Hip Hip and a Hampered Hooray

The week preceding Thanksgiving, Frank spent a week in Oklahoma helping Robin with her two kids and some house projects while her husband Jeremy was on travel for his job. Frank worked on some bathroom repairs for them, did some daycare drop-offs and pick-ups, and in general got to spend some grandpa time with Isaiah and Autumn.

Frank arrived back home a couple days before Thanksgiving and he and I ate our holiday meal out at a restaurant. It was no muss, no fuss, tasty, and relaxing. We would start our Christmas holiday and guest preparations that weekend. The plan was for Robin's family of four and Dan's family of four to convene at our house mid-December for an early Christmas family reunion. Frank told me to make a written list of what I wanted done before they started arriving and to prioritize it. He claims that when I keep it all in my head and "dole it out" to him, I keep adding to it. I made that list of baby necessities and Christmas frills per his request. One item on our list was to buy a new, dependable car to replace his 1979 Chevy Cavalier - a big task, yes, but one Frank had been researching for months. The decision had been made and we just needed to buy the car. We bought a white Toyota RAV 4 the Monday after Thanksgiving and drove it home that very day.

The RAV 4 is a crossover vehicle. The hatchback is a departure from our usual trunk outfitted cars but Frank loved the overhead camera feature and the high ride and the generous head room. As an extra perk, we would have an extra vehicle for the kids' visit. Frank came in smiling from the the garage after having run some errands Tuesday, the day after we'd driven it home. He said, "You know, I always buy bottom of the line cars. But I really wanted all the safety features of the RAV 4 and so we had to buy the top of the line to get them. Boy! Is this car nice! I am going to enjoy it."

We began to get the Xmas decorations down from the attic so I could leisurely deck the halls. After train night in our garage on the Wednesday night following Thanksgiving, one of Frank's train buddies helped him get the crib down from the attic so Frank could assemble it and we'd be ahead of the game for guest arrivals in a week and a half. Frank had assembled the crib. I had made curtains for our master bedroom; one of the list items assigned to Frank was their installation. After dinner, before we settled down for a bit of TV watching and although he was a little tired, Frank decided to push ahead and mount those curtains that were temporarily thumbtacked up on the wall. He tripped and fell once over some wrinkles in the drop cloth he had spread out to assemble the crib. That should have been a clue to quit.

But he pressed on Wednesday night and shortly thereafter, about 8:30 pm on November 30th, I heard a loud thud and a yell and a few choice cuss words. Frank had slipped from the first step of a small step ladder he had set up in the window seat alcove. He fell a distance of maybe three feet or less, landing hard on his hip. He could not get up and screamed in pain when he tried to move. I called 911. The paramedics scooped him up into a hinged clamshell type stretcher, strapped him on, and carried him down our stairs. They loaded him and the stretcher as a unit onto a gurney waiting at the base of our stairs, rolled him out to an ambulance and transported him to the Walnut Creek Kaiser emergency room. As the doors of the ambulance were being closed, Frank yelled out to me, "Diane, throw out that list!"

Frank was placed in a bed at the ER and several hours later it was confirmed by X-ray that he had indeed fractured his hip. The knob part of the femur bone had cracked through at its smallest diameter. Repair would be ill-advised and instead the entire ball and socket joint would need to be replaced. Frank would require emergency hip replacement surgery. After this diagnosis of the damage we would need to wait until the next morning to speak to the orthopedic surgeon. I got home 3:00 am Thursday morning December 1st only to be back by 8:00 am to meet with the doctor. Scheduling could not promise that Frank would be accommodated for surgery on Thursday but were hopeful that he would not need to wait until Friday. We waited in limbo. Frank's surgery was started at 4:00 pm Thursday. Here he is being rolled in to the operating arena with a valiant attempt at two thumbs up.

Hip replacement like this is predicted to be a 3 hour surgery. True to form, Frank was in the recovery room shortly after 7:00 pm. I went in to see him and he was very groggy. He was looking at the channels on the ceiling where all the privacy curtains hang by chains. He wondered why there were tracks for a model train layout on the ceiling. Kaiser's goal was to have his hip replaced within 24 hours of having broken it and they succeeded. The next photo is proof that Frank is now the bionic man, or Bio-Dad as Robin dubbed him.

