My 89-year-old mother badly ripped open her shin about ten days ago. Sometime around the beginning of July the injury took place. Mom has dementia and can't clearly recall how it happened. My brothers and I think that she stepped into a brush pile full of old branches that is on her acreage. Initially Mom did not tell anyone about the injury. She just flipped down a big flap of skin that had been ripped off of her shin. So the wound did not initially get any medical attention.
My brother eventually found about the wound and went to check it out. I was in Nordegg at the time and unable to help out. The doctor dressed the wound and asked that we return every day to have the dressing changed.
I returned to the city on July 7th and Mom's home care worker Kim and I took her in to the doctor to get the wound checked. It had begun to heal but was showing signs of serious infection. They prescribed some antibiotics to combat the infection that was beginning to set in. On Saturday the 8th I took Mom back to the doctor to have the dressing changed. He was not satisfied with the way that the antibiotics were working and advised that we should go to the hospital.
So, I took Mom to Emergency and we waited for about 5 hours before she was finally seen. They started a routine of Intravenous Antibiotics and set us up for a bunch of return visits to a daily IV clinic.
This all took place on the day that I was supposed to get together with my friends Chris and Connie, for another chapter of the Beer Parlor project. Chris and Connie had driven up to Edmonton and checked into a hotel with the expectation of us getting together for the weekend. Of course I had to bail out and we were not able to do anything.
On Sunday July 9th my brother was able to step in and he took Mom to the doctor and the IV clinic. I was able to briefly get together with Chris and Connie. We took advantage of a beautiful afternoon and took a drive out to several small towns in the Edmonton area. We scouted four or five different small town hotel taverns, with the expectation of returning to some of them at a later date. The Beer Parlor Project documents small town hotel taverns and the people that frequent them. One of the places that we stopped had these urinals in the men's room, made from old beer kegs.
After that scouting trip the next week was filled with taking care of Mom. I took her to the IV clinic on Monday and again on Tuesday. There she was given antibiotics by IV, and had the dressings on her wound changed. I also had a consultation with a Nurse Practitioner who assessed the progress and made recommendations for the days to come.
I was scheduled to head out to Nordegg for a few days with my brother-in-law Shawn, and I was able to do that on July 12th. My two brothers and Mom's home care worker stepped in and took Mom to her IV appointments and looked after dressing the wound. On July 17th Shawn and I returned to the city, and then I stepped back into the role of primary care giver. My middle brother Greg was away to a conference in Montana for a couple of weeks, and my youngest brother Wes lives in Calgary, and can only help out on weekends.
I stopped in briefly on the 17th to check on Mom before heading home to celebrate Helena's 15th birthday. Then on the 18th I spent the entire day with Mom again. We went to an ultrasound clinic to check the circulation in her leg. The doctors are thinking they may want to prescribe a compression stocking to speed the healing, but is has to be the right size and degree of compression. We also picked up a bunch of first aid supplies to properly deal with the wound. Many of the medical supply places were out of stock of the items we needed and a good part of the day was spent driving around and trying to find them all. Eventually we were able to do that, and it appears that things are improving a little. On Friday Mom can finally get in to see her family doctor and a decision will then be made about the compression stocking, and any needed treatments moving forward.
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