Shortly after retiring from a busy job when I was well into my ninth decade, I moved into a second-floor apartment in the house of my younger daughter and her husband. They are Christian Scientists, as I have been since being introduced to Christian Science as a young girl. 

The entrance to my apartment is on the first floor, in a small hall that also includes the entrance to the basement. One Friday evening about a year and a half ago, as I was making my way toward the stairs to my apartment after dinner with my family, I took a wrong turn in the dark and fell down the long flight of basement stairs. My daughter and son-in-law heard the noise and found me on the basement floor in what appeared to be a state of shock and confusion. However, I am told that I began to say aloud the Lord’s Prayer with my son-in-law, while my daughter called 911. She also immediately contacted a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful treatment, as I would have wanted her to do. 

I remember becoming aware of my circumstances in the ambulance and hearing my daughter, who accompanied me, singing hymns from the Christian Science Hymnal. I was told that we were on the way to the trauma center of a local hospital. There, I had an MRI, and the medical verdict was a fractured skull, fractured ribs, and multiple abrasions. My desire was to rely wholly on God for healing, and while I was given stitches, I declined pain medication and other medical treatment the doctors offered to me.