Hey, Old Man, Don’t Stab Yourself…

And other useful preventative injury tips as we age.

The kitchen weapon of mass destruction unto myself. Author’s image

After a nice long break from self-injuring myself, passing six months for a new personal record, the no-injury luck streak finally ran out and I have some sharp words!

First, let’s call out the elephant in the room; crappy little kitchen knives can and will do bodily damage. Especially in the hands of the untrained doofus who literally has no business doing anything in the kitchen, let alone with a sharp food weapon. Second, when said doofus is “Moi”, then all bets are off - I’ll miss all the safety warnings.

All I wanted in the morning was a nice ripe avocado sliced in half for breakfast. Critical guidance like “Don’t Stab Yourself” didn’t register at the time.

While slicing the avocado and removing the pit, somehow or accidentally, my right hand holding the knife forcibly moved, jabbing into the soft center palm portion of my left hand. Yes, I stabbed myself. The knife point easily pierced the skin with surgical precision as the blade cut through the soft flesh about halfway into my hand, nicking or cutting a nerve branch buried inside. Not only was it precise, but traumatic how it happened so quickly. Lots of blood, a bit of panic, followed by grabbing many paper towels off the countertop trying frantically to stop the bloody mess created.

It’s not first time I’ve been stabbed either. Decades ago in a pretty violent middle-of-the night 3am brawl, as scumbag thieves attempted to steal my car, one of them stuck me in the side with a screwdriver. That familiar pain was back.

From this experience I can share a few learnings in case your fate crosses the same streak of luck. For one thing, it hurt. Not like the middle-of-the-night, stub-the-little-toe hurt, I mean really hurt. It provoked an instant explosion of colorful language and words that begin with the letter “F.” As you can guess, “Fun” was not one of them. More descriptive sayings followed in rapid fire succession with shouting, barking and howling to the wall and sky.

It takes a bit to process this instant pain or trauma. We try to understand what has happened, followed by rationalizing and inventory of what to do next. I’ve had so many injuries over the years that my “running diagnostic” during trauma is pretty much automatic at this point. Self-triaging the knife wound was straight forward; it had to be cleaned and disinfected with surgical quality fluids, then dried and packed with something to stave off any post infection. My go-to is packing the wound with gauze and Neosporin for the first round of dressing. If it had been a longer wound, I likely would have packed it with disinfecting salve and then super-glued it back together. Thankfully, it wasn’t that dramatic.

Once all the dressing was complete and wound wrapped, post-trauma analysis was next. Awareness first piqued on the numbness at the end of my middle finger. It’s an indication the stabbing damaged a nerve branch to that finger. There was a similar feeling a few years ago when my left arm became paralyzed. One waking day, my neck vertebrae collapsed unto itself creating crushing nerve impingement. At first, it became numb. Then, “phantom pain” ensued that was like a bear chewing my arm off all day. For lack of better words, it was horrifically incredible pain. The finger in this injury isn’t like that. The nerve in my hand leading to that finger was now simply damaged. I can deal with that if it’s the worst part of this.

There’s another aspect to this injury that raises awareness around the topic of Aging.

Being a newcomer to this whole retirement life thing, my days healing from injuries lately are increasing, versus my days living pain and injury free. Thinking about it, the last several years have been spent in more difficult recovery times than trying to enjoy life. It’s maddening and frustrating at the same time. We hope for, and want to, enjoy our Golden Years, pushing aside all the struggle it took to get here. Just as we start to embrace the beauty of our time to live carefree, bam, an accident or injury happens to sideline us. It feels very unfair.

As a young boy, my great-grandmother (born in the mid-1800’s), fell and broke her hip at 96 years old. It was devastating as she transpired from a very sprightly active older woman to one of despair. Her humiliation was palpable at being bedridden and not able to help herself to even the bathroom. You could feel her want to give up on life. Over the months, with strong daily encouragement from my Mom and Dad, she slowly nursed back to moving around with a walker on her own. I can still hear in my memory the sound of that walker “thump thump” as her slippers would drag down the hallway floor. At 98, she went to the Old Folks home to be closer to aging friends. She used that walker until her passing a year later at 99, never actually regaining the body freedom had just a few years prior. It broke my heart watching her live her final years like that.

None of us want to be injured as we age. It takes much longer to heal as an older person. We become weaker with atrophy coupled by varietal health issues along the way. Some friends junior my age are in such bad shape from health-related issues that they too have lost hope. It’s disheartening because we all just want to have freedom with the bodies that served us so well most of our lives.

When injuries are due to becoming sloppy in our daily movements or not paying close enough attention to surroundings, it's very demoralizing. I beat myself up about that constantly and that can’t be healthy either.

This makes us aware that our aging process should be handled with measured caution and a sense of fragility to maintain the healthiest remaining years we have left. Obviously, we aren’t doing cartwheels on the grass anymore. I‘m not, and that’s ok, because at least I am trying to live a healthier life to extend longevity. But is that effort futile when degenerative or disorders arise that we have no control over? Or if we accidently fall and break our hip as my great-grandmother did? Can we change the trajectory of our fate to minimize any impending calamity or self-injuries? Let’s dive into that a little.

We cannot edit or rewrite God’s plan for us. What we can do is focus our attention and intent to be mindful in our daily movement.

For myself, an early diagnosis of degenerative disease wasn’t the news I wanted. It would undesirably change and physically limit me. Not dwelling on that while remaining thankful for the talents I still possess is vitally important. My core focus is to eat better, sleep and restore from years of stress overtaxing everything psychologically and physically. The next component is finding key purpose tenets to live and move by.

Beyond hobbies, family and friends, finding and participating in your circle and tribe is vital. Your tribe brings happiness and fulfillment in the post-working days of aging. My core tribe cares. Nothing makes one’s psyche feel better than being part of something with others who share common beliefs.

Then there’s placing guidelines on physical agility and movement. I can be very clumsy at times and downright reckless. Retraining my limits and recognition of the dangers of being the bull in china shop is the goal. Falling hurts and can put one in a downward spiral shortening our precious remaining years. With that in mind, one of our daily key purpose tenets must include awareness of our own physical actions. We must retrain the automatic thoughts of moving our bodies to be intended for injury reduction.

Even simple tasks like getting out of bed. A week ago, being lazy and not paying attention while rolling out of bed, or how close the edge was, I rolled straight to the floor and whacked the head pretty good. Basically, failing the tenet of being mindful in my movements. It will clearly take more daily practice as I appear to be a slow learner.

There are other ways to include this mindfulness in our daily physical actions. Some improve their approach through balance which is equally important. I’ve heard from peers that yoga, pilates and even tai chi fit very well here as they age. I’m lucky walking most days without falling, so, looking into these alternative strategies would really help to improve my own mindfulness on balance.

Last, while we aren’t exploring all the options in this short time on injury reduction as we age, please add your own thoughts in the comments to share ideas on how we can improve our approaches to reducing self-imposed injuries. Until then, please, be safe and don’t stab yourself, it really does hurt.