"there's nothing we can do"

We took my mom to see a back doctor this week to get a more expert opinion on her back pain. He looked at her x-rays and couldn't find any new fractures, thankfully (she had two hairline fractures back in 2004), and basically told us, that as far as she is concerned, with her age, and arthritis and osteopenia (not quite osteoporosis), there was really nothing else we could do that we weren't doing already —  basically pain management — and we could add some heat, a back brace, and hitting the pool (in a gentle way).

It was depressing to hear, yet at the same time liberating. It's always hard to hear that you've hit the wall, and with my mom, it seems that this is a message I am going to have to get used to hearing. But on the up side, it also means that we are doing everything right, so there's no reason to continue to poke and prod - she's an old lady (sorry, mom) and she's going to hurt, and now we know what to do when she does.

My mom is actually finally starting to do a bit better with her back, which is a real relief for all. I've managed to get her out every day this week, which may not sound like a big deal, but if you were around here at the end of May, it was something just to get her from her bed to the bathroom. We have been to the movies, a museum and out to lunch, etc. Summer is starting to finally feel like summer.

Painkillers are still a big part of the program, and they come with a whole other set of issues - appetite suppression, plumbing clogger. But they have definitely helped her get over the worse of her pain, and for that I am grateful. The pain was quite extreme in the beginning when this all started, Memorial Day weekend — geez, has it been a month already? When you're plus 70 years, the spectre of addiction is just that, a spectre. The old lady hurts, so bring on the pills, now. And who knows, maybe tomorrow everybody will hit the pool.

Related articles

• Osteopenia doesn't mean osteoporosis - so should you treat it? (thehandiestone.typepad.com)

baby-steppin ...

My mom's doctor insisted last week that I get her back x-rayed again. She didn't even look at the first set of x-rays we did at the urgent care, "I don't know how to read those." So we did, and we haven't heard from her since. I brought the first set of x-rays with us to the diagnostic center the doc favors and asked if they could compare both sets of x-rays. No problem. So now the doc will have to at least read a radiologists's report about the first set as well. I don't think that we're going to hear that anything major has happened to her back as she has osteoporosis which I suspect is at the root of all of this pain, but I'm not sure and I want to know. Wouldn't you?

I guess my greatest fear, besides my mom having some sort of fracture, is that her doctor doesn't really want to treat her, to deal with her, but prefers to pass her off to some other specialist. Medicine today is all about specialists. She has hinted as much, mentioning that maybe she should see a back specialist. Maybe she should. But will a back doctor do anything more than what we are already doing with her regular doc — managing her back pain until she heals? She is getting a little better, gradually, each day. She feels better by the end of the day, after she has been moving around and has had pain medication. I'm no doctor and I don't want to overlook anything that might help speed her recovery, but I also don't want to add to her stress level, and a new, unfamiliar doctor would do that. Sigh.

I'm hoping that she can at least get more mobile again before I have to go back to dealing with her dementia/long term issues. Her world is already shrinking incrementally. It's strange how the body responds to trauma. When her back issues first happened I felt like she vaguer than usual, but now that we've been dealing with her back hurting for almost two weeks the memory issues seem to have taken a back seat. It's as if the body can only deal with one crisis at a time. I'm pretty sure that lying in bed or sitting all day is not the way to speed recovery, but I don't want to push her too hard, either. One day at a time ...

I feel like Bill Murray in What About Bob? "Baby steps onto the elevator, baby steps walking down the hall." I'm baby-steppin ...

the madness continues

Another wasted day waiting for a doctor to never call me back.

Mixed communications — I'm giving them a tiny benefit of the doubt — we are going to try to get things right tomorrow — get my mom's back x-rayed and hopefully, finally get some decent pain management going.

I hate, hate, hate this. I can't express how much I hate feeling helpless against the medical bureaucracy and seeing my mom in pain. Hate.