<- press the button to go
to http://ordman.net
home page
This page is about Eunice's broken hip and related events of March
and April 2013.
The newest material gets added at the bottom. (June 7)
Material about her Aortic Dissection in 2011 is at
http://ordman.net/Eunice_sick.html
There is a lot of background here, written at the request of the
Society For Values in Higher Education,
which may do an article in its newsletter on how come a retired
physics/computer science professor
found herself in Marrakesh, Morocco, just before her 89th birthday.
April 15 report:
Another Eunice Ordman Medical Adventure. By Edward
(and Eunice) Ordman. [Provide any title you like].
While many of you know us (Eunice and Chip Ordman), it still
may make sense to give a bit of background before I tell of our
adventures after Eunice, a few weeks before her 89th birthday,
fell and broke her hip in front of the principal mosque in
Marrakesh, Morocco.
We were incredibly lucky in our academic careers. Eunice began
teaching college physics in 1946. She never finished her Ph.D. at
Rutgers since a critical exam was scheduled for the day her first
child was born: they refused to let her take the exam early since
"no one ever gave that reason before." My 1969 Ph.D. was in
mathematics, and we met in 1976 when we were teaching computer
science from experimental microcomputers built in garages by
hobbyists, at a small college in New Hampshire that could not
afford a "real" computer. When IBM produced its first
consumer PC in 1981, we were suddenly among the experts on small
computers. The University of Memphis hired us both away from our
small college and if I wanted to lecture in Budapest or Shanghai,
there was somebody to invite me. When a college in the Faeroe
Islands, with 56 students, wanted her to come help start a
Computer Science major in 1988, they hired me too to get her to
come. One of our freshmen there went on to a Ph.D. in computer
science from Copenhagen, and came to give a lecture in Memphis to
visit us and celebrate.
Late in 2000, Eunice commented that we had not yet visited
monasteries in the Himalayas. I realized it was not the time to
say "let's wait six or eight years until I retire." I gave the
University of Memphis adequate notice, retired at 57 (she was 77)
and we headed for Bhutan. Her notion of travel in recent years
has included visiting a Palestinian refugee camp,
Cuba, French medical missionaries in Malawi, teaching
English in a children's summer camp in rural eastern Poland, and
spending time in teacher's colleges in the Ukraine so that
prospective English teachers could practice English with us. We
have traveled with groups when medical care or politics
seemed to present special problems, but have not been constrained
by the groups: some of our best adventures were in the Soviet
Union. More than once, when the Intourist guide told our group to
turn right, we turned left. Once we simply got on the wrong
riverboat, going the wrong direction on the Dnieper. Being lost in
a strange place is a wonderful way to make interesting friends.
We often travel with charitable groups. For example, the
microlending program Freedom From Hunger has a local affiliate in
Bolivia. When the group in Bolivia there has its annual meeting,
someone from the New York office must attend. If that person can
bring 12 to 20 donors or prospective donors who pay her way as
tour guide, it keeps staff overhead expenses low and thus improves
the ratings given by the agencies that rate charities. You are
traveling with someone who knows local problems, introduces you to
local people - and, by the way, wants to keep you happy so you
will donate in the future. Yes, we got to Lake Titicaca and Machu
Picchu after visiting Bolivian hill tribes. One of the strangest
trips of this kind was in northern Thailand and Cambodia with
American Jewish World Service: the New York staff was visiting
charities with unusual funding problems. One example out of
perhaps a dozen: If you are smuggling medical supplies to
the rebellious Burmese hill tribes, you get good receipts for the
medicine, fuel for the truck, and some other expenses. You don't
get a receipt for the $5 to bribe the border guard to let you
across. And if he doesn't take the bribe and you are arrested, it
takes $100 or so to spring your courier from jail. If that
shows up on the books most funding agencies have fits. How should
such a charity keep its books to be eligible for foreign
charitable funding? Many of these travel pictures and
stories are at our website http://InOtherPlaces.com
In 2007 we were visiting Israeli and Palestinian peace activists
in Israel and the West Bank. We had no problems in the places
normally considered too dangerous to visit, but Eunice was mugged
and badly injured in Jerusalem (upper humerus in three pieces,
badly dislocated.) The first emergency room doctor said
"She's 83. She may have limited use of her right arm." I
pulled out a small picture book showing her rowing a rowboat in
the ocean and white-water rafting. "She's not that kind of
83-year-old." We got the full two-week tour of Hadassah
Hospital - Ein Kerem, surgery there and a second surgery after
return to the United States. A few months later the physical
therapist said "you have more flexibility and strength in that
shoulder than most women twenty years younger who have never been
injured." But we didn't take another major
trip for another 8 months. (The
Israel and Palestinian material is at http://ordman.net
)
In 2011 she had a major aortic dissection: the lining of her aorta
tore loose, from the arch above the heart down to the crotch. Death was expected momentarily, for hours, but blood
clotted to anchor the lining with the aorta 2/3 blocked. The dislocated lining blocked many side arteries. She
lost one kidney.
