Falling Off of a Ladder

Lessons I learned (and re-learned) from falling off a ladder.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Amazing Journey Podcast. I'm your host, Mike. I'm very grateful that you're taking the time to spend with me to listen to this podcast, hear about some lessons that I've learned along my amazing journey of life, and I'm looking to share some of those with you. And hopefully you can learn something as well. As promised in the last episode, I'm going to start this episode and subsequent episodes with um three songs that bring me great joy, each for a specific reason. And if you've heard them before and you like them, I would encourage you to look them up on your favorite streaming platform and have a listen. And if you haven't heard them before, then again, look them up on your streaming platform and have a listen. The first is Sweet Talkin' Woman by the Electric Light Orchestra. Great hit out of 1978, and I hear it, and I think of my favorite sweet talking woman out there. And she knows who she is. Voice of an Archangel. The second is winning by Santana in 1981, a very, very, very unique song. I had never heard one laid out that way before or since. And Santana, of course, is legendary. And I always finished that song feeling, you know, pretty good about life. And the last one is One Day at a Time by Joe Walsh. Great hit from 2012. Actually, he had recorded it years before that, before the Eagles went on tour and did their famous uh DVD from Melbourne, Australia. But 2012, they remastered it and it's got such a beautiful sound. So One Day at a Time by Joe Walsh. If you're struggling with any type of addiction or somebody that you love or care about is, this is a great song to kind of give you that little pick me up on a day that isn't so great. So speaking of days that weren't so great, um, I want to spend a little time today talking about lessons that I learned from falling off a ladder. Now, why you you may be asking yourself, why, Michael, do you want to talk about falling off a ladder? You said that this podcast is supposed to be positive and make us feel good about things. And I believe after we talk about the lessons that I've learned, or in some cases relearned, uh, we can walk away from it feeling better because any day that you gain knowledge and or wisdom and that little light bulb goes off in your head, I think that's a great day. I don't believe we're put here on this planet just to exist. I think we each have our own unique and distinct journey. And there are so many lessons that can be learned from it. So let me set the table. Um, this is a very tough week. This past Monday was the 15th anniversary of my father's death. My father and I were very close. We had a very unique and distinct relationship. And there were times that as I came of age as a man, we certainly didn't see eye to eye all the time, but I always loved him and I always respected him, and I believe and I know that he loved and respected me. Um and he was physically the most powerful person as far as physical strength went that I have ever met or seen anywhere in the world. When I was younger, I watched my father do things that when I relay the stories, there are many people who don't believe me. He was, and I'm sure a lot of you out there know somebody like they they just had freakish physical strength. And it was it was amazing, and there were days it was terrifying, but so to see him perform amazing feats of strength and work out with enormous amounts of iron and steel and cement free weights in the little homemade gym he built in the work area of our basement, to watch him go from that to a physically debilitated and beaten man ravaged by living cancer, liver cancer, uh it was it was a lot. It it triggered a PTS moment in me. And any of us who have had to watch somebody that they love and care about begin the journey towards death, it it is a PTS post-traumatic stress-invoking moment because you're trying to keep the straight poker face and you're trying to be there for them. And sometimes you just can't help it. Sometimes you have to step out of the room and kind of gather yourself because you don't want to see them, they don't you don't want them to see you break down, but it is just such a helpless, hopeless feeling that somebody that you love that much is dying, actively dying, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. So this past Monday was the 15th anniversary of his death, and I had thought, mistakenly so, that as the time went on, the the anniversary of his death would get easier for me. And the truth of the matter is it hasn't. Um I think about him daily, and I miss him terribly. But I've gotten to the point in my life where I realize that you know, I had a choice to make, and that choice is I can constantly dwell on the six months that you know he his health failed right before he died. Or I can look at it as a celebration of his life because his life was so much more than the six months that he got sick and was and died from cancer. So every year we uh we have a mass. My family is Catholic and we celebrated a mass, and um I left the mass, you know, feeling very, very good. It was I I just I left and just for a variety of reasons, it was just it was amazing. It it was a beautiful service, and you know, it was it was the first one since my father died, where I didn't leave the church feeling heavy, but I still missed him. And I went to work. I was the happiest handyman in the in the area which I live. I try to go to work and be cheerful, and I did my job. And then on Tuesday, uh the day after his mass, I had some things that I was looking to do. I I was going to afford myself uh uh just a little bit of time off in the afternoon. It had been a very emotional week. I'd been pushing very hard. And I had gone over to my mom's house, and I remember when my father built the loft