my mother is 60-something years old okay. she has always been both surprisingly physically tough and surprisingly accident prone her whole life

this. has not slowed down into her 60's.

I swear the number of times I log onto the family chat to see a photo of some injury she has sustained...

I was hoping it would start to get better with her starting to not have as many animals around, not as many dogs, not as many rehab animals to either take care of or go on wild adventures to rescue

but no. and this one was bad.

after seeing pictures of healing bruises and possible broken toe, realizing I clearly missed something, I call her to find out wtf happened now

she has one older lab-mix with a knee injury that insists on going upstairs where my mom's room is, even though she has already fallen down the stairs several times

I guess this last time, she fell down the stairs to the landing, my mom went down to help her, leaned over... and the dog flailed and knocked her foot out from under her

my 60-something year old mother fell down the rest of the stairs head-first... but not like sliding down the steps. she was like... airborne, falling headfirst

she landed on the ceramic tile and wooden bench at the bottom and THANK GOD she hit the bench with her arm and body and not her head. her head hit something because she has a bruised forehead and her neck is sore, but she didn

didn't end up with a concussion or a broken neck.

so... she feels like she's been hit by a car, but aside from a possible broken toe that she's already able to move and walk on now, she SOMEHOW didn't break anything or need stitches anywhere.

the bad part though....

my sweet, awesome, only-partially-verbal, three-year-old nephew watched her fall

my parents are extremely close to this little guy. they practically half raise him, he spends like every other day at my mom's house for hours.

so he just.... lost his tiny mind. screaming and panicking.

it took my mom a long time with my dad's help to sit up, and then sit on the bottom step for a while, while my nephew crawled into her lap and just sobbed and freaked out, saying his word for her over and over again (which is "Boppi")

they eventually got her hobbled over to the nearest bed, and he just laid on her and cried and cried. mom said he kept touching her neck every couple minutes, like either checking for a pulse or trying to wake her up. she reassured him that she was okay, Boppi just fell, and him crying "Boppi falllll D: "

she said he cried himself to sleep on her

and of course totally freaked out when my sister tried to take him home, screaming like it was his job to keep Boppi alive gfhdjkgh

good news is we all thought for sure this would make his night terrors flare up, but he seems to be okay. he's very affectionate and clingy to Boppi, but doing much better now.

I'm just like... for sure he'll be telling his therapist about this someday

OMG I'm both and about poor nephew!

I'm glad Boppi is mostly okay and hope that her healing is quick. I'm sorry there's more than usual to deal with!

oh Jesus to all of this D8