Some days later the doctors said: "We think your small intestine
has died from lack of blood. How soon can the kids get here to say
goodby?"
Eunice replied: "I've had a full life, life doesn't owe me
anything. But I'm having too much fun to leave. What will you try
tomorrow?"
The next day they found a way to put a stent in her superior
mesenteric artery. A half hour later she farted, and the doctors
and nurses cheered. (The orthodox Jewish prayer book has a
great prayer for this situation, beginning - "Blessed art
Thou. Lord our God, King of the Universe, who in Thy wisdom
has created the human body with many orifices and vessels...")
We added to the little picture book we carry when traveling
a language-independent medical history, including 4x6 prints
of select x-rays and CT-scan slices to show the critical issues in
her insides. And she decided our traveling should be more
conservative. She experienced running out of breath when
walking any distance (a few years earlier, in the Bolivian Andes,
she had suggested carrying an oxygen bottle when climbing hills
above 15,000 feet.)
We took a brief cruise from Florida to Freeport (Bahamas) and back
to see how that would work. She found that walking to keep up with
a tour group was difficult, and that long lines made it a good
idea to have a wheelchair to get through customs. With
that warmup we took a two-week tour of Alaska, visiting my foster
sister in Fairbanks and then her stepbrother in
Olympia,Washington. With those try-outs, she was again ready
for a trip overseas.
Realizing that her traveling days might end someday, she made a
list: she wanted to see the Alhambra in southern Spain, some
museums in Madrid, Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, visit an
"honorary" daughter who teaches in the US military dependents'
school near Frankfurt, and the family in Denmark of an exchange
student who lived with us twenty years ago. And if we were
to start in southern Spain, why not start with a few days in
Marrakesh? (We spend a lot of our time as interfaith
activists, with significant local and
modest national recognition. We are active
and well-respected in our church, synagogue and mosque. See our website at http://MemphisIRG.org )
Morocco is very religiously tolerant with a
very interesting religious history: for centuries the Berbers were
devout Jews.
The second day in Marrakesh, Wednesday
March 27, in a very attractive plaza,
Eunice was looking up instead of down and missed a 14 inch high step where she didn't expect one. She
went down and could not get back up. We are reluctant to be
emergency room patients or hospital inpatients where there is a
large language barrier. Passersby lifted Eunice into a chair
and carried her to a taxi, which got as close as it could to the
small hotel where we were staying on a narrow walking street in
the old souk. Hotel staff carried her in on a chair and called a
French-speaking doctor. He went with us by ambulance to the
hospital for x-ray and diagnosis of an undisplaced hip fracture,
then back to our hotel and asked medical history. When he saw the
photos of her heart and arteries, his face fell. "The hip
surgery is easy. But if we give her anesthesia in
Morocco, we will probably kill her." Two days of
conversations with him and others, in French, left us believing
him, if not fully understanding his reasoning. There was a lot we
could not understand even when we called in a translator.
He helped us set up a hospital room inside a hotel room, with
multiple daily visits by the doctor, the orthopedic consultant to
keep the hipbone from shifting, and a night nurse when I got
exhausted. Our travel insurance company denied air
evacuation: "Hip surgery is routine in Morocco." We decided
to fly home first and fight with the insurance company later. You
can't fly commercially unless you can sit upright, and the doctors
said no to that. It took days to arrange an air ambulance. Cost
roughly $70,000: luckily one of our credit card companies agreed
to a very large increase in our credit limit. After coming from
Hamilton Ontario and a night's sleep, the crew loaded Eunice into
a private two-engine jet late Tuesday morning April 2. The tiny
plane held two pilots, Eunice on a stretcher, and two nurses. I
curled up in the baggage space; our suitcases were left in
Morocco. No room for a toilet, and fuel for four hours in the air.
Refuel and go to the john in Horto (Azores), St. John
(Newfoundland), Hamilton,Ontario (change pilots), Memphis just
before midnight about 17 hours after leaving Marrakesh.
We arrived in Memphis, TN at Germantown Methodist Hospital.
Emergency room late Tuesday night April 2. Surgical prep.
Pre-surgery tests. More tests. More tests. Postpone surgery a day.
More tests. Thursday morning as she was being wheeled into
surgery: "No surgery, the anesthesia would probably kill her." The
more explanations we got, the more I understood the French
explanations from Morocco - the doctor there was exactly correct,
even had predicted the outcome of tests they had not performed in
Morocco. Once they had a heart catheter in to look, the
blood pressure difference between the left ventricle and aorta was
measured at 88 mmHg. (You have an idea of what a blood
pressure 88 too high would mean. In this case, the normal
difference is zero; 50 is when you consider valve replacement).
