Getting Plastered

"Help me!"

That's what I heard last weekend when I was walking into the local home improvement store with my parents.  I turn around in time to see my mother fall first onto her left knee, then her right shoulder.  And then there she sits, not able to move.  A man saw and ran over to help, along with a couple Bunnings staff members.  They managed to get her out of the way of traffic, but she couldn't seem to get up.  Not sure if it was just painful bruises or more, we eventually got her into a wheelchair and into the store to wait and see if she was able to walk.

After an hour and a few pain pills we decided it was time to go to the urgent care clinic.  Somehow we managed to get my mom into the car and then out again at the clinic, but her right leg didn't seem to want to work.  The clinic wasn't able to x-ray on weekends, so off we went again, this time to the ER.  This was about 6 pm.

The we did what anyone else would do in the same situation.  Wait.  And wait.  And wait some more.  Finally around 9 pm they brought her back to take a look and decided her knee was just badly bruised but that her shoulder needed an x-ray.  They took the pics, and then we waited some more.  Finally a nurse came out, took my mother in her wheelchair away, and told her it was time to get plastered.

Apparently she fractured her humorous in her upper right arm, so they put it in a cast and then wrapped it in a sling.  Then they had to x-ray it again to make sure it was going to set correctly.  Finally at 1:30 am we took her home.

The next day (after Phil ran a marathon on very little sleep) the doctor called.  After reviewing the film again, they decided that she needed to have surgery on her arm and it needed to happen in the next two weeks.  Not a problem normally, but considering she's in Australia and her doctor is in the US, plus she can't walk, the logistics are a bit infeasible.

She's had a couple days to recover now and can finally stand up and sit down on her own, so the next adventure will be to fly her back home on Saturday so she can get to the doctor.  Then hopefully she can have the surgery and start to gain her mobility back again.  Or perhaps she should just keep getting plastered to drown out the pain.

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