road trips

My Mom fell down a few weeks ago, she was getting out of the car to go set up for a ladies social and tripped over her own feet (her words, not mine). Crazy thing is, she was carrying a china plate at the time... it survived great, not even a chip. Too bad she did not fair equally well. She called my sister Julie right away and Julie wanted to take her in to the ER to get checked but Mom didn't want to miss her meeting. Julie planned to take her in the next day, but alas, with the daintiness and grace that seems to be the lot of all of us Valenzuela women, she fell that night and severely twisted her ankle. So there they were, Julie unable to drive due to crutches and an air cast, and mom unable to drive due to a very sore right arm, they were stuck.
Now my husband, being the soul of practicality that he is, wondered why they didn't just use teamwork and let my mom drive since she could work all the necessary pedals and steer with her left hand, and let Julie sit beside and work the gear shift....in any case, the days passed and by the time Julie got around to telling mom she had to go to the doctor, Mom said that her arm was actually much better, she had most of her movement back and was even knitting again.
Finally, mom had to go to the doctor for something else and happened to mention to him about her encounter with the sidewalk (a week and half prior!) and he insisted on x-rays. Good man, since he immediately saw that she had a broken arm! He called an ortho to get her in asap and she was able to see the ortho the next day (Friday, February 8). The ortho looked at the xrays and was simply amazed at mom's range of motion and strength --and especially her knitting. He said that people with this break simply can't move. She broke her radial head which is part of the lower arm bone that forms the elbow. He said that she had to have surgery, the sooner the better. Ugh.
They called and told me that she was going to have surgery on Monday, so I left right after Sunday morning service on Sunday. Well, I say right after but that isn't accurate. I took a nap and packed and finally got out around 4 pm. We had Terrible windstorms that day and the bridge tunnel was restricted to one lane and 15 mph. From our house to the far side of the bridge tunnel is supposed to be about 15-20 minutes. It took me an hour. The trip was down hill from there. We passed a brush fire whose smoke had the highway at a crawl, went through farm land area where the dust was blowing off in such clouds that visibility was extremely low, again, traffic at a crawl. About 4.5 hours into what is supposed to be a 5 hour trip, we had just passed into NC, I was on I85 and thought I was finally going to make good time. Not so. At 8:30 pm, I passed mile marker 212. At 9:30 pm, I passed mile marker 211. One hour to go one mile. Then in the most frustrating thing of all... there was nothing to show for what the delay was! No accident, no roadwork, nothing! Anyway, add the number of bathroom trips required by three small children and a pregnant woman to the mix and it was just a SUPER fun trip. We finally arrived at my moms after 11:30 pm.
Next day was supposed to be D-Day, got up, was getting everyone ready, and the doctor called. He was very apologetic, but felt like he had to inform us that since mom was on standby for the OR that day he had checked and the hospital had a number of emergent cases over the weekend. He said that our chance of coming in, sitting there all day, and never getting into the operating room was very high. Since we were already concerned about the fact that mom wasn't scheduled until late afternoon and she is diabetic (no food or drink before surgery), we decided that even with this throwing off all the plans we had made (me coming in from Virginia and Julie taking off work) it was better to wait. The doctor said that he had guaranteed OR time on Wednesday so we could come in on Wednesday morning.
Unfortunately, I had plans from Wednesday through the rest of the week and weekend and had to get the family back home, so we visited with mom for two days, then dropped her off at the hospital on Wednesday morning into Julie's capable hands and came on home. The trip home was, thankfully, uneventful.
Julie called me later with a report of the surgery. He opened her right arm up about 6-7 inches and removed all the broken bits, cut the jagged end of the bone off, and replaced it with a metal piece. The surgery took a little over 3 hours and then they kept her overnight at the hospital. My dear sister had too much fun torturing the nurses (no disrespect to the nurses out there, but Julie is a paramedic, they delight in making each other's lives miserable, I think it's an ingrained professional distaste for the way each other practices medicine).
We stayed home through the weekend, and then left again on Sunday after church to go back down. Again, an easy trip. I figure after that first trip, I'm owed another 4 easy trips! Monday was mom's birthday. She turned 68. That is awfully close to 70. Wow. She also went for her follow up appointment with the ortho doctor. He is so funny... he is quite amazed and keeps telling us (Julie and I) that our mom is a tough lady. He was pleased with the way it's healing and sent us up to make appointments for physical therapy.
One very happy event in all this was that my multiple visits coincided with the opening of a new Cuban restaurant in Salisbury. We did not go there every day of my visit. One day we went to a Japanese place.
Tuesday was Mom's first PT appointment, they really didn't do much, just a lot of massage to try and get the swelling out of her hand and arm. I think she was disappointed, she is really wanting to move fast and get busy. I think she was miffed at the therapist because he told her NO knitting for several weeks... so of course she had to go home and prove him wrong. She figures if knitting got her that much range of motion with a broken arm, now that it's fixed, it should be super good for her.
Mom was making great progess on her own, so the kids and I left on Thursday. They really needed to see Daddy, and honestly, so did I.

Friday (today) Julie called and told me mom had taken another fall, in the house. She had just gotten off the phone with Julie and so she had the phone with her, thank God, and was able to call Julie right back and tell her. Julie was on the way there anyway so she arrived soon after. When she fell, she tried to catch herself with her left hand which resulted in an injured left wrist and then spun around and landed on her right side. At first Julie was very worried about the extent of damage to her left wrist as it swelled up immediately, however she took her right in to the ortho and he exrayed both arms and said that the left wrist was severely sprained and the right arm was fine, no damage at all to the previous injury. Oh yes, I got this report in the midst of writing this post and mom is VERY pleased to announce that she has official clearance from the Doctor that she is allowed to knit as soon as she can hold both needles again. I teased her that she was going to be eager to rub this news in to Brad (the therapist) and she said that yes, that would be satisfying but she was also looking forward to the look on his face when he sees her on Monday with BOTH arms in splints.
Anyway, This has been a long two weeks, for all of us. It has been very gratifying to see how many offers of help have come in for my mom. My mom was always a second mother for many of our friends and peers and now even years later, the fruit of that is coming out. Her circle of friends in the 40 and under crowd is pretty amazing.
Julie tells me that I do not need to pack up and come right back, at least not right now. We will look into someone coming in on Julie's work days to check on Mom and perhaps even make her wear one of those medical call buttons, I know she'll be not too pleased about it, but I just shudder to think that she could have fallen last night while Julie was at work and no one would have known.