Feel lucky to be alive after falling forward down my stairs.

[Tolkienista]

I'm writing this just to say that you never know what is round the corner and for me I'm still in shock that I had the luckiest escape ever.
Saturday night I was on my own & stupidly descended a few steps of my staircase & leaned over the bannister to turn down the thermostat. I felt my foot pretty much disengage from the tread I was standing on and I was in free fall heading head first down the stairs.

It was probably only a milli second but I literally thought, I'm going to die as I was going forward and I knew the point of impact probably eight steps down would be my head. Miraculously I somehow managed to grab the rail on my right side and slammed into it with my body. It stopped me falling further and I disentangled myself and realised I'm alive.

Yes I've got bruised ribs, but nothing paracetamol can't deal with.

But I'm here to tell my tale and realise that at worst I could have died and at best I'd have sustained a head injury but to what degree I don't know.
Cue a massive sigh of relief , a massive reflection on my life and all that I've done to safeguard myself & then I throw it all away by endangering my life turning down a thermostat over the bannister.
If you've read this far, thank you for your time ........I just needed to get my story out there and say I'm safe, I'm fine, I'm really thankful and most importantly I'M ALIVE.

So glad you're OK, OP. You're right that we can be very complacent about stairs. I'm terrified of falling down the stairs. My son fell head-first from the top of our stairs when he was a toddler - I came out of the bathroom with him after a bath and he stepped towards the stairs instead of along the landing and somehow stumbled over his own toes. He was naked, so there was nothing to grab onto - I can still see my hand reaching out and missing him by millimetres. He slid down on his front and then flipped over at the bottom and I was absolutely sure he'd broken his neck, but somehow all he had were a few carpet grazes. I had flashbacks for years; he's nearly 19 now and I still say 'Careful on the stairs' umpteen times a day!

Someone else I know was less fortunate - she fell down her stairs at home two years ago and broke her neck, and she's been left almost completely paralysed from the neck/shoulders down. It's just unthinkable how life can change in an instant.

Glad you're OK!!! DH and I have had 'falls' over the past 2 weeks. DH on the ice outside Aldi, (he face planted,) and I tripped over the rug in front of the hearth, and went flying! Both bruised but OK. No broken bones or fractures.

Helps that we're both a bit chubby I think! (As we are both 60-ish!) A rather thin neighbour of mine slipped on the snow/ice last week, and broke her ankle, 2 ribs, and her wrist. She is 2 years younger than me!

Falling down the stairs could have been fatal though. Glad you lived to tell the tale @Tolkienista 👍

I pack my suitcase downstairs,

What a good idea.

Our neighbours have a balcony on their bedroom.

The previous owners had a hoist fitted.

So pack suitcase, wheel onto balcony & hoist down to the terrace.

Fwiw, I now have a topple tray for carrying food and drinks etc upstairs, leaves a hand (and brain focus) free to use the handrail without risk of balancing a tray.
like pp I chuck laundry down the stairs first and (ahem) tend to chuck laundry up the stairs to put away (I don’t iron!). Slippers are a pair for upstairs and a pair for downstairs. A bungalow seems like a good idea after this thread.
Of course I can’t do any of this at work….may need to persuade a younger colleague to take over my top floor duties.

Oh my lord thank goodness you’re ok @Tolkienista

I fell downstairs when I was 27 weeks pregnant, carrying too much and wearing the most clunky slippers ever. No carpet on the stairs as we were decorating and I fell backwards and bounced all the way down. My husband was in bed and leapt out when he heard me scream and reached the bottom just after I did. Went to hospital and everything was fine thank god but could have been so different.

That shock you have of a near death situation stays with you - I was bitten on the thigh by a friends big dog about three years ago and when I saw it bleeding I was convinced it was a main vein and I was going to die. Hands down scariest time ever for me and I’ve never forgotten that feeling of imminent death (and afterwards how lucky I was to have had a near miss).

And now I’m shocked at all these stories of people dying and being seriously injured on stairs. We really don’t take the risk seriously enough.

A friend of mine died falling down the stairs. I am very wary. I have an upstairs vacuum cleaner and a downstairs one because I feel really unsafe carrying them up and down stairs.

We all need lifts. Oh wait that’s a whole other thread of lift shafts and plummeting lifts. 🤣
bungalow it is.

My friend tripped (she was wearing floaty long summer trousers and somehow got her foot caught in the material) fell straight down the stairs and broke her leg plus hurt her back. The leg fixed fine but her back still gives her issues a few years on.

She burned the trousers in a ritualistic fire when she got home from hospital with her leg in a cast!

Op I'm so relieved you're ok.

And I'm taking your thread as a sign to buy a cordless hoover, which I've been dithering about buying... I'm disabled, and I've had one too many hairy moments trying to drag my heavy vacuum cleaner up and down the stairs. Fuck it, I'm buying it!

Also, your kind of heart stopping experience is why it's good to say fuck it, and do the travel, see the thing, experience something new, because life is so unpredictable. Wishing you a fast recovery from the bruising ❤️

If used carefully the stairs are great exercise. I have a downstairs loo but go up and down the stairs to the main loo during the day to avoid "bungalow legs". I sometimes forget that I have a d/s loo as I only got it fitted a year or so ago! My memory is probably worse than my agility 😊

Stairs are probably one of the most dangerous things in a house. I have read about people dying from a fall downstairs.

You've been given a second lease on life OP, enjoy it!

