Gimme a Break

Update: I should’ve known that a 91-year-old with osteoporosis does not hit a tile floor without damage…

I don’t know where this breakdown in communication occurred - Sonia (mom’s caretaker) took her to urgent care Wednesday and told me they took X-rays and found no fractures, but they did find a UTI - prescribed pain medicine and antibiotics, sent her back to her assisted living facility…(Sonia SEEMS perfectly competent in her English-language skills after 20+ yrs here, but there are gaps)

Her misery continued (unrelenting pain) but when I called the urgent care facility myself Thursday morning, they described a compression fracture at L1.

Then the real fun started - I called up to the main office of her facility to see about getting her transferred into full care while she’s recovering. Long story short, there is a protocol to be followed! but they let her records from urgent care sit on their FAX machine for 4 hours (!!!) so I didn’t start the required process of taking her to an ER to get her admitted to a hospital from which she will then be released to their care until 4 o’clock Thurs afternoon.

Hopefully this will work out for the best - the hospital wants to inject some bone cement into the shattered vertebrae to help stabilize it.

As I’ve wearily told everyone, I don’t make the rules, I just try to follow them - Medicare requires that she  be hospitalized for 3 days, then they will pay for 28 days of rehab care. Mom is miserably unhappy being hospitalized but they delayed her procedure until today, giving her IV antibiotics and repeating all the bloodwork to be sure she wasn’t septic. I really don’t know if this is the beginning of the end or not? I did have a nice conversation with one of my cousins (who is an RN) Saturday night as I drove home from E TX - she said mom will carry on as long as she can and then everything will start to break down.

I was able to fulfill my obligation to go work the ride Saturday - Christina rode Baraquinator in the 30 miler, which he breezed through as if it were nuthin’! My pretty pony! 3 of my trail riding buddies also successfully completed (quite a bit behind C and B)

Christina brought me chicken soup - she knows life has been tougher than usual here lately