On the morning of Saturday, July 13, still feeling weak from
the robotic hernia surgery I’d had 3 weeks earlier, I stood at my bedside
helping my husband make our bed. In an instant and without warning, I suddenly lost
my balance and fell to the floor. It was a hard fall onto my left side, and I
knew immediately that something was seriously wrong. The pain was excruciating,
and as I lay there unable and unwilling to move, my husband called for an
ambulance. The EMTs got me onto a gurney, into their vehicle and on to the Emergency Department,
where I was examined and evaluated.
Xrays revealed dislocation of the hip replacement hardware inside the bone, and fractures on both sides of my left femur, which would require admission to the hospital for surgery the next day, July 14.
Fortunately for me, the physician on call that Sunday happened to be a board-certified orthopedic surgeon who specializes in hips and knees. My injury required an incision from hip to knee, revision of the artificial hip, and insertion of new hardware to keep the thigh bone properly aligned and intact.As I awakened in the Recovery Room, my
surgeon told me the goal now was to allow my leg sufficient time to heal ~ a process that would
take at least two weeks in the hospital followed by some four weeks of nursing care and physical therapy in a
rehabilitation facility, with no weight-bearing on my left leg. That meant
confinement to a wheelchair, at least temporarily, and using a walker with all
my weight on my right leg ~ which of course puts more strain on my already bad right
ankle. (That ankle has been weak and sore for years, due to osteoarthritis,
with no cartilage left in the joint; basically bone on bone, forcing me to walk with a cane.)
Throughout this time I had no access to my computer and no
way to communicate with my readers and followers. Although I did have my cell phone, I rarely
use it at home and was totally unfamiliar with all its features and how to use it. As I
lay in my hospital bed, I spent hours struggling with firewalls, passwords and various other roadblocks,
as I tried in vain to log in to AOL, where I knew that hundreds of emails would be piling
up each day. In the end, I never did figure out how to log in to AOL. By the time I was discharged to my home earlier this week, finally with access to my computer, I had accumulated nearly 4000 email messages, and I've been slowly working my way through all of them. All the while I was desperate to let everyone know what had
happened to me, but at some point I had to decide to let that frustration and worry go, until I
felt well enough to compose the message you are reading now.
In the meantime I’ve been working hard to get better, and I do feel stronger every day. I am grateful to be at home now, with at-home visits
from occupational and physical therapists two or three times a week. My primary
caregivers are my husband and my sister, both of whom have been absolutely wonderful, and for whom I am eternally grateful. And
I am so happy to be home again and back online at last!
With Windows10 going away in October, and given my
experience of having been hospitalized for weeks on end without a computer, I decided to switch
from my aging desktop to a new (totally portable!) laptop, which of course comes
with Windows11. Fortunately my two computer-savvy sons have made that happen for me, but of
course using a new computer with a new operating system presents me with yet another steep learning curve,
but I am working on it! And at my family's insistence, I'm also wearing one of those fancy medical alert necklaces that connects me to an emergency response center.
I sincerely hope that this will serve to explain my absence
online since mid-July, and I promise that I’ll be working hard to get
everything back to normal as soon as possible.
With heartfelt gratitude,
Marty Tousley
Image by Gaby Stein from Pixabay
© by Marty Tousley, RN, MS, FT
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