Safe For The Holiday

Simple advice for celebrating the season without incident.

- Diane Sewell ​​​​​​​

MARGARET KERESTECI should have known better. Thanks to her previous job collecting injury data at the Canadian Institute for Health Information, the Toronto resident was well aware of the many mishaps that occur during the holidays.

Nevertheless, one winter night she was so anxious to get her exterior Christmas lights up that she hauled out a ladder, climbed to the top rung and then leaned too far to one side.

The next thing Keresteci knew, she was lying on the ground with two broken wrists and a gash on her head. Her husband and kids weren’t at home, so, in terrible pain, she made her way to a nearby house, where she summoned help by banging on the door with her elbow.

Keresteci suffered permanent damage to one wrist as a result of her fall. Her story is a kind of perfect storm of holiday hazards: elaborate decorating, high stress, busy schedule. It’s no wonder there are typically more falls from ladders, more accidental fires and more food-related illnesses just before and during the holiday season than at any other time of the year.

The good news is that most of these incidents are preventable. Here is our guide to the season’s red flags—and how to avoid them.

REACHING FOR THE TOP

Dr. Louis Francescutti, an emergency-room physician at Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra Hospital and a professor and injury researcher at the University of Alberta, says he treats traumas like Keresteci’s every year.

“Whoever draws the Christmas shift usually has a story to tell,” he says. According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, ladder injuries are so common that between 2015 and 2016, they sent more than 15,000 Canadians to hospital.