how I wish I could answer each and and every one one of you. I miss posting with you folks so very much. It was my daily pleasure. I’ll try to tell you how this happened, which was my own foolish fault. I will be having Home Health services for the next few weeks, as this recovery seems to be dragging out.
I had already put my upper back (thoracic spine) out by just getting out of bed three weeks prior but was doing fairly well using my walker, so I got a little nonchalant about it and thought I could do a little cleaning up in my bedroom. The waste basket overflowing was particularly bothering me. So I hiked myself in my roller chair into the kitchen to get a trash bag, and as I pulled up to the cabinet which was approximately the same level of my seat, I opened the door and then felt myself sliding forward. I knew I was falling and did not want to reinjure my back, so I sorta “cocooned” myself to the right and hit the hard kitchen floor with my whole right side, my hip and my arm. Fortunately, my daughter heard me from the patio, rushed in and called an ambulance. I had surgery on both the hip and the arm the next morning.
medicare let me stay in the hospital for only two days when they gave my family only 24 hours to place me in a rehab. I went to the wrong one first (sub-acute instead of acute) so I had to be moved again to an acute facility. I stayed there for 17 days. There they gave me intense PT every day, several times a day for the hip and the arm. I tried to tell them several times that this was beginning to affect my lower spine, but although they were very nice about it, they continued to concentrate on the hip and arm exercises.
unfortunately, that wound up putting me into an RA flare and a severe muscle injury to my lumbar spine. Most of my pain issues are concentrated there and probably the worst back pain I have ever experienced over my 14 years of RA and osteoporosis. The ortho doc said it was the absolute opposite of what should have been done, which was at least 15 days of rest before PT was even started. My fault . . . I should have been more insistent that the PT be stopped as soon as I started feeling the pain in my lower back.
the ortho doc has told me this could take another three weeks to three months to heal. Ergo, the nurses who will start this coming week. So I have missed the entire month of July and will probably miss most of August as well.
in the meantime, I will try to update this thread more often, as one of my daughters is allowing me to use this iPad in my bed since I can’t sit at my computer right now.
again, thank you all so much for your well wishes and kind comfort, you are all the very best cyber friends a gal could have 💕
Formerly Ford1224
We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Elie Wiesel 1986
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