Preventing Falls

Well this wouldn’t apply to MOST people, but some years ago my mother, a high school teacher, slipped and fell on a flight of marble steps in her school. At the time she was over 65. She was badly bruised – technicolor, to be precise – but suffered no fractures. This was extremely fortunate, since she had slid down most of the flight of steps. When I asked her what she had done, she responded that she had recalled her dance training: she had been a huge fan of Martha Graham and had studied the Graham technique when she was young. The technique involves teaching dancers to fall. Essentially, one relaxes instead of tensing on the way down, and you land about 1/4 turned to the side from supine with the spine in an elongated position.

I think what one to best prevent injury might vary with the TYPE of fall and depend a lot on what the person is doing at the time of the fall. Our instinct is to try to prevent the fall, when possible. People tend to flail about and grab for the nearest (not necessarily stable) surface. They also try to protect objects they are carrying. I recall a fall I had on my way to work one winter’s day: I was happily carrying my coffee in one hand and a bag in the other when I slipped on black ice under what had been a movie theater marquee. I did the wrong thing: in thinking to try to protect both bag and coffee, I put my hand out to break my fall. I thought I had fractured a bone in my wrist, as I couldn’t move my fingers much. Fortunately, I was able to see an orthopedist and have an x-ray an hour later and was even more fortunate in that I had only suffered a bad bruise – but I’m not a senior citizen nor do I suffer from osteoporosis or osteopenia.

Perhaps we all need lessons in how to fall long before we are at great risk of fractures. That way our reactions would become automatic. Once a person becomes frail the focus needs to be on preventing the fall in the first place. Both the elderly and their families need to be educated in fall prevention. People do risky things for what to them are “necessary” reasons, (eg. the 90-year-old mother of a neighbor, a nurse, whom I discovered walking the dog on an icy street I was having trouble negotiating: “Timmy had to be walked,” she protested when I remonstrated).