It has been a week since my mom fell and broke her humerus. I took her to Mercy ER and I found the entire visit disappointing at the time. They basically got her in and out in record time. They took an X-ray and said your arm is broke right below the shoulder, it will heal without surgery, here is some pain medicine and see this orthopedic person in a week. Oh I forgot about the “cheap piece of shit” sling they gave her to use as well.

So my mom hasn’t complained too much this past week but I did find it odd how bad her arm hurt and the only way it didn’t was if she had the back part of the sling near the elbow pulled up really high. It would have to be readjusted at least once a day until I finally invested in safety pins and pined that sucker. The doctor’s office seemed appalled by this. (morons). She kept saying she could feel her bone shifting around but I just chalked that up to her being a whack job. Today they took different X-rays as the hospital only got a front view due to the amount of extreme pain my mom was in. It still hurt like hell but they got back views as well. Imagine my surprise when the first orthopedic doctor walks in and basically says you practically crushed your shoulder, tore up your rotator cuff, and you have more fractures lower in the shaft of your humerus. Then said surgery is the best option to fix this. It may heal on its own but its slow and painful and the ball at the top of your humerus can die due to poor blood supply. His next words, I don’t do this surgery, one of my partners does. I am more of a spine guy. So my mom says can I see him today, preferably like right now. So he leaves and the next guy walks in. Both of these dudes were wonderful. He said that they like to wait until the swelling goes down before they do surgery. When I told him it was a week ago he seemed shocked. I said the ER told us to follow-up in a week so that is what we did. He then said great we can do it towards the end of this week. He sent us to talk to the surgery scheduler after he answered our questions.

I think God blocked the ER from knowing the truth last week so they couldn’t tell my mom. If she knew last week what a mess her arm was in and how it would be closer to two weeks before anyone could do anything about it she might have been a bigger mess. Also at least after talking to the doctor she knew she was no longer crazy about feeling her arm bone shifting around. I recind the whack job thought. She is going to have a reverse total shoulder replacement and he said the pain from the surgery will be much less than what she is currently experiencing. So that was good news. Hopefully by the end of the week the new bionic shoulder is in place and my mom is back to being her old self.

Mole Moral ~ If you are going to break something, you might as well break it into fifteen pieces and do a number on it. I’d give this one the number TEN!