Broken Arm!!!

Tomorrow my mother is coming home from a visit to my sister at the beach.  Faye (a cousin-in-law who's a candidate for sainthood) will be driving her back.  It seems Mother had a rather eventful visit.  Yesterday she sat in a wicker chair at a store, fell backwards and hit her head.  For once, her hard head came in handy.  She has no concussion. 

That should have been enough excitement for her, but no, not my mother.  She made it back to my sister's house and decided to go in the back door.  Sound reasonable to you?  No indeed.  The steps leading to the front door have a sturdy hand rail.  Mom knows this and was reminded of it several times this visit.  Tempting fate, or her hard head once again, she choose to use the back door.  You know, the one without a hand rail? 

Mom fell...again. 

Her head is fine.  Thank you for asking! 

Instead, she broke her arm.  Her right arm.  She's right handed. 

I strongly suspect that we'll be rather busy around here for a while.  Monday morning I have to call Mom's primary care doctor for an immediate referral to an orthopedic surgeon.  Currently she has a soft cast.  She needs a hard cast and possibly surgery (or so I'm told.) 

And then there's her daily care...She'll need help bathing, dressing, toileting and figuring out just how to do things with her left hand and how to do them safely.  As independent as Mom is, I need to quickly find as many ways for her to maintain her independence as possible.  I need to put my thinking cap on and really work at this one.  Somehow, I've got to come up with a strategy that will enable Mom to gracefully accept the help that she needs right now and to encourage her to remain as independent as she's able to be.  Any ideas?

I've already begun to prepare Boo.  We may need to stay with Mom for a while.  If she has to have surgery, I'll need to be at the hospital to thoroughly understand her care afterwards.  As a matter of fact, I need to go with her to her appointments to ask questions and be sure that I know what to do.  Boo understands that he may well have to have a "sitter"/helper when I'm away with Mom.  At least, he understands right now.  My biggest concern is being able to adequately care for both Mom and Boo, particularly at night when Boo is easily confused. 

We'll see how this goes.  Your prayers would certainly be appreciated whenever we come to your mind.  I guess this also means that blogging every day in May just won't happen this year.