Just as I was about to commence an all out assault on the health insurers to force them to obey the law, I stumbled and fell face down because of a crack in the concrete that was barely visible.
My fall in the dark and nearly broken arm gave the health insurers more time to continue disobeying the law.
After I fell, I got up and kept walking. Unfortunately, my arm was so badly hurt I was unable to type anything for three weeks.
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This was Margaret in May 2022 when we were at Port Eliot. We spent three nights in Port Eliot and this was our final holiday together. When we were there, we both knew the cancer was likely to return soon. A cat scan on 23 September 2022 revealed that the cancer had blocked Margaret’s left kidney and she was close to death.
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The garden of the holiday house we stayed in at Port Eliot in May 2022.
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Th Fall
In March 2022, I decided I needed to apply what I called the Stimulus System to the health insurers. This meant I had to make it more painful for them to continue ignoring the law than it would be for them to actually obey the law. Metaphorically, I decided to shove a very big boom stick up the backsides of the health insurers.
As luck would have it, I had a bad fall early in the morning of Tuesday 15 March. This delayed commencement of the Stimulus System.
When I finally left hospital in July 2021, I had resumed my daily walks. These usually happened very early in the morning. Depending on when I woke up, I often walked in the dark. Initially, my early starts happened because my illness had completely disrupted my sleep rhythms, but my body continued waking up far too early long after I had regained my health. Rather than let the inability to sleep become a burden, I turned the early wake ups into a positive by walking whenever I woke up. I then found the early starts meant I had far more usable time every day and what had started out as an accident became useful. Since I had more working time every day, I was better able to take care of Margaret and I was better able to continue the struggle with the health insurers.
I was more than one kilometre from home at 5:30 am on 15th of March when my shoe caught on something on the path. My shoe had hit the edge of a cut in the concrete path; a trench had been dug there and then repaired. The repair had left an unevenness of less than 13 millimetres (½ inch) where the cut edges of the path had been repaired and rejoined. My shoe caught on this edge and I fell face to the ground. It was as if I were a tree with the trunk suddenly cut through. I tried to shield my face with my hands as I went down. This limited any visible bodily damage to some grazes on my face and knees and some cuts in my mouth; parts of my mouth had become sandwiched between the concrete and my teeth. Most of the shock from my fall was absorbed by my left wrist. The left wrist began aching immediately.
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I was alone in the dark, so I picked myself up and resumed walking. Even if anyone saw me, it was dark and anyone who might see me would be nervous about helping a stranger in the dark. I returned home and had breakfast. The left arm soon became swollen; it was very sore for days. It was impossible for me to type anything, so dealing with the health insurers had to wait.
My arm developed an angry rash which felt like it was on fire. The rash began on my right forearm and spread to my left arm and belly. I ignored the pain of the sore arm and splashed cream across the rash. The GP ordered an X-ray on the Friday, 18th of March. This confirmed there were no broken bones in the arm or wrist. It took four weeks before the rash went away.
I did wonder about the fact of it all and its timing. The crack that caused the fall was tiny. The likelihood of tripping over that particular crack was extremely small. I have walked over the same crack many, many times since, and anyone looking at it would say it is impossible to trip over it. Tiny as the crack was (and still is, because it is still there), the fall did happen and it happened at the commencement of my concerted effort to make the health insurers obey the law.
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