Sunday, January 13, 2008

Where I have been



I don't know where to begin. I haven't blogged and I haven't been online much in the past 5 months. I'm going to just give the very short version so I don't bore everyone to tears with my tale of woe.

In August, I tripped in my livingroom as gracefully as I knew how, and fell, breaking my right shoulder and my left hip. I walked on my broken hip for several days until I could no longer stand the pain and went back to the ER. The ER had never x-rayed the hip because they gave me so much morphine that it didn't hurt anymore! It had been 10 days and they discovered serious damage to my hip because I walked on it. It wasn't just broken, it was, well, traumatized is the best word I can come up with.

After a LONG separation from my home while I was in the hospital and then in rehab, my hip is still not healing. My shoulder is coming along okay. I walk with a walker and sometimes crutches but using the crutches just leaves me so much more breathless. I have been home since the end of October and have been out of my house twice since then. You can imagine my state of mind these days.

I haven't had surgery yet on my hip because there hasn't been any healing at all there. My orthopedic surgeon told me it would be about 6 months before something could be done. I will need a custom piece that they can fit a hip replacement to. I have been referred to a large teaching hospital near Boston, where I will see the head of the ortho department. That is on the 31st of this month, so I am hoping that they will be able to do what my ortho surgeon doesn't feel qualified enough to do.

I am very deconditioned and discouraged. I can get along okay in my apartment with help from my family and a great neighbor family who all pitch in so that someone is over a couple of times a day. There's no doubt that I would be in an institution were it not for all of them!

So that's where I've been this fall and winter. Of course this is all taking much too long in my estimation but I'm looking forward to being able to walk again and get back to rehab to get some more breath.


~Eileen