Tomorrow is my mom’s 75th birthday. Unfortunately, she’s spending it having a partial hip replacement (at least the surgery supposed to be tomorrow, there’s been some screw ups around this so I can’t be sure).
This is the last in a long line of health problems for my mom. 2009 has been a rotten year for her. At the end of '08, she had surgery for lung cancer. Then in January, just when the docs decided she had recovered long enough from the surgery to start chemo and radiation, she developed an infection in her foot, that resulted in a chronic wound (she’s also diabetic) and the discovery that the circulation in that leg was only 30% of what it should have been. So they placed stents in the artery in her leg.
While she was in the hospital recovering from that procedure (it can cause a lot of pain when the blood starts getting back to oxygen-deprived tissues), she had a mild heart attack. She was sent to a nursing home for rehab between weakness of being in bed and the healing of the bad wound on the back of her leg. One day during physical therapy she had some chest pain, and 4 days later (on March 6) had double bypass surgery. They almost amputated her foot while she was in the hospital that time too, because of the wound. Fortunately they didn’t, and the wound she got in January is still there but healing better than expected.
She was back in the nursing home recuperating from that when last week she developed a lot of pain in her hip - an xray revealed it was broken, and we still don’t know how. The fear is that it’s the cancer spreading to the bone (they never did do the chemo and radiation yet because of all her other problems). They did some tests today to look more closely at that, haven’t gotten the results yet.
Anyway, she’s been in the hospital since last Thursday with her very painful broken hip. The surgery’s been delayed, first because her blood was too thin from the blood thinner she’s been on and then because of the aforementioned screw ups.
So if you could please keep her in your thoughts and prayers (if you are so inclined) tomorrow as she celebrates her birthday in the OR. She’s been through so much this year, it just breaks my heart that she’s going through this now. Thanks!
