The background, beginning Wednesday, May 20

En route to an early morning visit to the commode, our mother fell and couldn't get up. And her left hip hurt. A lot. She wasn’t wearing her alert button (didn’t wear it at night because it would sometimes go off if she turned in her sleep), but was able to pull the phone off its perch in the hallway and pressed the speed dial for Dave -- calling 911 not being an option as she felt it would create too much of a disturbance in the neighborhood at 5:30 a.m. Besides, all she needed to do was get into bed and rest and the pain would go away, right?

It takes Dave over six hours to get from his home in Ashland, KY to Mom's house, so he called Byron and Colleen, who live, oh, maybe 12 minutes away, and they drove over and dealt with the situation at hand. She was transported by ambulance to Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, where she spent the better part of the day in the ER, having the usual pokes, prods, and x-rays one endures in an ER when presenting with a broken appendage. Besides the broken hip, though, she was found to have a very low hemoglobin count (in the 6 range; 12 to 15 is considered normal). Often hemoglobin counts this low are indicative of internal bleeding, and medical team concerns shifted from the broken hip to uncovering the cause of the bleeding.

Mom had been on the anticoagulant Coumadin (warfarin) for a blood clot found in her left leg in March of this year, and was being monitored by her internist. Following her blood draw on May 18, she was told to discontinue the Coumadin for a few days as her clotting factor was too low. Being on Coumadin may have contributed to low hemoglobin, along with her chronic G.I. issues. Because of this, though, gastrointestinal/hematology docs were consulted and she received two pints of blood while in the ER.

Byron and Colleen were with her when she was admitted. Colleen, who teaches dental hygiene at University Detroit, needed to leave for her classes. Byron called me while they were en route to the hospital, so I did what I needed to do at work (I’m a unit head in the libraries at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, a little more than a two hour drive from Mom’s) and headed over to SE MI, arriving at the hospital around 11 a.m. Byron then left to attend to his law practice, and I kept Mom company until she was transferred to a room around 3:30 p.m. At least they didn’t have to put in the dreaded N.G. tube, which happened a few years ago when she was hospitalized for liver failure.

Mom would need surgery for the hip, but the medical team did not want to attempt it until her hemoglobin levels were up. Another factor contributing to the delay was a heart arrhythmia. During all this she was in considerable pain, for which she was receiving morphine and Vicodin, which didn’t settle well on an empty stomach and she had a difficult night in the wee hours of Thursday. When Dave and I walked in her room around 7 a.m. Thursday morning, she had an N.G. tube, which had been put in place to keep her from aspirating on vomit. She looked absolutely miserable. FFP (fresh frozen plasma) was ordered to help with the blood thing, and because it wasn’t known when she would have surgery, she couldn’t have anything to eat.

Thankfully the N.G. tube was removed Thursday afternoon. Finally, after everyone had their say and signed her off for the surgery, she went under the knife late Friday afternoon. She made it through the surgery well, and began eating “real” food (well, as real as hospital food is) on Saturday. She's been able to enjoy visitors and looks a lot better than she did just a few days ago (except for her hair -- had to miss her standing appointment on Saturday at the Persnickety Beauty Salon).

She now sports some hardware in her left hip (pins). As I type, she's watching the end of Meet the Press from a chair and just had her IV removed. It’s anticipated that she’ll be transferred to a rehab facility on Tuesday, where we will likely move the birthday festivities on Sunday.