grace.