recovery from hip fracture

[Parietal]

my very frail aunt fractured her hip a few days ago. she has had an operation and is recovering in hospital. Even before this she had trouble walking and was often confused (memory clinic have seen her but no diagnosis).

can anyone tell me

• how long is she likely to be in hospital?
• what support will she need when she gets out?

Her current house, which she longs to go back to, has 5 flights of stairs from the front door to her bedroom and no lift. So I don't think that will work. what does she need?

thanks for your help

Your poor aunt. The hosp will get her as mobile as they can before she is discharged and they will equip her with walking frames etc. they will involve social worker/ ot to ensure she can scope. She might be transferred to a respite home to recover. 5 flights sound impossible- could she have a ground floor room? Age uk etc can help and advise. Good luck

It all went pear shaped for my mum.

Hospital had decided she would go to rehab, then changed their minds with two days notice, just before Christmas. However they did not seem to have taken on board the fact that they had decided to re-break her wrist the next day as it was not setting properly or to read their own notes which confirmed she was very confused.

There is no evidence either that they spoke to SS or her GP. Certainly weeks later neither was aware she had been in hospital or discharged. SS would have discovered that she was completely on her own in the block (mainly second homes), that her heating and oven did not work and no shops within walking distance.

I would

1. Speak to SS and voice your concerns. Ask for a home assessment. Say it is very important that she is transferred to rehab to give you all a bit of breathing space. At minimum it sounds like the home assessment needs to consider whether adaptations are possible.

1. Speak also to the GP saying the same thing and ask him to weigh in. He needs to alter them to the previous memory referral.

(3. You could see if you could get a new referral. If she is shaken up and if she has recently had an operation her mental capacity may have dropped, some of it may never return. If she has a new test someone should go with her. My mother was very convincing in conversation. Names of grandchildren ...no problem, except she got them wrong. Me gently correcting her caused her to drop her facade and we got a diagnosis much closer to reality.)

1. If there is rainy day money consider a plan B in the form of private respite care. We found a mega expensive nursing home which would take her on Christmas eve. Money well spent. They spotted the pins in her hip, not mentioned in the discharge, so liaised with the GP and took them out. Did not sport the stitches that needed removing because they were hidden under a bandage. Were great at liaising with the hospital, who remained unable to send anything other than to her empty home, and would have provided escorts for hospital appointments had I been unable to attend. Plus good food and company helped build her up. For me the important thing was having her safe, gaining a bit of breathing space, and gaining advice from people who knew the system. They suggested the sorts of sheltered housing that they thought would suit, and steered me away from the shiny new McCarthy and Stone development that my mother liked but which in retrospect would have been absolutely unsuitable. It also meant that my mother saw the respite care and the initial months in the sheltered housing as part of the process of her recovery and so we never had to get her to decide to move. She will still say she would like to move back home (the flat is rented out), but only "when she gets better".

1. You need to work out what the process of transferring from hospital to community physio is. I managed to get the first few post discharge appointments at the hospital itself. Good as the community physio team took a while to gear up. I found it useful to be there. They explained that some sort of spring had been inserted and it was crucial that she built up muscles to balance the tension on the spring. And that the most important thing was to walk, and ideally to climb stairs. (My mother never got back into the latter.) My mothers memory was pretty awful so she would not have remembered any of the advice, and certainly could not remember to do the exercises. However by constant repetition she did grasp that the more she walked the less it would hurt. When she moved to sheltered I hired a carer for two hours a day, to take her for walks. First to sort out her orientation so she could recognise where she lived and did not get lost, and second to get her walking.

The local paper reported that an elderly lady had died at home after being discharged the same Christmas. I am not surprised. Some parts of the system are great, but there are huge gaps. I feel a lot of my role as Attorney is to ensure that my mother gets the different elements of support that she needs. (Last week I was only too aware of the irony of phoning the memory clinic for the third time to remind them that her six months assessment was due.) If some needs to be bought in, so be it. Inter alia I would have bought her some private physio sessions if the hospital had not agreed to fill the gap.

Gosh. Recovery from anything is so variable in elderly people.

They say. Hip fracture knocks you down one level of ability at best, so independent at home will need help with shopping etc and only just managing at home likely will need residential care.

Personal experience is more like the poster above (sorryneedmore sleep :( )

Dh grandma went from warden controlled minimally needing help with transport and shopping at Xmas , falling upstairs after a lovely night at the theatre 28/12 to being dead at Easter. She was over 90 and a we feel she decided enough was enough :( she just quietly deteriorated.

Mum probably has broken her hip ( no one really knows, much confusion re X-rays reported as " very suspicious" and she became acutely anaemic with a huge bruising to her leg, her other medical problems went off dramatically too). Anyway we've not pursued the hip as any op would kill her. She's lots worse functionally than she was :(

Good luck.