Member-only story
HEALTH
The Bean Bag Man
Or was it Humpty Dumpty?
I was driving to our clubhouse to pick up mail and spend a few minutes in the gym when a woman I vaguely recognized flagged me down. I pulled over and opened my window.
She told me her husband had fallen — could I help? Of course. I pulled off the road and she led me to her house.
A large white-haired man sat on his driveway at the bottom of their porch steps. He had a large belly and his white, edema swollen legs were splayed out in front of him. A thin man with matchstick arms was standing beside him and looked very happy to see me.
This didn’t look easy because my thin partner didn’t look very strong. Our fallen challenge looked quite heavy and wouldn’t be able to offer much help. He said he couldn’t bend his legs, so we’d have to pull him up high enough for those swollen beasts to get under him. I wasn’t sure we could do that without him falling again and bringing us down with him.
But then I spotted a plastic lawn chair. There was enough room between the big man’s back and the house to squeeze the chair in. If we could lift him just high enough to fall into the chair, it would slide back and be stopped by the house.
My helper seemed dubious. “We’ll have to grab him from the side”, he opined. Umm, yeah, or…
