Been a while, hasn’t it.
Yes, well… a lot has been going on.
Basically it starts on Tuesday morning, the morning after mom gets home from the hospital.
9:00, she wakes me from my slumber on the couch. She’s just waking up herself. We talk a bit as our eyes struggle to stay open. We have a cigarette.
Around 9:30 she asked me how I did with her daily tapings. She tapes all the talk shows every morning and the week she was gone I had to make sure that every night, I put a new tape in. She walks over to the VCR and bends down to organize the tapes she will begin watching later in the day after I leave for work.
On her hands and knees, she begins to talk but is interrupted by her own self…
“oh my god… oh my god….”
She begins to scream. She’s in pain.
She yells again and rolls onto her side, then to her back.
Every breath she takes is followed by a yelp.
Her new hip has become disconnected.
I had *NO* idea what to do. I offered a pillow, I think.
She finally is able to tell me to call 911 and I did so.
Just minutes later, the police arrive and inspect the scene taking down whatever information they can get. Then the first of the paramedics. Deciding how to move her onto a stretcher, then down a narrow flight of stairs with a broken banister, and a sharp right turn at the bottom. The fire department shows up. More medics arrive, too.
They bring a stretcher up that can be separated in half then slid under someone, connecting back together again at the center.
Very carefully they begin taking action.
Once restrained, they lift her up and out the door, down the stairwell half way, only to hoist her over the rickety banister and down to the first floor hallway where other medics stand prepared to take over.
Success.
I’ve locked the doors behind everyone and as they place her in the ambulance, I look around and no one tells me what I should be doing. I ask someone “Where am I in all of this?”
He points to the ambulance and says “front seat, there, Sir. Buckle yourself up, too”
The trip to the hospital was very slow. Again, they had to drive very carefully so as not to make things worse.
The yelling, by the way, has yet to cease. This is not a pain that can be gotten used to. It’s constant, unbearable, and something I can’t even imagine. I tried… many times.
The rest is pretty boring. They had her in the E.R. for a bit, pumping her with morphine (which didn’t help at all), then they got her a room for a few hours while they waited for O.R. time.
I must say, it was almost traumatic! My mother, as most people know, is not exactly someone I think about every day. Yet seeing her, my mother, in more pain then I think I have ever seen anyone else in… was pretty strange, to say the least.
So she had the operation re-done and now wears a brace. She’ll be moved to another hospital tomorrow which specializes in her situation and the physical therapy she must endure. She’ll be back home, I assume next week.
Now onto other news:
Three more restorations have been added to the portfolio section of www.thecarpetedwall.com.
Diet Pepsi Twist (the one with lemon flavor added) is really not bad at all!