We were initially told that there could be one to two weeks in a rehabilitation facility before going home. However, Frank was doing well enough and his home situation was deemed sufficiently supportive that he did not qualify for a rehabilitation facility. He was pleased he would be home recuperating and not off somewhere else during the kids' visit. This also meant that Friday night I was scrabbling for the delivery of a hospital bed, a walker, and adaptive bathroom equipment. The living room furniture had already been reconfigured to squeeze in the Christmas tree. It was liked a timed game of Tetris to fit a hospital bed in the living room as well, made even more urgent by the deadline of Frank's arrival home. But it all worked out. Frank came home directly from the hospital on Saturday, December 3rd without a detour to rehab. Recovery will be long - probably about two to three months until the muscles cut in surgery are healed sufficiently that positional restrictions can be removed. Then there will be several months of physical therapy to regain range of motion, etc. 

Timing is everything. Having to go to a rehab facility could have been a downer because of the kids' upcoming visit. We dodged that bullet but still offered that they were free to cancel. They opted not to. I picked up Robin's family from the airport Wednesday morning December 7th while our friend John stayed with Frank. We were not inside the front door even five minutes when the physical therapist arrived for Frank. Dodging rolling suitcases and two children supercharged after spending 6+ hours on a plane created quite a cacophonous environment that the PT handled with great aplomb. During his visit, little Isaiah, 1½ years old, tried hard to fit into Grandpa's slippers and walker.

Dan and Carrie arrived the next day, Thursday evening. Since it was late, their kiddos were sleepy and could be transferred directly to prepared beds. "All was calm, all was bright," for them. The next PT visit was proposed to be when Dan and Carrie's family was leaving. We tweaked that appointment time so the chaos was not repeated.

The surprise total hip replacement was certainly a cloudy event but there were lots of silver linings.

• I abandoned "the list".
• We had been shy one bed to accommodate sleeping for everyone. The hospital bed cured that shortage. It was also paid for by insurance.
• Having the visiting families here was a help in many aspects. Jeremy installed a hand-held shower head and an elevated toilet seat. He got the oil changed in one of our cars. Robin changed and prepped all guest bedding. She was a great help in readying for Dan and Carrie's later arrival.
• Having the visiting families was also a distraction in that those kids lifted Frank's spirits. Frank said he could lie in the hospital bed with his eyes closed and just listen to and wallow in all the laughter and love being exchanged about him.
• Expectations for perfection and gourmet meals were dropped and the pressure to be like a Norman Rockwell painting was gone.
• Frank being unable to drive his new car is a bit of a bummer but on the bright side, had we not bought that RAV 4 when we did, I would have had no vehicle high enough or with sufficient leg room to transport Frank home with all his positional restrictions. The most difficult constraint to honor is that he is not permitted to bend at the hip joint an angle tighter than 90 degrees. Sitting in a too low chair or couch or toilet seat violates that rule. Getting in a car is an orchestrated procedure involving strict sequencing and pre-planned contortion of non-hip body parts. It is tantamount to loading a 6'4" plank into the passenger compartment of a car without bending it.
• My being forced to drive the new car because of the situation made me overcome my timidity with the new vehicle sooner, instead of procrastinating until later.
• Jeremy and Dan finished putting up those blessed curtains that caused it all.
• Frank is usually hard to buy for, but this year he got a lot of Christmas gifts from me - a walker tray, a shower chair, a raised commode, an extra length shoe horn, a grabber, a clothes hooker, and several refreezable, body hugging packages of frozen lima beans. These are gifts he will definitely use.

Today is Thursday, December 15. Dan's family returned to SoCal on Monday and Robin's family returned to Oklahoma on Tuesday. Hence I have some time to blog. The house is a lot quieter, a lot roomier, and once we recuperate from company and get a bit of rest, I admit it may seem a bit lonelier. But not just yet. With the influx of therapists and visiting friends and multiple phone calls, being dull is not a concern for now. All in all, things worked out as well as could be expected under the surprise circumstances. We did not have perfection but we had excellence. We will have fond memories of the cross-family cousin pairings are shown in the next two photos. Side by side Autumn and Vivian are 4 and 2½ years old. Nose to nose Isaiah and Lillian are 1½ and ½ years old.

We disbursed the vintage knitted stockings this year to both families. Each family will celebrate December 25th in their own homes this 2016. It was time. Frank and I will have a quiet, and hopefully calm, Christmas - the two of us. I collect sayings and thoughts that amuse me or cause me to ponder. I will share two of them here. Frank and I will "not cry that [the family celebration] is over; we will smile that it happened." Also, "Life is not about waiting for the storms to pass; it is about learning to dance in the rain."

After all, although this early Christmas visit did not transpire quite as planned, Grandkids Giggling on the couch under a Grinch quilt are never, ever a bad thing. To borrow (and edit) a line or two from Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas ...

[Frank's hip] HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming!  IT CAME!
Somehow or other, it came just the same.