My mother had a bit to drink Saturday and decided to move a 30lb concrete bird bath. She fell and broke her hip. No phone on her, so she laid there and yelled for help for at least half an hour. Thankfully the weather was nice at the moment and someone was jogging by eventually. (Otherwise I might be planning a funeral, or telling the story of my mom dragging herself to the neighbor’s house)
Anyway, she calls me a couple hours later from the ER, everything is cool she’s checked in and is waiting for a doctor, I tell her to keep me updated and I’ll run down if she needs me, otherwise I’ll see her in the morning at her permanent room. Ten minutes later I get a call, she’s hysterical, the doctor walked in her ER room and grabber her leg and pulled, asking her how her cough was. He had the wrong room. I ran down immediately after that call. Anyway, after some more keystone cops routines, her hip not being an actual “emergency” but only urgent we got installed in her room at like midnight with a broken hip.
Next day, after getting home at 2:30 AM, we head back up at like 9. Usual hospital no one knows what anyone is doing. The on call ortho surgeon was a shoulder arm guy, and since my mother is young for a broken hip he was pushing for a full hip replacement and not a partial (Hemi), and he wasn’t comfortable doing a full. He worked up a deal with the hip guy to come in that afternoon and he’d assist. So three rolls around, and she’s in awful pain the whole day and on morphine.
She goes into surgery, and after the surgeon tells us it’s all awesome and finished we go down the room to wait. Two hours later I go around looking for her and asking the nurses where she is. And they are all like, what, she should be down by now. Then someone finds out she’ll be down in 15 minutes. Half an hour later she comes down still doped up, and I was expecting her to be awake. Turns out after we left the surgeon went back in to check her post op xray and they had dislocated her hip moving her from bed to bed.
Then Monday we added afib and a high heart rate. Today she walked for the first time, and tomorrow she’s likely getting a cardiac reversion done.
I’m exhausted, hanging out at the hospital is draining. I’ve been coming home at night, and spending the whole day there. My wife is an angel, and my friends are all saints.