Last Journey
April 29th, 2007
I knew exactly what I was going to from the scant details we were sent by control. A 95 year old lady who has fallen over and sustained injuries to her arm and leg. The area of the address suggested that she had lived in the same house since her wedding day and wouldn’t want to be going anywhere any time soon.
My hunch was right. Walking through the front door was like walking into a time warp; a journey back in time several decades before I was born. Perched uncomfortably on the arm of the sofa in front of the door was the elderly patient I had been called for. 95 year old women do not sit on the arms of sofas. Her son who was in his 70s had picked her up off the floor and carried her to the sofa - she had tripped over her walking stick.
She was told me her wrist hurt, but I had already spotted something which was of far more concern to me. Despite her awkward position on the sofa arm, one of her knees was clearly 2 or 3 inches further back than the other one and her leg was bent outwards in an unusual manner. She told me of her ‘bad knee’ that keeps letting her down, but I as I asked my crewmate to fetch the Entonox for me, I knew it wasn’t her knee this time.
As we lifted her down the steps to her front door, I knew the likelihood of her ever returning to her house was very slim. Even if she does survive the next 8 weeks that she now requires in hospital, she won’t be going back home but most likely to waste away in a don’t care home (as Tom Reynolds may have said).
Entry Filed under: Work
8 Comments
1. Mart | April 29th, 2007 at 9:22 pm
#NOFs always tug at my heart strings. My gran was 93 when she died 5 years ago, and she was of good health and very independant until 6 months before her death she fell and did her NOF
2. Kum | April 29th, 2007 at 9:58 pm
I think it is such a shame a #Nof still means a allmost certain death for the elderly surely we can do better for our old folks? I knoe accidents happen but the impaitent care I wouldnt want for my dog.
3. Mr Mans Wife | April 29th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
What does #NOF stand for?
4. Adam | April 30th, 2007 at 12:19 am
#NOF is short for a fractured neck of femur. It’s a break in the top of the leg where it meets the hip in simple terms.
5. Adam | April 30th, 2007 at 12:24 am
Further to my previous comment, they are generally easy to recognise as the leg with the fracture will be shorter and the foot will be rotated outwards. Which makes the job I went to last week all that much harder to understand. It was a 100y/o male who had fallen a two days before we’d been called and it was so obviously a #nof yet the nursing home hadn’t called a doctor or us (ambulance).
6. caramaena | April 30th, 2007 at 4:42 am
It’s so sad that it has to end that way. I guess there’s no way she can be cared for in her home then?
7. Mart | April 30th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
To be honest it is the secondary conditions that normally prove to be the downfall. Reduced mobility leading to pneumonia, that sort of thing. Generally if the patient is fit enough for the surgery it will be 6 weeks or more in hospital recovering and having some physio and then dependant on situation at home and what have you will determine where and how it is possible to provide ‘care’ If as described she’d lived in the house so long and it was like walking through a time warp then it is unlikely that it would have been possible to provide care for an imobile elderly person in that location.
8. uphilldowndale | May 1st, 2007 at 12:18 pm
I was relieved when I read the other day in the obituary column that a little old lady (whom I had last seen being wheeled into the back of an ambulance;) had ‘passed away peacefully at The Laurels nursing home’ Contrary to a lot of what we read about nursing homes, this home cared that she needed to go to hospital, they also cared enough to know the patient didn’t want to leave her familiar surroundings,
So I was pleased she ‘recovered’ enough to get out of hospital and get back to her own bed and her own room, to die; which was obviously where she wanted to be