Tripping and Falling With MS

Today I had another scare with my wife. We were walking into Hobby Lobby after lunch and I was ahead of my wife and daughter. I stepped up on the curb and a few steps later I heard someone hit the concrete behind me. I turned around quickly and found my wife face first on the concrete sidewalk. She is not sure exactly what happened, but she fell and rolled hard on the ground. As soon as I turned around my daughter immediately helped her up and she was ready to move on and not cause a scene. She was embarrassed and hurting, and didn't want to stick around to see who saw her fall. I tried to make sure she was OK, but I knew that she probably wouldn't say much as she was trying to compose herself. She grabbed a basket when we walked in so she could use it as support and walked into the store.

She has a few bumps and bruises, but overall is doing well tonight. Her side and leg is hurting from falling on it, and her arm is a little scraped up, but I think it scared me as much as it hurt her. She said she was not sure if she missed the curb or her leg, or foot, or knee gave out, but the next thing she knew she was rolling on the concrete. This is not the first time this has happened, and it always seems to happen when we are walking somewhere in public. A few years ago this happened fairly often, but it hasn't been a problem for awhile. Today I think we were both taken by surprise at how quickly she fell.

The hard part about this isn't just the physical part, but the emotional part of the disease. Our daughter was pretty distressed after her mom fell today. She was attached to my wife at the hip at first, and my wife had to tell her to back off and give her some space. I know it is hard on our daughter to watch her mom struggle and especially hard when she sees her hurt. Today concerned me too. It stresses me when she falls or has issues like this because it usually doesn't stop for awhile. The fall she took today could cause her to have other physical issues since it jarred her body so hard. Sometimes the effect of a fall like this will last for days if not weeks. We will have to be careful the next few days and with a three week trip ahead, we may have to find a chiropractor to check her alignment after the fall.