Today I want to tell you the story of my mom falling down an escalator and breaking her back. (She's fine now, don't worry.)

Let me preface this by saying my mother falls down a lot. She's famous for it. Everyone has a "Dorothy fell down" story. Once we were in Costa Rica on a rainforest walking tour, and she fell off the path and down a little hill into the jungle. The guide had to help her out. On another walking tour, of the Grand Canyon this time, she fell and injured her ankle, and had to be piggy-backed up to the top of the Canyon. She fell down in the street in Manhattan and cut her scalp open, and walked home through New York City with a bloody face, alarming a lot of people. The worst, until now, was when she fell down the basement stairs and broke both her ankles, and was in a wheelchair for weeks. Considering her history of falls, she's gotten off really lucky when it comes to serious injury.

So this time, here's what happened: We were site-seeing in London, and had spent the first part of the day at the Tower of London. The two of us decided to head home while the rest of our group continued exploring the city, I because I'm easily fatigued, she because she'd (surprise) fallen down at the airport and hurt her leg, so she didn't want to overdo it. So we took the tube back to our home station.

On the way up the massively long escalator at St. Johns Wood Station, I heard someone start screaming behind me. It wasn't my mother's voice, but I did hear her say "Oh!" Just a little sound of surprise. I turned around to see what was happening, and saw my mother and another woman toppling down the moving steps. There was no one else on the elevator behind them, giving them a clear shot to the bottom.

Now, keep in mind, this was just a few weeks after my father died. And my sister died two years ago, leaving me as the only child. And as I witnessed this event unfolding, I thought, icy calm, "I'm about to watch my mother die, and then I'll be all alone."

I chased them down the escalator, trying to catch them, but they slid a few more steps and then stopped on their own. My mother was calm. The other woman was SCREAMING, leading me to believe she was in excruciating pain and must have broken something. I shouted for someone to call 999 (I remembered I was in England!). That was when I realized that we were still moving upwards and both of them were going to get sucked into the grate at the top of the escalator if I didn't do something. That was the moment I started to panic a little.

Fortunately, I remembered that escalators have shut-off buttons for exactly this sort of emergency. Unfortunately, it wasn't within reach. I started to shout for someone to hit it, but by then the Underground employees had been drawn by the screaming and were already on it.

The escalator stopped. The woman continued screaming. I was certain she'd broken her back or something, to be in that much pain. So my priority was to get my mom--who didn't seem to be in dire straits--up and off this poor woman so that medics could reach her. As I Mom to her feet, I saw that the other woman's pants had blood on them, which at first I assumed belonged to her, but it quickly became evident that my mother was bleeding from her hands and head. But she could stand--in fact, was insisting she was okay--so I helped her up to the top of the elevator.

At this point, I didn't have any idea what had happened. One of them, I figured, had knocked the other down, but they'd been fallling side-by-side when I saw them. Mom didn't know what had happened, either--one second she was standing, and the next she was falling. One of the Underground employees fetched a first aid kit to stop her bleeding, and another went to the screaming woman and, to my amazement, got her to her feet and up the stairs. SHE WASN'T HURT AT ALL. She'd been screaming in panic, presumably anticipating being caught in the grate of the escalator when the stairs she was lying on got to the top. Not that I blame her.

I asked her what had happened, and she said that my mother, on the stair above her, had just suddenly started tilting. The woman tried to brace herself to hold Mom up, but failed and got wiped out. (Eventually we reconstructed events--my mom had let go of the handrail in order to get her phone out of her purse, so she'd be ready to tap out of the gate at the top of the escalator, and had lost her balance.) Very, very luckily, the woman was uninjured, just very shaken.

My mother also appeared to be uninjured, other than some scrapes on her wrist and a very tiny one on her scalp. She could walk just fine, and hadn't appreciably hit her head. I could not believe her luck. Only Mom could take a fall like that and walk away from it, I thought. And we did walk away from it--after declining any further medical attention, we walked from the Underground station to our rental house.

Two days later, though, Mom was feeling the effects of the fall. Having been through a number of falls myself, as well as a couple of joint surgeries, I thought her pain sounded like muscle spasms. We went to urgent care, where she was seen by a very lovely young doctor who agreed with me, and offered to order an MRI, but since we were paying out of pocket and he didn't think it was really necessary, we declined. He prescribed her codeine. When that didn't control the pain, she went back the next day and got morphine. That helped, but didn't totally eliminate the pain.. At this point, she was still walking, but it hurt a lot to get up from sitting, or to go up stairs.

Well, long story short, the pain got worse as the vacation went on, until, by the last couple of days, she couldn't leave the house, and needed help getting the stairs to her bedroom at night. We had to use a wheelchair to get her through the train stations and the airport on our way home.

We finally got back to the states, and went to TWO doctors (urgent care and primary care). By this point, it was clear to me that Mom was experiencing bone pain, which I have a lot of experience with. The things that hurt her were the things that hurt me when my pelvis was broken (intentionally) and screwed back together. I was 100% positive that she had a break. But when they X-rayed it, they didn't see one, and told her it was a flare of her iliosacral arthritis. Despite her insisting it was not that--she could tell the difference--and me insisting there must be a broken bone in there, AND despite the fact that X-rays miss about a lot of pelvic fractures, especially in the elderly, both doctors sent her home to do RICE.

I took her to the emergency room next, where we waited all day to finally get a CT. And guess what? Her sacrum was broken. She had a U-shaped fracture, which is often associated with severe neurological damage, but--here's that Dorothy luck again--hers had managed to avoid the sacral vertebrate; it was just in the surrounding bone. She could have been paralyzed, or worse, but instead all she got was a couple weeks of intense pain.

