We have talked about it for a couple of months now, because in order they are 74, 65, and 67, and 60–meaning my Dad, Mom, and her Mom and her Mom’s boyfriend.  We know that things will be changing as they become even more frail, and in the case of my parents, they are already very frail.  So, my partner and I talk about how we will do / what will we have to do while taking care of them.  It was sudden on Friday afternoon though.

My mother had a stroke at 21.  She doesn’t have but very marginal use of her left side.  Like the PT who assessed her yesterday morning in the second Emergency Department that she was in says, “She has found a really interesting and neat way to walk,” but it does not look comfortable.  He said that he had not seen anyone find ways like she has and said that being able to walk as much as she does will help her as she recovers from her new injury. However, she doesn’t really have but one limb working at this point, and she is terrified when she stands.

The term is hemiplegia.  I think that if you think or see the word, you can kind of hear or visualize a person and what would make it different than quadriplegia.  Her left arm lays slack with no use of the hand or fingers, and her left knee can barely bend, so she drags her left side to walk.  I’m not sure if I can remember the first time that my mother fell, but I know that she was in her 30s, and she was certainly younger than I am right now.  One time she was spinning in the kitchen on her left foot and was using her right foot to propel herself in circles to make my two-year-old brother laugh.  She fell though, and scared us both.  As she has aged her falls have not come from horsing around, but rather just trying to get around, and they have become more frequent.  The one on Friday has changed her life for sure.

She was hanging up her jacket on the coat rack in her living room.  As is common with her, she lost her balance, but I think she fell this time very differently.  My father called me at work on my cell, which is unusual, because he doesn’t typically use my cell, and asked me to help me get my mother off the floor, because she had fallen and he could not get her back up at this point.  I looked at the clock and had thirty-minutes left.

I had recently contracted enterovirus, so I’ve missed nearly four-days, so I was nervous.  I told him that I would come as quickly as I could.  I wound up getting very upset, so I went up front after about 10-minutes and told the bookkeeper in the building.  She glanced at the clock and said, “Just go,” so I did.  My boss had her door shut, and I was glad to talk to my bookkeeper instead, because she takes care of her 27-year-old nephew who is in a nursing home and cannot talk.  She knows emergencies and pain better than any of us, because he was in an auto accident which has left him with little functioning, and it happened when he was 25.  There is no shortage of injustices within the human experience.

I used my GPS to ensure the fastest route, because it was rush hour, and when I got there, my mother was propped against the wall in front of the kitchen.  She was pasty and ashen.  I talked to her, and she said, “I think that I dislocated my shoulder.”  If only that had been it!

My father had just called the paramedics about ten-minutes before I got there, and I was glad.  I told him if her shoulder had truly been dislocated that we had no business moving her.  He just looked at me like he does now.  It’s difficult to discern if it’s due to 1) aging, 2) being deaf,  or 3) psychotropic meds that he now takes and definitely should have taken when my brother and I were young.  The paramedics got there and asked for a kitchen chair, and when all three of them got her seated in it, I heard her shoulder slip back in and she said, “Ow.”  That was it, and I foolishly believed that she was just bruised.

I drove my Dad to the Emergency Department at a Hospital very close to their house.  We got all the metal out of our pockets while my Dad became more and more disoriented.  Finally, we got back to my Mom’s room.  We waited and they brought in an x-ray.  Time just ticked.  I figured that she would discharge and we’d be home by 7 at the latest.

After the PA came in for the third time he said that “Unfortunately, there is a break.  And it’s one of the classic ball and socket break wherein it jams into itself.”  I wouldn’t see the x-ray until the following afternoon in another Emergency Department.  The doctor came in about 20-minutes later and we talked.  I told her that with her right arm with a break that she had no abilities.  My 74-year-old Dad with bad hips who walks so slow cannot take care of her, and as I thought, I began to realize that all life had changed for us.  She agreed and asked if she would want to go to a rehab hospital.  I told her flatly, “No. My mother is stubborn.  She won’t go, but I have power of attorney.”  The doctor laughed dryly and said, “Everyone thinks those are for resuscitation with heart attacks, and they are for stuff just like this,” and then she patted my shoulder with compassion.  We agreed to have my Dad try to help her at home.  Left side still very paralyzed, as it had been for the last forty-four years, and now terrified of falling again, and no use of her splinted right (good arm) translates into very minimal functioning.  Far fetched at best that she can be at home.

I realized that we had taken my SUV.  My mother has to fall into the seat to get her butt in the passenger side, grab the handle that comes down when you pull it, and then scoot back by lunging for several minutes until my Dad or I turn her, and then we bend her knees to get her lower half in.  And this process is when she’s operating under normal functioning.  Now, she has no arm.  I told Dad that I had to go back and get his car.  So, I did.  I drove back from the hospital to their house and stabbed a sausage that was half eaten with my spork because that was pretty much all that was left from my lunch and it was after 7 pm and was dark and cold.

I called my mother-in-law.  She and my sister-in-law who lives with us currently, are nurses.  They are good too.  The former told me to get a gait belt, and use that to move her so she wouldn’t fall.  She explained that use to me, and it was then that I realized that the gaits of my parents couldn’t be more out of synch.  My Dad shuffles his feet with baby steps, and my mother swings a right leg sideways and drags a left foot behind.  How was it going to work with her belted to him?  Visions of my Dad’s hips shattering as they both fell in their house ensued.  She reiterated what the doctor said, and I said, “She’s never going to speak to me again when it hits her that I sent her to Rehab.  She’s very stubborn, and can be combative.”  My mother-in-law assured me that she would need lots of care because her good arm was broken.  We hung up and she called me 10-minutes later and said that she would be helping me.  I sighed and felt a surge of emotion.

I’ll finish this piece tonight.  It’s already very long, but getting it out has helped me as I process the last 48-hours in an empty house.  My partner and sister-in-law have left with my saint of a mother-in-law and her boyfriend to go to AZ.  My partner has a new, and biological nephew.  Beginning of life is certainly contrasted with what is going on here.

I’ve seen too many of these since Friday