A few days after I moved into my new apartment I started to have some more serious health issues. I had been having a sore back since the flight down here from San Francisco. Suddenly it got much worse. I couldn't get out of bed one morning. I had no one around to call to come and help me but my land lady showed up and let herself in. She thought I was out when I didn't go to the door when she knocked. She was basically snooping around my house and when she came into the bedroom and saw me in the bed she acted startled. She quickly made an excuse for being in my apartment when she thought I was gone. I could not deal with the intrusion because I was in serious pain and could not get out of the bed. So I overlooked it thinking that she had learned her lesson by getting caught.
Without me asking for it, she made me some tea so I then asked her to get my meds. I drank the tea and took my pain meds and asked her to leave because I was going to be alright and did not want any help. A couple of hours later I managed to get up out of the bed and get to the bathroom. After managing to shit, shower and shave I felt a lot better but I knew that it was temporary so I set up everything I needed near my bed. I had my meds, lots of water, my computer, some snack foods and some extra towels as well as a big plastic container in case I could not get out of bed but had to piss or something. I felt pretty sure that I would be alright. There was a phone next to the bed in case of emergency. I was already tired from all the shuffling around I had done to assemble my items near my bed so I crawled back in and took more meds then basically just passed out. When I woke up it was dark out and I was in agony. I re upped my meds right away, drank some water, used my plastic bucket and with a lot of effort managed to roll over in bed. I went back to sleep.
When I woke up again it was morning. I took meds for the pain and waited for them to kick in so that I could try to get up and go to the bathroom. About an hour and a half later I struggled up and holding on to the walls I made it to the bathroom. As I was sitting there on the toilet I noticed some feet sticking out from the rug in my living room. It was my landlady sleeping. I was a bit pissed off when I saw her. I finished my business and as I was struggling to get back on my feet to pull up my underwear which is all I was wearing she walked into the bathroom like she was my wife or something. I asked her to leave and she got all indignant with me. She could see that there was nothing I could do if she did not leave so she took her sweet time leaving. I repeatedly told her I did not need or want any help from her and asked her to respect my privacy.
After she left I found some food and made some coffee to drink. I felt better but my mobility was almost nil. I had to hold on to the wall to stand up and walk, rather shuffle my feet forward. I decided to take a risk and walk down to the internet cafe to email my family and friends back home. It was a short walk to the elevator then a walk of about fifty yards to the internet cafe. I was about halfway to the cafe when a decrepit looking, severely crippled, dirty, stinky, sick looking old man who was walking a wiener dog that looked like it had died three years earlier and looked just as bad as the old man did started to shuffle past me on the sidewalk with the help of his cane. He looked like he was going to die from a heart attack any second from all the effort he was putting in to passing me. He started to laugh at me as he was whizzing by at about three shuffles a minute. I was in agonizing pain and only able to manage about two and a half shuffles a minute. I was on a couple hundred milligrams of morphine. I was tired and angry about my situation. I was also not in any mood to be made fun of. The old man started to laugh louder and louder as he passed me with his faster shuffle than mine. I was probably the first person he had been able to walk past in forty years by the look of him and the excited sound of his laughter. He started to point at me with his free hand and call me names, very bad names. I got pissed off and in a strange, for me, mean spirited split second decision I reached out like I was going to trip him, of course I really would never have tripped an old crippled man. In my super slow state he saw my obviously telegraphed move to try to trip him and he raised his cane and struck me in the face with it. At the same time his mangy shit and scab covered dog suddenly came to life and started to bark and bite at my heals. I fell backwards against the wall and just stopped to get a grip on myself. I could not even kick at the stupid little dog trying to bite me with his toothless old mouth. He did try to gum me to death though and left a wet sticky slobbery mess of saliva mixed with pus on my feet and ankles. The old man continued to walk away from me screaming at me about how he had kicked my ass and strutting along like a rooster at a much faster pace of maybe four shuffles a minute. I waited until he was a long ways off, I think it was about twenty five feet or so, before I continued my shuffle to the internet cafe. I could still hear him ranting as I entered the cafe. I was exhausted and almost crying at this point. My pain was extremely high.
I got a terminal and sat down to send off some emails. They were very short and full of spelling errors because I was so out of it from all of my pain killers. Then I tried to get back up on my feet and I needed to ask a young man to help me get up. He generously walked me over to the cash register to pay for my computer time and I thanked him again as I shuffled out the door in the direction of my apartment. Before leaving the cafe I carefully checked in each direction to make sure the old man wasn't in sight because I didn't want him to come back and beat me up some more in his cocky mood. I felt really, really, lousy as I shuffled along to go home with my black eye and lump on my head.
I think it took me about an hour to make it the fifty yards to my elevator and then back into my apartment. I went straight to the bathroom then re-upped my meds and with a big effort I rolled back into bed before I totally lost it. I just cried myself to sleep I think. When I woke up the wacky landlady was in my apartment again. I wanted to call the police but I could barely speak English so trying to talk to the police in Spanish was going to be too difficult for me so I just asked her to leave. She gave me more grief before she left me alone. I took more meds, drank some water and stayed in bed for a couple of more days before I felt good enough to go to the hospital to try to get some relief. I took a taxi to the German hospital just a short ways from my apartment.
The doctors were very good and the service at the hospital was top notch. They did some exams and tests then told me that yes my back was out but that I had a kidney infection that was making it much worse. They gave me antibiotics and sent me home. Within two days I was much better and able to walk almost normally again. I guess the kidney infection is what made me so much worse than my back had ever been before. It sure felt good to get my mobility back. Now if I could just find that old man again to even the score. Of course if you knew me, you would know that I would never retaliate against someone like that but I might think about it. I will think twice in the future before I try to trip up an old man. I had learned my lesson.
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