in the garage. It was a very interesting day. It was a time before cordless power tools were a thing. There were many extension cords, there were old rickety ladders, and and it was quite a business. There was quite a bit of adult language that day. But I needed to go up into that loft to do what I needed to do to repair the ceiling. I had promised my mom I would do it. I wanted to do it before the weather got too hot, but I wasn't feeling myself. It's not that I was sick, but I just wasn't feeling myself. And I went up the ladder and fixed the first thing that I needed to fix. And on my way down to fix to get another piece of lumber to fix the second thing that I needed to fix. Folks, I don't know what happened. I honestly don't. Um, I positioned the ladder the way that I had always positioned the ladder when I go up and down. I've never had a problem, but the ladder came right out from under me. I dropped about 10 feet in accordance with the prescribed speed of gravity, which is 9.8 meters per second, and I hit the concrete floor in the garage hard. I landed full force on my left foot. Um, I fell down and the aluminum, the aluminum ladder came down on top of me and landed with such force on my right hand that I broke my my right middle finger. I mean, I could tell, and it took me a few seconds to get my bearings. I wanted to, you know, wiggle my digits, make sure everything moved, and it did. And when I went to get up, I just I could the pain was just so intense in my left foot, I thought I had broken it. Um, I have sprained my ankles and sprained feet before. This was a pain that I I haven't felt in a long time. So I still had one more thing to fix. And I was I kind of got mad, right? Because sometimes that's my default setting. I get mad. Now I've got an adrenaline rush. Now my foot doesn't hurt. So back up the ladder I go, I fix what I need to fix. I put the ladder back where it goes, I put my tools away, I shake things off. I said, okay, I'm all right. I went inside and, you know, used the facility. Asked mom if I could have a can of Pepsi Cola for the road. She told me yes, and I left. And I just, oh boy, that foot started to ache and throb. So now I'm in denial because it feels like my foot is broken, but I don't want to admit that it's broken because I just cannot fathom having my foot in a cast for eight weeks at the beginning of summer. Not that there's a good time to have your foot in a cast, but I'm running all these calculi in my head. I said, I'm going to go home, I'm going to ice it, ice that foot and elevate it and try to take a nap. There's nothing I can do for the finger. I've broken fingers before, they just kind of heal. All you can do is tape it to another finger or put a brace on it or something. But anyway, I went home and I fell asleep. And I'm a flipper and a flopper when I sleep. And I rolled over and moved my foot. And oh man, I shot straight up out of the bed screaming. I normally have a pretty high tolerance for pain, but I can assure you with this evolution, I would have won the blue ribbon and the gold star for the world's biggest baby. And so I said, I have to go and get this foot looked at. Um but now the challenges begin. So these are some of the lessons that I wanted to share with you up to this point in this evolution of falling off the ladder. First, trust your gut. If you're upset about something, if you have something on your mind, if you have had a disagreement with a significant other, if things aren't right with you and your kids, if you're missing someone, a loved one or a friend who has passed, don't climb that ladder. Don't do it. Reschedule, come back another day. You know, in my gut, I knew I should not have been up there, but I did it anyway. And this is what happens when I don't trust my gut. Number two, when you're going up anything over a three foot, you know, the little three-foot ladder or steps to a level, you always have somebody foot that ladder. You know, be have somebody at the base of it when you're going up and down. I knew better. And mom was busy inside doing something. I didn't want to bother her, but in retrospect, I wish I did. The third thing that I learned from this exciting evolution is that neither crutches nor canes are any fun. When I could not wait bear on my left foot, and I knew I needed to get uh to the hospital. I had an old pair of crutches that I had used when I had my knee scoped about 10 years ago. And it was like learning to walk all over again with those crutches. I mean, by the time I didn't need my crutches anymore before, I could go at a pretty good clip. And but it was learning that all over again was just horrible. It was physically exhausting, and you realize that you can't, I mean, you can't carry when you take for granted that you're just gonna get up and you're gonna walk, and you're gonna, you know, if you go to the grocery store and you've got a, you know, a bag in each hand for groceries, well, it doesn't work that well. So for me, I have this little messenger bag, this old-fashioned 1940s model canvas messenger bag. And if I needed something from the store or to get my prescriptions or whatever, you know, it has to go around my neck, over my shoulder, and I've got to walk myself on these crutches. And now I have to walk myself on these crutches with a broken middle finger on my right hand. Game changer. So everything takes so much more time with crutches, and I had forgot about that. You know, just walking to get yourself from the house to the car, walking to go from your living room or your bedroom to the bathroom. You know, I'm a holder. I try to hold it until the last minute. And when you're busted up like this, there is no holding because the results are catastrophic. And two showers and a load of laundry later. And oh yeah, stairs are really fun when you have one leg. Forgot about that, too. Something as simple as