Surgical Indecision

Back in the day when Mum was still able to consider things fairly rationally, certainly before the millennium, she was in constant pain, to a greater or lesser degree, particularly with her left hip.

She was referred by her Doctor to see an orthopaedic Consultant; she attended all the appointments made for her, and listened very nicely to what was recommended. She would then say "I'll have to think about it....." and another appointment would be made for her.  Invariably, when she returned for the next consultation, Mum would say, "Yes, yes, indeed I will take your good advice.... but there are a couple of things I'd like to get sorted out first, before undergoing surgery."  It all sounded terribly reasonable at the time.

I would pick Mum up from her home in Southsea, and drive her to all the appointments at RN Hospital Haslar in Gosport, but over the years, she never seemed to get any nearer to making a decision to get herself out of pain.

She was clearly frightened of an operation. Her fear wasn't assuaged when the Consultant gave her statistics of having a hip replacement. He told her, "95% of patients do very well. 3% have no improvement, and 2% will have a very poor result."

For Mum, this translated as disaster. She was sensible enough to know that all surgery carries a risk, and that the Consultant had to explain what could happen, but in spite of meeting many other patients in the waiting room at Haslar who had already had a hip replacement, and being told how great it was that they were now pain free and able to walk properly again, Mum could focus only on the 2% disaster scenario. The "glass half-empty" was in full control in  Mum's head.

In the end, as the Consultant had predicted, Mum's hip stopped hurting her; the bones settled in the socket, and she lost a bit of height. However, before that happened, and whilst she was still in pain with her left hip, she started to throw most of her weight onto her right leg; after a while, her right knee began to protest, and cause her even more problems.

She was offered a Zimmer frame and shown how to use it, but preferred to rely instead on a low four legged stool, that she would lean on heavily, then pick up and plonk down a few inches away, before taking a step forward. Her GP always tried to encourage her to use the right walking aids, and explained that using the stool also put put a terrible strain on her back.

The problem was, with Mum sounding so lucid, and definite in her decisions, no-one could argue with her, and we watched with bated breath as Mum made painfully slow progress around the house, clinging stubbornly to the low stool.

One evening, the accident we had all been dreading, happened; Mum took a step forward, got her foot tangled up one of the legs of the stool, and went over onto the floor. One look at her lower leg was enough to show it was serious;  the ambulance was there within minutes, and Mum was taken off to hospital, with a broken ankle.  At 92, we really feared the worst.