Midnight trip to the ER? Thanks, Fitbit.

Late Sunday night, having just watched John Oliver, returned from his 3 month hiatus and on a tear about Brexit, I decided to check and see how many steps I’d gotten in that day.

I knew I’d gone beyond the 10,000 I like to get, but I wanted to see how close I was to 11.5K steps. That’s 5 miles, the level I really like  to reach.

When I first started using my Fitbit, I stuck with the 10K a day religiously. One might say obsessively. I went well past a year during which neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night could keep this Fitbitter from the swift completion of my self-appointed rounds.

Then I missed a day. I had a good excuse: I’d just flown into Dublin during a freak snowstorm, and was staying out of town in a place that was heavy on gloom of night and light on sidewalks. So I decided that 9,683 steps was good enough.

After that, I missed an occasional (admittedly very occasional) day when I didn’t reach my step goal.

And that was fine.

More recently, I’ve decided that as long as I hit 70,000 steps during the course of a week I’m good with whatever I achieve during the day. Which means if I have a 14,000 step day, there’s no problem with having a 6,000 step day. I’m even better if I make it to 80,500 steps (that 5 mile a day average.

But once an addict…

Anyway, when I made my 11:30 p.m. check on my steps, I saw that I was only 380 steps short of 11.5K. Easy peasy. I could do that one with my eyes closed.

Upstairs (living room and kitchen) is easier walking than downstairs (bedroom, office, den), so I went upstairs. In my stocking feet, which is not the most advisable way to get steps in.

Did I mention I could get those 380 steps with my eyes closed?

I decided I could do them in the dark. There was enough light coming in through the living room blinds to see my way around the table, around the couch. And in the kitchen, there’s no blinds to impede the snowy winter night light from coming in. All there is to impede the light is the scaffolding that was set up for the gut reno going on next door.

Anyway, phone in hand to check on how I was doing with those 380 steps, I walked into the kitchen. And walked into the open door of the dishwasher, which I had opened an hour or so earlier to get a bit of air drying on the dishes that had just gone through their cycle.

Well, one thing quickly led to another, and there I was, on my knees, head rammed into the handle on the even, glasses in pieces on the floor, and blood gushing from the eyebrow area.

Oh.

After picking my shocked self up and grabbing some paper towels (Bounty, the quicker picker upper) to staunch the flow, i managed to get myself to the bathroom where I examined the gash.

Looked to me like I was going to need stitches. Seemed to me that it isn’t smart not to get things stitched up as soon as you can.

So, a few minutes before midnight, I found myself walking in the snow down Charles Street, heading for Mass General Hospital.

Now this was the sort of late-night walk I’d made with my husband a couple of times during the final stages of his illness, when we’d called the oncology center with a question and been told to come on in.

As Sunday was the fifth anniversary of Jim’s death, it was an eerie feeling to be out in the snow heading for MGH.

When I got to the ER, they asked me what happened. So I explained all about the Fitbit. And the dishwasher door. And my husband’s anniversary. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, I told them.

The ER folks could not have been nicer or more efficient during the intake.

It was an average night – I asked – not particularly busy, but not dead, either.

Within a few minutes of turning up on MGH’s doorstep, I was ushered into the farther reaches of the ER. There was a quick wait to see a nurse, then a few minutes to see a physician.

It turned out the the resident had gotten her MD and a PhD from UMass Medical in Worcester, so we got to talk Worcester while she worked.

There was plenty of downtime. Wait for the lidocaine that was going to numb the area round my eye. Wait for the attending physician to stick his head in and decided whether I needed a CT scan on my head. Wait for the resident to see to a couple of patients in more dire need. Wait to get stitched up. Wait for the bacitracin, the discharge papers.

But I was fine. The ER was pretty  quiet. My room had a door, not just a curtain. I had the latest New Yorker with me. And there’s always Twitter.

I arrived at the ER about midnight. I was out a little after 3 a.m.a

The snow was pretty steady, but it wasn’t that cold or windy. I was going to walk home, but there was a lone cabby there, and I asked whether he was okay with a short fare. He was. And I made it worth his while. (300% tip.)

With the big gauze bandage covering my stitched up wounds – there were two lacerations – and a bit of a black eye peeking out from behind the bandage, I look like I was in a barroom brawl. Or a prize fight.

But, no.

Just a crazy old lady fall.

I’ll live. And I’ll live without addiction to getting those steps in. Having used my Fitbit from over two years, I have a pretty good idea of what’s 4 miles a day, what’s 5. I’m now sworn off obsessive checking. I’ve decided I’m addicted to taking a daily walk – it really does make me feel good – but I’m no longer going to make myself crazy about steps. Or so I’m telling myself.

I did promise my sister Trish I would stop obsessing about Fitbit – a birthday gift from Trish a couple of years back. She told me that, if I ended up killing myself getting some “needed” steps in, she’d feel guilty about having given me the g.d. Fitbit. So I really am truly off. (Don’t want Trish to feel guilty…)

So I’m really going to stop being so obsessive. And no more near-midnight, stocking-footed pacing in my pitch-dark kitchen.