Loss of mobility’s pretty much the beginning of the end for a lot of people. Both my father and grandfather could trace their decline to that. My sympathy to the family.
In Malaysia if a person dies on their birthday their personal physician has to deliver a litter of baby pigs as a penance for letting it happen.
This isn’t as much a given as it used to be. SO’s grandmother broke her hip in 1969 and that was the slide to death. My mom broke her hip around 2006. The put a pin in it and had her up and walking in a couple of days. 8 weeks of rehab at a facility and she was good to go. She lived another 5 or 6 years until she was 93 RIP.
Thus ends the last decent Republican – he passed with a clear conscience and may he rest in peace.
Oh, totally. Broken hip doesn’t mean the end of mobility anymore! My grandfather slipped when he was clearing his driveway, ended up jabbing himself in the inner thigh/femoral area with the handle to the old, heavy, chains-on-the-wheels snowblower he had. Didn’t break the skin or anything, but it laid him up for a few weeks, and after that, he never regained the mobility he’d had. Slow decline from there. (Granted, he was 92 when it happened, and died 2 years later, but before that, he’d do things like climb up on the roof to do repairs… much to my mother’s chagrin and worry).
In my dad’s case, it was a hospital stay and not doing the PT in rehab that did him in. The more they couldn’t get around, the more they didn’t bother trying… and that’ll do you in, both from muscle atrophy and just the total disengagement on a mental level.
But good on your grandmother for doing the rehab! Cannot stress enough just how important that is.