Update 1/2/09
My mother in law is getting ready to finally leave hospital after over four months in the surgical wards of two teaching hospitals in the UK. She is going to be moving permanently into a nursing home on February third and the nursing home is in her own town and as it is quite an exclusive area I expect that the actual home will be quite pleasant. this way her friends who live locally can visit and she can see her grandchildren more easily…or the other way around. She must be so pleased to be leaving hospital as such…especially when the first one kept her in bed for over two months
15/11/08
As I am writing this post my mother in law Sue in England is undergoing surgery to amputate her leg. You may remember she fell and broke her hip on the eve of our Twenty Fifth Wedding Anniversary. She had a few weeks of quite good recovery and then as she lives by herself it was arranged that she would go to a convalescent hospital for six weeks or so until she was able to go home.
We have been keeping in touch by email… my sister in law’s husband has a computer in his office at work. About a week or so ago I realised that although we had one letter from Sue we had not had any emails for over a month. I sent one really to find out when Sue was going home. My brother in law said that she is a bit confused and would not do her exercises as she kept saying she could not feel her leg and that would affect when she could go home. She had previously had some short term memory issues and mental confusion since the recent surgery.
I was concerned and asked if the part of the brain which controls short term memory also controls motivation etc…thought it was a reasonable question. After a few emails and a visit by one of her grandsons who is a physiotherapist the convalescent hospital decided to get her whole leg X rayed in the teaching hospital where she had the hip repair. They discovered a problem with her knee which had been replaced some twenty years ago. They arranged for surgery and found that she has a “cocktail of bugs” in the artificial knee joint….they washed it out after removing large quantities of bug laden fluid.
Meantime I received an email from my brother in law saying the consultant was extremely concerned and that she was on an intravenous drip for three days to try to target the bugs. My husband was than asked to be available for a phone call from his sister. We knew it to be bad news as his sister rarely phones Australia and in fact had a phone number from when we lived in our last home which was over seven years ago!
We found out the problem was that somehow or other these bugs had attached themselves to the metal of the old knee replacement and the usual treatment is to replace the knee with another artificial joint. Not so simple though as now the replacements are made from plastic and are much smaller and they will not fill the huge area of the last replacement. The other option of replacing the knee and the bone with a large piece of metal is also out as it is the same thing ….those damn bugs like metal. So…. they gave her three days for the intravenous drugs to work….meanwhile they were draining off litres of foul liquid from her leg.
Yesterday we found out that they will have to remove the leg and hopefully get all the bugs before they spread up to her recently operated hip. This does however mean that as she is 87 she will not be able to walk again and that will probably mean that she will not go back home again.
How could this happen? Not just the question of the bugs…when and how did they get in but why was she not informed ten years ago about the need for her knee replacement to be upgraded ..while it was still possible. Also, how is it that in the convalescent hospital nobody noticed or believed her when she said she could not feel her leg? Especially after an operation such as she had received? I am so angry and was absolutely beside myself for a while thinking such things as if she is confused because of the infection what happens when that infection is gone and she is back to herself but realizes…hey no leg?
The thing is she has always been such an independent and yes, stubborn woman. But she is also an incredibly brave and gutsy woman who although she had a sheltered childhood in boarding school went nursing and then enlisted in the Royal Women’s Army Nursing Corp during World War Two. She was based in Cairo and saw all sorts of horrors the injured soldiers endured there. Her first husband was killed just after the war in a freak Air Force accident and she eventually married the brother of her school friend and brought up two children …sending them to boarding school as well, although she hated to do that to my husband who repeated ran away from his first schools. By the time he followed in his father’s shoes to Harrow he had given in. My point is that it takes a really strong woman to do that ….even though she did not want to and I am hoping her strength and determination will stand her in good stead now. One of my fears however is that the type of operation will remind her of the war and the terrors she saw and nursed there. Maybe I am being silly but it is worrying me.
The consultant has phoned my sister in law at home this morning…yes amazing and suspicious in my mind...and informed them that he would begin the operation and so she should be most of the way through it now. They had to take extraordinary precautions so that the bugs would not infect anyone else so they could only do this when they could isolate the operating theatre at the weekend. My sister in law said that one good thing that could come of it is that apparently she has had a lot of pain in that knee and that would be gone when she recovers …but it would have been gone with a new knee too wouldn’t it? I guess grasping at straws is some comfort….my husband and his sister for some strange genetic reason are prone to optimism…they always have to see the good side or the ray of light. You know… when you are raging inwardly about the injustice of the universe. My immediate response inwardly to that was not if she gets phantom pains it isn’t!!
I guess that shows my nature, I am a realist and find no comfort in platitudes…my comfort comes from raging at the world that would allow this to happen to a war veteran and mother and grandmother…someone who has lived a very good life luckily. She has travelled ..that brings me comfort …that she has not wasted her life and her previous good health. What helps me a lot is to warn others about the perils of surgery and how one has to be informed about the future complications of operations. I have had some hugely botched surgeries which have really impacted my physical enjoyment of life and I always feel that if any good is to come from these things it is to get the message out to others. If like me you have been told you need knee replacements…then like me do whatever you can to put off that day…lose weight avoid stairs and most of all research research research.
I have not really gone into the issue of what it is like for people who have loved ones in other countries… those like my parents and now my husband …..who were so far away and felt so powerless when their loved ones died or were very ill. Australia is a country founded on migration and my husband’s workplace has been brilliant. He is taking a week’s compassionate leave and a week’s unpaid leave and flying out at the end of the week to be with his family. I will keep you informed of Sue’s progress. I have password protected this post as she has let very few people know about her ordeal…in that she is a lot like me.
Update 1.35pm Sunday
Sue survived the surgery and asked for a ham sandwich. My SIL said she actually seemed less confused for the first time in a long time. David is booking his ticket at this moment. Thank you so much for your words and your thoughts and for your prayers…it has been a great comfort.
