Day Two

Day 2 - Friday, December 5th

After arriving in his room, we were told he would have to have yet more x-rays because his left ankle was turning blue and he was hurting below the knee. He was taken for those tests and came back to his room around 5:00 am. Most of the morning he rested but was not able to eat or drink in case they were able to do the surgery. He had a few visitors that morning but around 11 :00 am he wanted to reposition himself and the Nurse's assistant was trying to help him and he dislocated his left (broken hip). From 11-3:00 we waited on the doctor to come in to help re-align that hip. We were told that he would be in around 12:00 to put the hip back in place. Finally the doctor came in a stated that there was no way that his hip could be out of place but Don insisted that something was definately wrong. They agreed to take an x-ray and about 4:00 told Don that he was correct, that his hip was out of socket (not in the usual sense), but that with the hip being broken in that area the hip was higher causing his pain. The doctor stated that he would have to put Don's left leg in traction to "realign" his hip. About 5:00 the procedure was complete, and you could tell immediately the relief in his hip by the look on his face. They were then able to put his bed at a 30 degree angle allowing him to sit up a little. Then we were told that he was able to eat and drink again because the traction could possibly help the hip to heal which would post-pone the surgery. He finally ate some puddind around 7:00 this being the first thing he had eaten since lunch on Thursday. He has a few more visitors but could not stay awake the entire time, he was finally able to get enough relief from pain to sleep but only for about 10-15 minutes at a time.