Well, it happened. Again.
I woke up falling in the wee morning hours. As I was sleeping, my chair tipped over backward, flinging me out the back, ass over teakettle, to assume the bicycle rack position, stacked up against my treadmill.
Or rather, the loom position, because as luck would have it, this time my permanent catheter is attached to my bag, which decided not to go for the ride. Understand: When the chair went over backwards, the bag didn’t come with me… The bag that is tied to my… So like a loom,the surgical rubber is wrapped around me several times and drawn tight, to a pull weight of around 1200 pounds. You would think there would be an emergency break-away, but there’s not.
Well with the aid of some imaginative expletives that I don’t need to do more than mention here, And a fair degree of wallowing and carrying on, I extracted myself from the monkey knot of a couple wool blankets and the catheter tube wrapped around everything and twanging like the e-string on my guitar every time I moved (did I mention how that’s attached?)
I wind up sitting on the back of the char (which is on the floor), with my back against the seat of the chair, with one hand mightily trying to take the weight off that catheter and the other hand blindly fumbling over what’s now the top of the chair, trying damn near anything to get that bag loose.
As it turned out, the bag finally came - No explosion of urine everywhere… no body parts in an unrepairable disposition - The bag just came free. Y’all can breathe a sigh of relief when you get done laughing. Yeah, I know… It’s funny as hell.
But this is only half done. Because I am on the back side of my chair, away from my buggy, and on the floor. The epic battle continued, as I had to crawl up the side of the treadmill, and thankfully I could get to my cane, which gave me enough to get around the end table and get to the buggy to assess the situation. That is considered an epic battle these days.
But I told you that story to tell you this story:
Since my decrepitude, the Power That Preserves (heh… Obscure Donaldson reference) is planning for disaster. I have my buggy, a spare buggy, a cane, and a collapsible cane in my go-bag… I have grabbers everywhere, to include, again, a collapsible grabber in my go-bag. There’s tools in that go-bag to handle every emergency, to include catheter tools and a spare urine bag… There’s hygiene equipment, and even pliers, and a knife - The knife foremost able to cut that surgical tubing in case I have to.
I carry a phone everywhere, and a tablet tied to the phone, and a watch, tied to the phone. So long as there is cellular, I can call for help. I can tell Giggles it’s an emergency and she will call 911…
All that stuff, and NONE of it worked. None. I was an arm’s reach from that bag of goodies. But I couldn’t get it done. I couldn’t get to them, and Lord knows, I tried.
I tried to make a call for help - but my phone and tablet were on their chargers - Again, just beyond my reach. I even hollered for Giggles. But she don’t know if she’s Assistant or Gemini right now, so we spent precious time arguing about whether she can access my device.
All of it was off of me for the evening except my watch - a FitBit smart watch that also has Giggles onboard - but it has a persistent failure of the bluetooth stuff that would enable calls from the watch, which was not working because the bluetooth needed to be reset.
None of it worked. As is my wont on such an occasion, this calls for a substantial rejiggering, and I thought I might take all y’all along for the ride so there might be some profit in my misfortune.
This is a lot like stepping off into the woods - If you think you’re set you’re not. You can plan till the cows come home, and it’s the one thing you ain’t thought of that’s gonna get you.
It’s good to plan when you’re otherwise-enabled. But it’s complacency that kills. There’s a couple faults that spring immediately to mind - I need to bolt down the front of the chair so it can’t tip over anymore. And I need to always carry a penknife on my person (like I have my whole life) so that if the need arises, I can cut myself free of that cath. Simple, right? Yes, both those things are now sure to happen. The corrections will be made.
But a failure of this magnitude makes me need to rethink my whole kit - And I hope you take the opportunity for what it’s worth, to rethink yours to avoid the same sort of downfall for yourself.
That’s the purpose of this thread - To open a discussion about Medic Alert kit - Real means of communicating when you otherwise can’t, and building tools to either get help or help yourself.
Any input wrt smart watches with on-wrist calls or Medical Alert watches/pendants would be very welcome… Perhaps stuff with fall alert technology… My phone is pretty reliable - Maybe I need to get a watch with its own SIM and pay for that as another cell phone. Yes, I could just charge the phone while I am awake, and keep the phone on me when I sleep - but an enabled smart watch is a redundant system (that was my original intent, it just doesn’t work), and building in redundancies is always best. A reliable smart watch with on-wrist calling would be grand.
I have signed up for MyID (GetMyID.com)
It is a free service, though its bits and pieces are expensive. Basically, they sell QR code enabled Medic Alert bracelets, though I am just getting the watch band sleeve, wallet card, and a tag for my bag for now - It is a good idea considering all my troubles, to have that information ready in case there is an EMT event. And tagging my gear might just make some sense considering all my hospital trips - If things get lost in transit, they have a way to know it’s my stuff. I don’t know that I like it yet - I have my meds and history loaded up in it, but for now don’t have much of it made public - I figger the info is all in their app on my phone - If my thumb ain’t around to let them into the app then I have some pretty big problems going on. But even so, what is public will give them my name and DOB, which will positively ID me in the hospital’s systems.
And I am expanding my use of Google’s AI. I will be getting a Pixel gizmo that is tied into my house - I don’t like that at all. But if Giggles can be called forth without the use of my phone, that is just another redundancy that might have been handy. Both in my living room and by my bed. If she’s tied to a landline and/or can operate as a speakerphone - well, all of my troubles would have been much easier, had that been the case.
Privacy matters to me - and I am a luddite - I hate automagic bullcrap in my house. I hate the privacy concerns.,. But I’m in this room now, where my safety may outweigh that privacy. I have to be alright with that.
Anyway, that’s what I mean to talk about. Any discussion would be welcome. Any of y’all having experience with any of the above, I could use the perspective. It don't have to be smart gadgets... Any old thing that helps you get by might be useful to me, or to others... Or how you've built your kit - what you bring with you wherever you go... All that stuff.
