Role reversal: Caring for Aging Parents
When my mom first started discussing back surgery I didn’t think much about the risks involved. This was, after all, a woman who had undergone many recent surgeries, including a broken femur and a triple bypass, and come out a champion! She is one tough cookie for a woman in her late 70s who doesn’t complain much in the healing process. She makes friends with all the nurses and doctors and aides. Of course, my mom has always held people in the medical profession - especially doctors -- in high regard, probably since her beloved grandfather was a doctor. At one time she even dreamed of being a doctor herself, but gave it up after she didn’t get into the one med school she applied to after college. All this to say, her family had a lot of hope that her scoliosis, degenerative discs and osteoporosis could be relieved by a back surgery supposedly by one of the best surgeons in the medical profession. Alas that has not been the case so far, and I hurt for my mom as she hurts with ev...