getting dressed. It's very difficult to look nice when you've got a foot that's swollen, you can't get a shoe on, you can't get a pair of pants over it. So it's the old running pants and sweatpants until further notice. I I'm I'm glad my job isn't as a fashion displayer. Uh I'd I'd be out of work. Well, come to think of it, I'm out of work as a handyman now for a little bit too, but just the difficulty navigating everyday life. And then the the last thing that I had forgotten about that I got a very immediate primer on yesterday was aloof people. The last time I needed to use crutches was 10 years ago. And it is worse. You couldn't get anybody to hold a door to you or for you. They walk out the door of a store or any other building, they've got their face down in the phone, not paying attention. You know, I had a couple of people, you know, seeing me struggling on crutches, you know, one not paying attention, stepped right on the foot that I thought was broken. Every day, day-to-day living logistics were difficult and frustrating. Um, just getting from the house to the car. Luckily, it was my left foot and not my right foot, so I could still drive. But exceptionally frustrating nonetheless. And the last lesson I that really came out and hit me right between the eyes very, very hard, was that I am again reminded, and I have a better understanding of what people that I've loved over the years have gone through when they faced health issues, you know, either temporary or permanently declining health. I think of my mother's mother, who I was extremely close to. She didn't have a driver's license ever. The last time that she drove was before World War II, and then was of the Rosie the Riveter class warship, and she worked in a factory until the men came home from the war. And uh she and her husband, my grandpa, they didn't have a car. You know, they they didn't need one at the time. Um, everybody they knew had one, so they didn't have one. And she walked everywhere up until her mid-70s. And then she started to have issues and complications from diabetes, and her world got smaller and smaller and smaller, you know, until the point where she really couldn't even make it from her chair in the dining room, uh, 30 feet away to the bathroom. And that was when you know she had to go into an assisted living facility, and she went into an assisted living facility in August and she passed in November. And so the takeaway from that is when the world gets small, a lot of people get ready to leave the world. Um, I had mentioned my father as well, um, just watching the debilitating effects of cancer uh for a man who I literally would see lift uh amounts of weight that again nobody would believe if you didn't see it yourself, to not being able to get himself into the bathroom and to clean himself up afterwards. I had an uncle, my mother's brother, who again got very sick, complications from diabetes, and his health just plummeted, and he had a walker, and just getting him in and out of his house and in and out of the car was incredibly difficult. It was very problematic. And even though new constructions are supposed to be in accordance with the Americans for Disabilities Act, and they're supposed to be ADA compliant, a lot of the older buildings are grandfathered so that they don't have to make those changes. And you have to prop doors and get wheelchairs and navigate one or two steps. And for somebody with mobility issues, it is exceptionally difficult. And my late best friend that I lost back in 2009, the same thing, complications from diabetes. We we lost toes and then we lost feet, and then we lost legs, and it was exceptionally difficult. So the biggest lesson, my biggest takeaway is this injury is a temporary inconvenience for me. I'm going to recover relatively soon, and we're going to get back to life normal, but hopefully a little bit wiser, a little bit more humble, and a little bit more switched on to recognize hey, I'm not having a great day. And there's some things that I just am not going to tackle on this day. And there are just some things I'm not going to do anymore. I'm at the stage in my life I don't want to be on an extension ladder anymore. Um again, as I as I record this podcast, I'm at the stage where every muscle and every bone and every joint in my body hurts. You know, I hit the concrete pretty hard. And sometimes we need these reminders in life that maybe there's some things we just shouldn't we shouldn't do anymore. Doesn't mean you have you have to stop being a handyman and helping people by fixing things. But I'm at the point in my life where I don't know that I need to be on a ladder. I'm going to take a second here, because we're rapidly running out of time. Um because when you spend time with friends and it's a good, it's good time, it goes quickly, right? We're all friends on this podcast. But I do want to take a moment to give our weekly product endorsement. Uh the first is a brother label maker, especially the P Touch tabletop version, uh with the TZ tape. I'm one of these nerds that labels everything in my file cabinet. I label every little container of screws, um, label all of my binders vertically. Don't judge me. Uh but if you love label makers as much as I do and you love labeling as much as I do, the Brother Tape desktop label maker can't go wrong. Uh the second thing that I would like to endorse this week is a Silva Compass. I first became exposed to Silva Compasses back in 1982 when I was a tenderfoot scout in the Boy Scouts of America. And from then to now, I have always had at least one Silva Compass in my possession. In the days before the little computer that we carry in our pocket everywhere, also known as a smartphone, uh, we didn't have GPS on demand. And when you went into the woods or when you took a trip, sometimes you needed to be able to read an atlas or read maps. And part of