Oh god I did loads of times wearing wide legged jeans, but, luckily, each time I was going up the stairs. I ended up face planting the stairs. I don't wear them anymore .

I went flying on the 6/7 steps from the attic. No carpet and I was wearing socks. Badly bruised and winded but it does make you think.

Youngest was a few months old. I put him down at the top of the stairs and turned to open the gate. He chose that moment to roll for the first time and fell right to the bottom. His fall was broken by the lower stairgate (we had a toddler as well).
I have never heard such a blood curdling scream (me and the baby). Took him to A&E, all good and not a mark on him. I aged ten years though.

I have two family members who have had awful incidents with stairs. One fell on a concrete set hard onto their bottom and snapped their tailbone off, could barely walk for weeks afterwards and still gets pain now several decades later. The other fell from the top step all the way to the bottom and had to have an inquest into their death their injuries were so horrific. The poor judge at the inquest had tears in his eyes as he told us ‘I hope it brings you some solace that the coroner said it would have been a quick death’ and when they have to detail the process of that death at the inquest we can only bloody hope so, absolutely horrific.

I’ve slipped myself a few times on stairs and that awful feeling seems to consume your whole body doesn’t it?! So scary. Glad you’re ok OP.

I fell down the stairs years ago (I was carrying sheets for the wash and tripped on them) and dislocated my shoulder really badly - think of the ball of my arm being almost where my elbow should be 😱

One thing that I keep thinking with my son's stairs is that I'm terrified of catching my sleeve in the rail. It's one long rail, so it would be easy to do and I know if that happened I'd be a goner as the stairs are so steep.

They are terrifying really, but very good for us otherwise, in terms of physical health.

Not stairs, but I (almost) fell headfirst out of the attic a few years ago. I was taping insulation to the loft hatch and pressing very hard on the inside of the hatch when it gave way. Like the OP my reactions saved me but I don’t to this day quite know how, it all happened so fast. I had a massive bruise on the back of my arm but the physics of it all - a mystery.

This thread has reminded me I need to be more careful with stairs - especially when we let our new young cats out from downstairs, they’re bound to try to kill us on a regular basis.

I fell down the stairs when carrying my newborn DS who fell out my arms, those few seconds are etched into my memory!

10th October 2016. Hubby goes out to tutor. New kitten (important) is in downstairs living room. I go up to ask DD what she wants for tea, turn to go down the stairs, step down from the short landing - and the next thing I know, it’s 5 hours later in A&E with half a dozen doctors and nurses round me.

The kitten had managed stairs, got under my foot & I apparently started to go head first, grabbed the banister, flipped myself then went down on my back, still holding the banister, and banging my head on every step. DD called the ambulance, got a neighbour to stand at the top of the street to direct it, called her father and did first aid.

2 compressed discs, severed nerve in arm, trapped nerve, damaged tendons and muscles and severe concussion. I couldn’t use my arm for 6 months.

I am so careful on those stairs now, I go up and down on hands and knees. The poor kitten was killed.

But dear god I was lucky. Someone was watching over me that night.

I am definitely wobblier and less able to cope with stairs than I was. Inevitable I suppose as I am 81.

We have a big Victorian house with high ceilings. DH was very worried about my falling on the stairs. So we took the plunge to have a lift put in. Not a stair lift.

Luckily we had an ideal place for it. Two small rooms one above the other and mainly used for dumping post and odds and ends and spare clothes and bedding. Some people have lifts running between a downstairs living room and a bedroom. I would not want that. Ours cannot be seen unless the doors of the two rooms are open.

I realise that we were lucky to have the means to pay for it, but honestly it was worth every penny. I now no longer dread having left some item upstairs but be unable to face the climb to retrieve it.

Our DSs have stopped urging us to think about selling and moving to some sort of one storey accommodation.

We used the company that another poster on here recommended and we were delighted with their efficiency and professionalism.

I have posted on similar lines recently, so apologies if you have read it all before but it has transformed my life.

I've frequently said to people that the most dangerous thing as you get older is gravity.

There's a sailing safety expression "one hand for the boat," it means no matter what you're doing you should be hanging on with at least one hand. I've adapted the saying for home use "one hand for the stairs" and make sure I've always got one hand on the rail on the way down. Having read this thread I might get a rail installed on the other side too. Two hands for the stairs.

Hi OP 👋

So sorry to hear about such a traumatic and scary accident, and so pleased you are ok. ❤️

I was actually thinking about accidental falls down stairs earlier when I stood at the top of ours on the landing, and took a step back from a small kids wardrobe we used to have in my DD's room, which now lives on the landing for board games storage.

I was thinking that if I'd overstepped by a few paces and just been idly looking at the cupboard while not thinking, I might have gone backwards falling down the stairs. 😳😫

It is so.true, life can literally change in the blink of an eye. I had a horrible head injury and post concussion syndrome before being injured by an off label antipsychotic a decade ago so you'd think that I might be a bit more cautious! 😅😒😳😳😳

Take care, OP. Big hugs xx

In my late teens I worked in my local pub. One of our regular’s wife dies vacuuming the stairs. I’m 47 now and it still stays with me. He turned into an alcoholic and would spend all day at the pub. They had a 7 year old too. I often wonder what became of them .

My grandfather died after he broke his neck falling down the stairs at my fathers house.

My father had deliberately remove all the banisters and railings as he 'doesn't like the look' so there was nothing to grab when he fell.