"The Fall"

At around 8pm on Thursday night we were told that the next day our classes would be cancelled because we had to go into the city to be interviewed by Immigration. (Remember, they like to tell us things at the last minute.) We needed to "wear pretty dresses and look nice" and we would leave..

 at 8am. 

...

At 7:55am 

I woke up 

to the sound of my roommate waking up. Yeah. That's not good. We freaked out. I threw on a dress and ran to the bathroom. My hair looked awful so I decided to wet it. From this point on the story gets a little blurry... 

I remember my foot beginning to  s l i d e  on the slippery floor... 

And then... 

From what my roommate tells me:
 the doorbell rang. 

I don't know for sure if this was before or after I began to slip. 

Maybe I was trying to run to the door? Maybe I was trying to run to my room. 

I feel like I was trying to RUN somewhere... (clearly a bad idea).

She said she heard me say, "ooaahhughhhh!"

And then she heard a loud CRASH!

She thought something fell. She didn't think it was ME!

She answered the door and shouted, "Are you okay?"

I didn't answer so she came to look.

There I was. On the ground... and totally KNOCKED OUT!

The next thing I remember is:

1. feeling confused

2. sitting in the bathroom

3. with 3 or 4 people standing in the very small bathroom

4. hearing someone say, "She's in shock"

5. wondering why I was in shock...

6. and why my head hurt so badly...

7. and why I could see my cheek

Soon, I was whisked away to the hospital... and that was an interesting experience... but hard to write about because the memory is a bit fuzzy since I was a bit out of it. And the rest is history... But I do have some pictures for you:

The spot with the missing tile is where my head landed. It had tile before. I have a hard head.

This is my brain. I might hang it on my wall.

This is the closest you will get to a picture of me in the hospital. 

This is my face now. With some makeup on and my glasses positioned at just the right angle, you can barely tell...

But without my glasses, even with makeup, it still looks pretty nasty. And let me just tell you... this is a vast improvement! And that it looks worse than it feels.
The side of my face is still swollen and pretty sore... but the eye isn't bad.

So, yeah... That's the story of "The Fall."

I think nearly everyone on campus knows about it... And even some people off campus, like our fruit lady. I tried to convince my students that it happened when I was beating up 5 men who were trying to steal an old lady's purse. A few of them thought I was very brave. A lot of them knew that was bologna.

It was traumatic. But in the end, I have a story to tell... and I got flowers... and fruit! And a whole lot of FIRSTS!