Having a bit of a lean time of it at the moment. I was at work last Monday morning, and about 09:30 my mobile rang. Saw who it was and said, “Hello, Mummy”. A man’s voice answered: “It’s Chris, your neighbour. Your Mum’s had a fall”.

When I got home some 20 minutes later I found Mummy lying on her bedroom floor with the cleaning lady (who fortunately comes on Mondays) and Chris. Mummy was in too much pain to move. Chris had called the ambulance who deduced it wasn’t fatal and gave a 90-minute ETA. They came in about 70 minutes, concluded there was something badly wrong with her hip and prepared her to be stretchered to St.Richard’s Hospital. I asked if I should prepare an overnight bag. “An excellent idea”.

At St.Richard’s the doctors found that she’d broken her hip. The seriousness of this (Mummy is 91) can be gauged by the fact that they operated on her on Tuesday morning.
When I came in to see her after the operation they told me they’d decided to give her a Hip Hemi-Arthroplasty.

That was six days ago. Mummy is making as good progress as one can expect given her age. Today she zimmered up and down the ward five times and even negotiated the Physiotherapy Step Boss. She got lucky with the ward: there are only seven other patients, all solidly middle-class octogenarian females speaking with Received Pronunciation, so she’s among her own kind. After a shaky culinary start she’s managed to get a couple of piping hot meals. And I’ve been to see her for three hours every day, and my brother & sister have come in many times as well, which gives her as much of an emotional and psychological boost as possible.

I asked the Senior Physiotherapist who was in attendance today what Mummy’s prognosis was, and how soon she might be able to come back home. She said she might well be discharged fit at the weekend.

I always said that for me, the worst-case scenario for Mummy’s twilight years would be for her to be physically incapable of doing what she wanted, but fully aware of it and with a strong enough will to demand that I and the rest of the family do everything that she wants, necessary or not, to her exactingly high standards. Well, here we are.