orienteering was taking your compass and leveling up alongside of the map and figure out where you are and where you wanted to go and what path that you needed to take to get there. And the Silva Compass has been helping me navigate ever since 1982. It's an outstanding product, very well made, very durable. I keep one in each of my cars in case, for whatever reason, electricity stops working, the phone dies. If I know where north is, I can always figure out how to get home. And then the last thing I'd like to talk about is something that has been an absolute lifesaver for me in the last few years, and that is a can of boost natural oxygen. Um, the athletes use it, special operators in the military use it, high performance training facilities use it. It's great, uh, especially if you're at a little bit higher altitude or it's a little warm and you're having a hard time catching your breath. You take a hit of those handy uh handy boost oxygen bottles, and it helps settle things out and get you back to equilibrium very, very quickly. So those are my weekly public service announcements for things that work for me and have continued to work for me. Coming into the home stretch here, I want to talk about the path to recovery. And I think my path to recovery is something that can be extrapolated out for the rest of us. Um, the first and most important thing that I need is rest. One of my fatal flaws is I try to get absolutely every possible minute out of each day that I can. And I go and I go and I go and I go until I collapse like a little kid. And that's something that I need to work on. As hard as I work, I need to work as hard when I rest. So I would encourage all of you, please make sure that you're getting enough rest. Take the time to just sit down, put your feet up, take a nice hot shower or a hot bath, and sit in your favorite chair, lay down in your bed, crack open a book, watch something on television or your computer or your phone or whatever, but please make sure you get enough rest. The second thing is ice and elevation. I know there's a lot of you out there listening that power walk or jog or swim or mountain bike, preparing for triathlons, whatever you're doing to exercise, you're gonna get some sprains and strains, some nicks and bruises. Make sure you keep any of those wounds clean and you ice and elevate whatever you can ice and elevate. When the pain stops from this injury, and I'm officially on the mend, I need to do some progressive exercise to prevent atrophy. And I think that's a good lesson for all of us. There are no events in the Olympics for couch potatoes, and a sedent sedentary lifestyle will kill people faster than going for a walk or getting some exercise. Um, I can't wait to be cleared to go back in the water. Previous episodes I've talked about water aerobics. I will continue to beat that drum as often as I can. Uh, love getting in the water. Can't wait to do some swimming. And the gym that I go to has a nice hot tub, and I swear that thing has magical healing powers, man. You get in there in front of a couple of those jets and it beats all your muscles and joints up. You feel like you've got an hour-long massage. So just don't stay in the hot tub much longer than 10 minutes. You can get dizzy and woozy and pass out in the water, and very bad things can happen. So part of the journey in life is to focus on recovery, no matter what ails you, no matter what hurts you, no matter what sets you back. I had been told as a little boy, and I have seen I have seen it on screen in movies since then. Uh, you know, the the the paraphrased phrase, you know, it's not how many times life knocks you down, it's do you have the strength and the intrinsic fortitude to be able to pick yourself up and to dust yourself off and to keep moving forward. There are times you're going to need a tactical pause, and we all need tactical pauses from time to time. But no matter what the injury, be it physical, be it emotional, be it mental, be it spiritual, be it psychological, we have to have the ability to be strong enough and tough enough to get up and move forward. You can't have pride if you are fortunate enough to have people that love you and care about you. Don't shut them out. Don't shut them out. Let them help however they can. If they love you and care about you, they already feel helpless that you're injured or hurting and there's not much that they can do about it. So if they want to stop and pick you up a six-pack of grape soda, let them. If they want to make breakfast, lunch, or dinner for you, let them. Let them help. Let them be part of it. It's a way that you all grow together and whatever type of relationship that you have grows together and gets better and it gets stronger. So I thank you for spending this last half hour with me. I've said it before, I will say it again. The greatest gift that we can give each other is our time, and I'm awfully grateful that you've spent the last 30 minutes or so with me. I hope that if nothing else, perhaps the image of my ladder falling over with me on top of it like a cartoon uh gave you a little bit of a chuckle. I'm okay. Little nicked up, but um I've been through worse, as most of us that are listening to this podcast have been. Um, and we'll be back here next week for another episode and some more time together. Until then, get outside, get ready for summer, look after yourself, look after the ones that you love, be safe, be well, be as happy as you can be, be kind. If you'd like to reach out to me, email amazingjourneypodcast at PM.me. That once again, that's AmazingJourney Podcast at PM.me. There's a specific topic that you'd like to talk to me about or you'd like me to talk about. If it's something that resonates with me, I'm happy to I'm happy to chat about it. Until then, look after yourselves. This is Mike signing off. We'll catch you on the flip side.