This is also going to be an atypical weekly round-up in that I'm going to jump straight to the major thing that happened and then come back and see if I can be bothered with any of the rest of it.
Ma fell this week. Now for anyone who has followed the blog for a while, me falling is not uncommon... and there's a genetic legacy there... when I was a kid Ma used to fall about as often as I do now. And when we were in Sydney in 2013 she fell and bruised up her eye (how I'm still not entirely certain). But this time was worse... and she somehow managed to dislocate her shoulder.
Again, genetic legacy, since I've dislocated my shoulder three times and ended up with a reconstruction (and then there was that time I popped my knee out of, and then back into, the socket).
But rolling back slightly... just after lunch on Tuesday I get a phonecall from a number I don't know... answer it and it's the big boss from Ma's work, calling to tell me that she's had a fall, dislocated her shoulder and they've taken her off to the emergency room.
As soon as I realised she was from Ma's work, before she'd even gotten to the why, I knew it wasn't good... I mean people never use your emergency contact number to tell you there are puppies and kittens and rainbows. No, it's for emergencies.
So as soon as I get off the phone with her, I try and call Ma, and there's some phone juggling when someone I don't know answers and then they hand me over to her. She sounded a little out of it... I'm guessing that was probably a combination of shock and really good pain meds. I asked her if she wanted me to come to the hospital, but she said no, a woman from work was with her and she was okay all things considered.
I stayed put, but I will say that I had trouble actually making coherent thoughts for the rest of the afternoon, and even for me I was probably a little more brusk in some of my emails than normal.
Hometime came around and I hadn't heard anything, so I messaged her to see where she's at... she calls me and tells me they think it's only a sprain/strain, but they want to do one last scan before they release her. This is good news. I much prefer this news.
So I walk home, stop to get some hayfever eyedrops and many things made of chocolate from the supermarket.
I texted her on the way home and the reply didn't make a ton of sense, but I figured she's distracted or can't type with her good hand... one of those things.
When I'm walking up to my building, she calls me. Turns out the shoulder was actually only half dislocated, when the doctor when to rotate it in the CT scan it popped out of the joint properly. So in the time it took me to walk home and do shopping, they'd scanned her, popped the joint out, put her under and fixed it... and she'd regained the land of the living. Which is probably why her reply didn't make a ton of sense.
She was going to get her sister to come and get her... which would have been fine, but anyone who's read the blog for more than about five minutes knows that if it had been me, she would have left work after the first phone call and come down... just like she has done for every single other disaster (like when I did my back in originally)... so I couldn't just dump this is someone else's lap.
So I got changed, pulled up the directions in my phone and set off for the hospital.
By the time I got there it was around 7pm, and she'd been at the hospital since around 1:30pm. And it was around 8:30pm before I got her home. Not that there was much to do once I got there, the woman from work who had kept her company, I think until I said I was on my way, had gone... she was just waiting for one last visit from the doctor and then she was good to go.
You know those times when your brain goes to the disaster place... even when logically you know that everything is survivable and not anywhere near that bad, but your brain just goes to that "she's hasn't called me, she'd dead in a ditch somewhere" place. Yeah, that was pretty much me between that second phone call and when I walked into the emergency room. I don't even want to write all the words down for what I'm talking about because then that will mean that they're not safely locked away in my head, but out there in the world, and if they're out there, they might happen.
You know?
Anyway, turns out Ma did what both she and I have done about a bazillion times between us, she tripped over a raised paver that she's walked over or past a hundred times before and caught her foot in just the wrong way... and down she went.
But she didn't put her arm out enough or something and landed on the arm or shoulder in the wrong way... kerblammo.
The doctor eventually showed up (terribly British woman), we got all the lovely drugs, Ma got dressed and I took her back to her place.
I tidied some stuff up for her so she wouldn't trip over things, made sure she was okay and settled and then headed off home.
And because I actually haven't driven to her place since I moved into this apartment, and it was dark and I was a little stressed... I got lost. Yes, I could have stopped and turned my GPS on... but I figured I knew where I was going... turns out not so much and I got turned around at a certain point and started going away from where I was supposed to be headed. Eventually I stopped and got myself sorted though... but it added another ten or fifteen minutes to my trip.
Between then and now I've been checking in with her about twice a day, morning and night, just to see how she is.
I also ordered some flowers for the woman she works with who sat with her all afternoon... and some chocolates to share with the other people in the office, since they all arranged to move Ma's car from work to home, and generally just looked after her before she went to the hospital. I also wrote an appropriately appreciative card to go along with them.
Today I did some shopping for Ma, and then headed up to her place after I'd unpacked my shopping and dropped some books off at the Oxfam shop.
And knowing that it's not any fun to be confined to the house for a week after you've injured yourself, I took her out to the shopping centre near her, if for no other reason than so she could get out of the house. It turned out to be pretty much the right thing to do though, since we ran into her co-worker who sat with her.
Now I've never met this woman before, but as soon as Ma introduced us we both moved to hug each other, her I think to thank me for the flowers, me to thank her for what the flowers were for, looking after Ma.
Ma has an appointment with her doctor tomorrow (yes, he works Sundays, but he's around 300 years old and only works a couple of days a week now) and then an appointment at the hospital a week on Monday. So we'll know at that stage when she can drive again... and when she's gets to go back to work.
Given that they're talking about no driving and being off work and seeing a physio, the only thing I can think is that she dislocated her shoulder in a much more serious way than I did any of the three times I did mine before the reconstruction. In fact in at least two of those cases I drove my car home after going to the emergency room... and in one of those I then drove to both get my hair did and then go to La Cousina's (first) wedding the following day. Granted that's partly because she'll be 70 next year and I was, I dunno... mid 20's. But this is much more like when I had my reconstruction to be honest.
But, like I said, other than being sore (and actually surprisingly unsorry for herself, compared to how I would probably be feeling in her place) and unable to do some stuff, she's doing okay.
Compared with that the rest of the week was fairly dull.
Getting in the car, driving for 40 minutes, sitting in a hospital chair then getting in the car and driving for about 50 minutes all while somewhat stressed and tense did something of a number on my back and after I put my socks on on Wednesday morning, I stood up and where was some serious twinge activity.
I had a chiro appointment scheduled for Friday anyway, but called up to see if they could slot me in for an unscheduled one... and they got me straight in which was great. And I'm going back next Friday for a follow-up.
Thankfully I did all of the tidying up for this coming week's rental inspection on Sunday. I still need to clean some stuff, but everything is tidy, which makes the biggest difference. It will also hopefully cut what I need to do tomorrow down to only a couple of hours.
I also discovered that I'm fresh out of the really good quality photo paper for printing Ma's calendar... and they don't make it anymore... so on the way home today I stopped in at Officeworks and bought a new kind... so we'll see how that goes. I also bought some adhesive paper so I may need to make more pasteup stickers. Maybe I'll finally get around to making the fish version of my eyeBird.
The major downside to driving to Ma's place is that the sun ends up against me... as in, it's coming in through the driver's window in both directions, which doesn't happen when Ma comes here... and given that it was a hotter day than I thought it was going to be... I ended up with the first sunburn of the season on the inside of my elbow.
That's about all of it I think... hopefully there won't be a week this "hectic" for quite a while.
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