Janie622
11-19-2005, 12:30 PM
Hi!
I sure am glad I found someone to talk with. I'm writing about my mom. She is 70 years old, not in great health, and is need of a hip replacement according to the doc. The problem? My dad has Alzheimer's and he will freak if she is not there for starters.
Her pain began in April 2005, so it hasn't gone on that long, but it is immobilizing her. She can hardly do anything. I do all of her errands, etc., and I really can't afford to take 6 weeks off work right now to care for her and my dad together. She had a cortisone injection, but it only last 2 weeks.
I've been reading about prolotherapy, is anyone familiar with that? I'm just trying to find some alternative to hip replacement surgery to relieve her pain. Can anyone help me or refer me to someone who can? We live in Knoxville, TN.
Thanks so much for any help you can provide.
Janie :angel:
I sure am glad I found someone to talk with. I'm writing about my mom. She is 70 years old, not in great health, and is need of a hip replacement according to the doc. The problem? My dad has Alzheimer's and he will freak if she is not there for starters.
Her pain began in April 2005, so it hasn't gone on that long, but it is immobilizing her. She can hardly do anything. I do all of her errands, etc., and I really can't afford to take 6 weeks off work right now to care for her and my dad together. She had a cortisone injection, but it only last 2 weeks.
I've been reading about prolotherapy, is anyone familiar with that? I'm just trying to find some alternative to hip replacement surgery to relieve her pain. Can anyone help me or refer me to someone who can? We live in Knoxville, TN.
Thanks so much for any help you can provide.
Janie :angel:
Sponsor
legtoolong
11-20-2005, 05:44 PM
Hi,
I don't know about alterntive therapies, but I don't think you would have to take a full 6 weeks off. Of course there are no guarantees how anyone will recover. I'm 62 and had my second replacement almost a year ago now. At about 2 weeks I was back to taking care of myself and starting to do things around the house like folding laundry. At 3 weeks I was cooking some simple meals and anything else that didn't require leaning down to the floor.
I hope someone else can help you find the answers you seek.
Leg
I don't know about alterntive therapies, but I don't think you would have to take a full 6 weeks off. Of course there are no guarantees how anyone will recover. I'm 62 and had my second replacement almost a year ago now. At about 2 weeks I was back to taking care of myself and starting to do things around the house like folding laundry. At 3 weeks I was cooking some simple meals and anything else that didn't require leaning down to the floor.
I hope someone else can help you find the answers you seek.
Leg
Tobias
11-20-2005, 06:19 PM
Probably you will discover that prolotherapy (aka "sclerotherapy") is not the answer to your mother's hip problems. However if you want to read about it, you can here:
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/prolo.html
Your mother's doc is probably correct - that she needs THR. This procedure is highly likely to greatly improve your mother's pain and mobility problems. It's a miracle surgery actually, in these terms. It sounds as if she is probably already having a lot of trouble in her daily activities and with arthritis, they don't get better, they get worse - much much worse. I was on my way to crutches and a wheelchair before I had my 2 THRs at age 59. It really wasn't necessary to wait until I was that bad but fear and hope that things would get better kept me out of the OR longer than they should have.
Cortisone injections can work for some people for awhile, others, not at all. In any case this is only a temporary measure and is not a cure. The cortisone is tough on the remaining cartilage so the natural progression after cortisone doesn't work any more is to have THR.
Your chief problem it seems is to get some help for your father while your mother is hospitalized and in rehab. If no one can stay with him, other possibilities could be adult day care, hiring someone to stay with him, or even (if his condition is bad enough), a nursing home for a few weeks. Your mother would probably be eligible for home health care, home nursing visits, and home PT, especially if she doesn't go directly from the hospital to a rehab center. Medicare covers all this stuff for a THR where needed.
Also respite care might be worth consideration, even if she doesn't have surgery right away. This would allow your mother to do things on her own and your father to have companionship while she's gone.
I had a father who had dementia. It got so bad that we had to have him go to a nursing home. In the meantime, his care and condition and behavior took a real toll on my mother, more than we realized. He outlived her by 2.5 years. She had her own health problems but I can see now, in retrospect, that we could and probably should have stepped in a little sooner. It was a very difficult time (one of the worst episodes of my life) so I can empathize with your dilemma. Now that I know what things we should have done, it's only academic knowledge, as they are both gone now.
I agree with the previous poster that she might not need your presence in the home for as long as 6 weeks. However, you can't know this going in. There are other options that could work for all of you and wouldn't cause you to leave your job at all or at least for very long.
As I see it your thorniest issue is the care of your father during the period of your mother's recuperation. There are alternatives to you providing it yourself. Please pursue some of them. I suggest www.alzheimers.org for starters.
http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/prolo.html
Your mother's doc is probably correct - that she needs THR. This procedure is highly likely to greatly improve your mother's pain and mobility problems. It's a miracle surgery actually, in these terms. It sounds as if she is probably already having a lot of trouble in her daily activities and with arthritis, they don't get better, they get worse - much much worse. I was on my way to crutches and a wheelchair before I had my 2 THRs at age 59. It really wasn't necessary to wait until I was that bad but fear and hope that things would get better kept me out of the OR longer than they should have.
Cortisone injections can work for some people for awhile, others, not at all. In any case this is only a temporary measure and is not a cure. The cortisone is tough on the remaining cartilage so the natural progression after cortisone doesn't work any more is to have THR.
Your chief problem it seems is to get some help for your father while your mother is hospitalized and in rehab. If no one can stay with him, other possibilities could be adult day care, hiring someone to stay with him, or even (if his condition is bad enough), a nursing home for a few weeks. Your mother would probably be eligible for home health care, home nursing visits, and home PT, especially if she doesn't go directly from the hospital to a rehab center. Medicare covers all this stuff for a THR where needed.
Also respite care might be worth consideration, even if she doesn't have surgery right away. This would allow your mother to do things on her own and your father to have companionship while she's gone.
I had a father who had dementia. It got so bad that we had to have him go to a nursing home. In the meantime, his care and condition and behavior took a real toll on my mother, more than we realized. He outlived her by 2.5 years. She had her own health problems but I can see now, in retrospect, that we could and probably should have stepped in a little sooner. It was a very difficult time (one of the worst episodes of my life) so I can empathize with your dilemma. Now that I know what things we should have done, it's only academic knowledge, as they are both gone now.
I agree with the previous poster that she might not need your presence in the home for as long as 6 weeks. However, you can't know this going in. There are other options that could work for all of you and wouldn't cause you to leave your job at all or at least for very long.
As I see it your thorniest issue is the care of your father during the period of your mother's recuperation. There are alternatives to you providing it yourself. Please pursue some of them. I suggest www.alzheimers.org for starters.