They had her in surgery the next morning to stabilize the fracture. She stayed a couple of days in the hospital, and a few more days in a rehabilitation facility to do physical therapy, and then she came home, where she got to simultaneously heal from this massive injury and grieve the husband that was no longer there.

So, that's the story of my summer vacation!

What I'm Writing

I've been primarily working on the revision of Exile, and it's going well. I'm hoping to have a version for beta readers this fall, but you know how deadlines go. I'm thinking about some fundamental changes to Geometry, but that book still feels a long way off. I'm trying to come up with an outline for a book set on Mars, which is a fun excuse to do Mars research.

Blog-wise, I've caught up on transferring all the Veronica Mars and Science Fiction Double Feature posts, which were my highest priorities. That means I can start those series again! I realized that I haven't done the modern Invisible Man yet, so that'll probably be up next. We have our little home theater all built out now, and I'm looking forward to popping some corn and watching a scary movie on my big screen.

What I'm Reading

I didn't get as much reading done this month as I would have liked--I still haven't finished Pagan Britain--but I did get a little.

In non-fiction, I read The Genius Myth: The Interesting History of a Dangerous Idea, by Helen Lewis. A chapter of it, focusing on high-IQ societies like Mensa, was published in the Atlantic, and it so validated my feelings about IQ that I decided to read the whole thing. But the book is concerned with a "broader" definition of genius--the "great men" (because they're almost exclusively men) and the myths we build around them (with their enthusiastic cooperation). It's well-written and even humorous.

In fiction, I read Lianne Moriarty's Here One Moment. Moriarty's ability to write from inside the minds of so many different characters is astounding. There are SEVEN point of view characters, each of whose interior voice is completely unique and believable. While Big Little Lies remains my favorite of her books, this one is a close second, dealing with how we might live our lives differently if we expected them to end soon, and whether we even have free will or if everything we do is merely the result of a chain of probabilities (one of my favorite useless philosophical quandaries).

I discovered that, after nearly a decade, there's a new Old Man's War book coming out, so I started a re-read of that series. This is great military sci-fi, with one of Scalzi's patented smart-and-smart-ass main characters, that delves into another of my favorite useless philosophical quandaries: who actually are we? What makes us who we are? Genetics or experience? Brain or soul? All while telling a fun, actiony story of space wars against intriguing enemies, both alien and human.

What I'm Watching

The Residence on Netflix, a mystery/screwball comedy that feels very Shonda Rimesy (because it is) and features one of my favorite actors of all time, VINNIE VAN LOWE (otherwise known as Ken Marino).

The Ultimatum: Queer Love season 2. I always watch The Ultimatum and I always regret it, but I get much more invested in the queer version (which thus far been entirely WLW. MLM when??). They always stay together! Even when it's incredibly obvious that they shouldn't!

I watched one episode of season two of Sandman, and I don't know if I can continue. I know all the arguments for and against watching it, and I wanted to give it a chance because 1) lots of people besides Gaiman were involved in making it, and shouldn't be punished, and 2) bad people can make good art. But the character of Dream has always been closely identified with Gaiman himself for me. I'm not sure if that's why I can't stand him anymore, or if it's the season two writing, but he just seems like a huge whiny manbaby who wants everyone to feel sorry for him for something shitty that he did, and it's all too real. I'd rather watch a show about any of the other Endless at this point, and maybe we'll get more of them in other episodes, so maybe I'll try watching a bit more. We'll see.

Looking forward to season 2 of Wednesday!

What I'm Playing

WoW classic is about to launch its Mists of Pandaria era, and that was such a fun expansion that I've decided to go back and play through it once. Of course, that means getting a character to level 85, and I decided to start from scratch so that I could play Alliance with my son. I have a Draenei priest, currently level 36, so it's gonna be a while.

What I'm Making

I finished the wrap shirt! The fit's a little awkward--I think I mis-measured, or gave myself too much ease, but the garment is a bit too wide. And the stiff fabric--it's quilting cotton, which doesn't drape as well as other types of cotton--results in the sleeves sticking out in a weird way. I like the way the hombre fabric turned out, but in reality these colors are a little bright for me and don't fit in with the current old-man/fifties-nerd aesthetic I'm building. But it was fun to make and I learned a lot. I'm definitely going to make this pattern again and refine it for my fit and style.

I'm getting really close to finishing my Trinigan--just one sleeve and the collarband remain.

What's On Deck

I don't have much travel planned through the end of August, which is always a pleasant relief. We're doing a little weekend trip to Astoria with the dog, which barely counts, and otherwise I'll be home, sheltering from the hot weather by sitting in our windowless TV room. Speaking of which--the biggest thing coming up is a remodel of said TV room, involving a lot of shelves for all our books. It's the only room in our apartment that was basically featureless when we got it, so it's been fun turning it into a usable space. And I'll be glad to unpack the boxes of books that are currently stacked in our daughter's vacant bedroom.

It'll also be the eventual home of Pithlit the Betta, whom I forgot to tell you about. I got a fish! Actually several fish, because I also got some golden corydoras for my big tank, but Pithlit is more of a real pet because he comes to check me out every time I go by, hoping for food. Bettas are the labradors of the fish world.

Finally, in the next month I'll be helping my mother get rid of my father's things, and unpacking all the stuff they never got around to unpacking before he died--a project that will be both fun, because new space!, and somber, because death. But at least I'm not living in the universe where my mother died falling down an escalator.