Hip Pain (Tue, 5 Apr, 2011)

Yesterday when Lonna the Hospice Aide came, she was under instructions to ask mom about her hip and then call Karen, the RN who is taking Denise's patients while Denise is out this week. Mom told Lonna that her hip was so painful last night that she couldn't sleep. Eventually Karen asked to talk to mom, and after some discussion, Karen decided to meet us today at mom's regular Tuesday Wound Clinic appointment.

Karen examined mom's hip and was concerned enough that she asked Steve, the Hospice Nurse practitioner, to come over to give his opinion. Karen thought that mom might have fractured her hip somehow, even though mom has no recollection of having bumped it. Karen said that sometimes elderly people with osteoporosis can fracture a bone just by walking.

So before Steve arrived, we went in for mom's wound treatment. Good news...the wound continues to get better every visit. Dr. B still wants to see mom again next Tuesday, but she thinks we are in the home stretch.

Soon Steve arrived and Dr. B invited him into the exam room. As soon as Dr. B finished, Steve closed the exam room door and checked out mom's hip. He rotated mom's legs in and out and noted her grimaces of pain. He doesn't think it is fractured. He wants to try a Lidocaine patch, and he is going to FedEx them to us at RP so they should be here tomorrow. Apparently you apply the patch right over the painful area and it is supposed to help. If it doesn't help, then next Tuesday Steve will meet us at Dr. B's clinic and give mom a Cortisone injection in her hip.

The last thing Steve said to her was, "If you fall, it is almost certain that you will break something--your wrist, your shoulder, your hip, your leg--and you will end up in the hospital and then in a nursing home." Mom replied, "You are just full of doom and gloom, aren't you!" Steve told her he is just being realistic and she needs to be extremely careful. I was actually glad that he said that, because it reinforces the need to use the walker, and it also puts her on notice that if she does break something she will not be staying here at her cabin. I suspect that she is more willing to hear that from a male nurse than from me.

Mom said on the way home that she has a feeling that her hip pain might be bursitis, which she has had many times in the past, and she said that she has had cortisone injections before. She said that she is "overjoyed" at the idea of getting some relief from the hip pain.
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