Too Good to Be True

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Are you kidding me?

No, really...  a broken femur??

It was fun having dad around the corner while it lasted.  Popping in to see him daily... waving to him across the room when I arrived.  Having been ten days since being discharged from the previous fall, he decided he missed the hospital.  Or something like that...

Being a fall risk... his mattress had been switched to a concave shape, lowered near the floor and a mattress added beside the lowered bed for additional protection.  Still not cluing in to the fact that he needs assistance getting out of bed, despite my telling him every day to ask for assistance in moving around, at 4am Thursday morning, he fell getting out of bed.  He has had several falls sinceoriginally being admitted to the hospital back in September, as you will recall from previous posts.  Turns out all the falls, hospital visit, dramas of September/October were merely a build up to today's events... a broken femur.  A little Internet research revealed that a broken femur is a common sports injury.  Also common in the over-65 set.  I would assume dad would fall into the second category, unless you call crawling out of bed a sport.  When you think about it, it kind of is, for him.

Soooo.... back to the emergency room.  More bringing doctor's up to speed on his medical history.  More chasing down medical staff to give them the lowdown on the Sinemet doses. More reassuring dad as to what is happening to him.  He just stares at me with these big eyes, unable to speak and ask what is happening. 

Parkinson's loss of balance and the brittle bones of osteoporosis makes for a vile combination.  This is the fourth fracture incident... L1 in the lumbar spine in November 2009, wrist bone in August 2010, ribs in September 2011 and now femur in November 2011.  We are now waiting on a surgery opening within the next couple of days as he requires pins and plates to put his femur back together. 

I still cannot believe we made it to Sydney... we really only had a window of ten days and we made it.  There is still a lot to figure out here, but am not regretting the move (just yet)...  Even though the hospital is farthur down the road now, and I have to take a ferry and a bus to get to it.  They are expecting him to be in only two weeks, but still too early to confirm that. 

To be continued...