It was only a mastectomy.
When my mother was around 82, she fell and broke her leg. This was not the typical elderly hip fracture. You know the type I’m talking about. Instead of falling and then breaking a bone, the bone snaps due to osteoporosis and then you fall. Not in her case. She had just quit working after 64 years on telephone switchboards (as the result of the store she was working in closing down) was just as active as she had ever been and definitely did not have osteoporosis. Anyway, she walked out on the back porch, turned around and caught her foot on a board, leaving her nowhere to go but down. When she hit, I heard the bone crack.
In spite of my comments to the contrary, she insisted that she hadn’t broken anything and picked herself up off the floor with the intention of going to the store. She made it about twenty feet before the thigh muscles tightened up and she was forced to sit down. Over her continuous objections that nothing was broken, it was paramedic and ambulance time.
At the hospital, they confirmed what I already knew. She had a broken leg. Fortunately it was far enough down that a hip replacement wasn’t necessary. Her comment to the orthopedic surgeon? “Hurry up and fix it so I can get back to the house.”
It wound up being sixteen days before she saw the house again, but her attitude darn sure didn’t change. Repair of the leg was a piece of cake, but while in the hospital, a lump was discovered in her right breast. Come to find out, she had known it was there and was planning on seeing the doctor. Eventually.
A biopsy confirmed breast cancer and a mammogram implied that it was significantly larger than it turned out to be. The next day, after a modified radical mastectomy, she was in her room when a visitor arrived. It so happened that the visitor was a volunteer from the Reach For Recovery organization and she was carrying her little brown bag with a selection of items in it. Never did know what was actually in it, thanks to my mother’s attitude.
The visitor starts into her typical spiel, not realizing that my mother was anything but typical. I wasn’t there, but according to my mother, it went something like this:
“Good mornin’ honey. I know you’re in terrible pain and you’re worried about how long it’s going to take to recover and regain the use of your arm. Well, darlin’, if you work real hard and follow your therapist’s instructions, it won’t be more than a few months and you’ll be able to get your arm level with your shoulder. And then....”
Aside from that being the absolutely wrong way to talk to my mother, what the visitor didn’t know was that my mother had a high pain threshold, an even higher pain tolerance and was mule-head stubborn to boot. Before the little gal could complete her spiel, my mother looked at her, raised her arm (on the mastectomy side) straight over her head til it was pointed at the ceiling, rotated the arm 360 degrees at the shoulder, put her arm down and said “You mean like this?”
The visitor took one look at her, picked up her little brown bag, turned around and walked out the door without saying another word.
Not only did the broken leg heal without a problem, the cancer never returned and my mother lived another fifteen years, dying at the relatively advanced age of 97.
In spite of my comments to the contrary, she insisted that she hadn’t broken anything and picked herself up off the floor with the intention of going to the store. She made it about twenty feet before the thigh muscles tightened up and she was forced to sit down. Over her continuous objections that nothing was broken, it was paramedic and ambulance time.
At the hospital, they confirmed what I already knew. She had a broken leg. Fortunately it was far enough down that a hip replacement wasn’t necessary. Her comment to the orthopedic surgeon? “Hurry up and fix it so I can get back to the house.”
It wound up being sixteen days before she saw the house again, but her attitude darn sure didn’t change. Repair of the leg was a piece of cake, but while in the hospital, a lump was discovered in her right breast. Come to find out, she had known it was there and was planning on seeing the doctor. Eventually.
A biopsy confirmed breast cancer and a mammogram implied that it was significantly larger than it turned out to be. The next day, after a modified radical mastectomy, she was in her room when a visitor arrived. It so happened that the visitor was a volunteer from the Reach For Recovery organization and she was carrying her little brown bag with a selection of items in it. Never did know what was actually in it, thanks to my mother’s attitude.
The visitor starts into her typical spiel, not realizing that my mother was anything but typical. I wasn’t there, but according to my mother, it went something like this:
“Good mornin’ honey. I know you’re in terrible pain and you’re worried about how long it’s going to take to recover and regain the use of your arm. Well, darlin’, if you work real hard and follow your therapist’s instructions, it won’t be more than a few months and you’ll be able to get your arm level with your shoulder. And then....”
Aside from that being the absolutely wrong way to talk to my mother, what the visitor didn’t know was that my mother had a high pain threshold, an even higher pain tolerance and was mule-head stubborn to boot. Before the little gal could complete her spiel, my mother looked at her, raised her arm (on the mastectomy side) straight over her head til it was pointed at the ceiling, rotated the arm 360 degrees at the shoulder, put her arm down and said “You mean like this?”
The visitor took one look at her, picked up her little brown bag, turned around and walked out the door without saying another word.
Not only did the broken leg heal without a problem, the cancer never returned and my mother lived another fifteen years, dying at the relatively advanced age of 97.
posted by Relative | 7:52 PM
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