This week my sister called me with dire news about my mom. It was as though I saw it coming, could almost say the words before she did."She fell and broke her hip. She's in the hospital."
I've heard of so many similar cases, I'm beginning to wonder if the majority of women who live to the age of ninety (Mom's 90th birthday is six weeks away) are fated to fall and break a hip, rendering them bedridden and soon thereafter dead. Should we be bundling them all in hip padding?
Imagine, if you will, what it would be like for an advanced Alzheimers patient, about at the level of a 16-month-old child, enduring two days of intense pain while the doctors determine that, yes, her hip is broken, another day while they decide whether and how to repair it, undergoing major surgery without general anesthesia (because anesthesia would make her disease permanently worse), followed by weeks of being confined to her bed. Unable to understand any of it, no matter how often her daughter tries to explain.
The surgery involved placing three screws in the femur just below the hip socket through a small incision rather than a hip replacement which would be far too invasive for someone her age. This is as much as I know, or want to know, about it. My sister has informed herself to the point that she probably could have assisted in the operating room, but then my sister is a saint. Or maybe a pragmatic angel.
At the facility where Mother lives, staff is forbidden to tie patients to their chairs or beds, so it could be just a matter of time before she tries to get up, and falls again. What do we do now, hire someone to sit by her bed and keep her from getting up? Put her in yet another facility (this would make her fourth move this year) where restraints are permitted?Should I make the two-day journey to Oklahoma again, to stay with her until it's safe for her to walk? If ever?
Photos: my mom, in her sixties, and my sister the angel