House Arrest

My sister-in-law visited my mother in hospital this evening and found her tied in a wheelchair. Chantal described it as a gentle restraint, "a padded, open-faced underwear that goes over your clothes". My mother's version was that she had been arrested for doing something wrong but she didn't understand what it was.

According to her nurse, the reason for the house arrest was that she was forgetting to use the walker that had been plonked in front of her and therefore was at risk of falls. I say plonked because up until now, eight days into her hospitalization, nobody with the necessary expertise has come to asses her gait and balance, never mind her cognitive status. Whoever said that forgetting to use a walker was a crime anyway?

One could argue that I have the necessary expertise to assess this, at least the physical part, and that may be true. But she's my mother and all I can think of right now is there are worse things in life than falling.