There was no leeway for the changes in blood pressure that occur
with anesthesia or major surgery. What could be done without
anesthesia? After long discussions of percentage chances of
various disasters in several scenarios, we decided. On Friday
evening, they ran in a balloon to temporarily stretch the aortic
valve. They brought the pressure down by 38 mm, and it was stable
for the next 36 hours. Sunday April 7 they did the hip surgery -
metal rod in the femur, screws to hold it in place, a long screw
to hold the ball to the femur.
Then we could address complications. Eunice had been on her back
over 14 days before they could sit her up for the first time. The
muscles in her arms and good leg are therefore weak, impeding
exercise and movement needed for the bad hip. At her age and with
several abdominal arteries blocked, she eats slowly and the
muscles in her esophagus don't work very well. This is no problem
when she is upright, but in this case some fluids that should have
gone down her esophagus had been going down her windpipe and
producing symptoms like pneumonia, which have largely cleared up
since she has been able to sit partway up to eat. So on April 15
the visitors in her hospital room included the cardiologist, the
orthopedic surgeon, the pulmonologist, the gastroenterologist, the
speech pathologist (for swallowing problems), the physical
therapists, and several others I haven't learned to identify yet.
We do hope to get her to a rehab place for physical
therapy within the next couple of days; I think everyone has
agreed except the gastroenterologist who may request more
tests. Home in two more weeks or so, insh'allah (God willing).
Interspersed are visitors from the various groups we are
involved with - the church, synagogue, mosque (the
traditionally dressed Muslim women visitors intrigue the hospital
staff), the Catholic peace group, the local
gay/lesbian support group (Memphis may have the only Catholic
Bishop who sponsors a monthly dinner in the cathedral for gays
and lesbians), and assorted others. We are told that few
visitors have Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim clergy all
turn up in the same hour or two. The visitor rate is holding up
well even on our 13th day in the hospital,
Through all this Eunice has remained her usual affirmative,
enthusiastic, confident self, swapping colorful stories with
anyone who will listen. We've had one of her daughters and a
grandson and my daughter in town in series, to alternate
nights with me in the hospital room. For those who remember
Jilana Ordman, she finally completed her Ph.D. on the same day
Eunice broke her hip: The dissertation, "Feeling Like a Holy
Warrior", is on the emotional lives of the crusaders and the
connections between emotions, violence, and theology.
Anyone knowing an appropriate academic vacancy, please let us
know.
Another side issue: The doctor in Morocco, who both was
incredibly accurate in his diagnoses and prognoses and made
Eunice remarkably comfortable in a hotel room instead of a
hospital, paid for the nurse, x-rays, orthopedic man, etc.,
out of his own pocket. He wanted to be repaid in cash
under-the-table (whether for tax or contract purposes, I did
not ask.) While we were in Morocco we could not get
anyone to send us large sums of cash - for fear we had been
kidnapped. We discussed options and he agreed to let us return
to the US without paying him and work on the problem from
here: he said he decided to trust me after I asked if we could
solve the problem by making a large contribution to a charity
in his name, and gave him a detailed description of St. Jude
Hospital in Memphis as a possible example. He says I
can't just wire money to him, it would attract the attention
of his government. After a number of calls to cell phones in
Morocco at 3 AM US time, I am beginning to learn the niceties
of transferring money by wire between numbered accounts.
A bank in Casablanca has told an intermediary that the wire
has arrived and that the money should be there in a day or
three. I'm not sure the doctor and the intermediary
actually trust each other, and with conversations in broken
English with one and broken French with the other it is
becoming quite a colorful tale. The doctor clearly was trying
to overcharge us egregiously but by American standards it was
cheap for the care Eunice received. How the insurance
companies will deal with his hand-written bill, and with some
of the very strange entries on the hotel bill, is an
experience we are postponing for the future.
Chip Ordman, with contributions from Eunice (Written
late on April 15)
April 18, noon:
On
Wednesday afternoon Eunice Ordman finally left
Germantown Methodist Hospital after two weeks
and a day there.
She is now at the Memphis Jewish Home and Rehab,
36 Bazeberry Rd, Cordova, TN 38018. It is
very near the corner of Walnut Grove Rd and
Forest Hill Irene Rd. It is far
enough out east that cell phone coverage is weak
or zero in the room, but we do have a room phone
at (outdated) and
can make (domestic) long distance calls on
it. I will not be staying overnight here;
they want to motivate Eunice to exercise hard,
lots of physical therapy, motive to get home as
soon as she can. It is too soon to
estimate how long that will be but I'd take a
stab at two or three weeks. She is visibly
getting stronger now but after three weeks in
bed she has a long way to go.
We have (jokingly)
warned the front desk not to be startled at a
sudden increase in the number of Muslim
visitors. ( the patient population here is
not predominantly Jewish, by the way, although
the meals are kosher.)
She arrived in a hospital
gown and they took all her clothing to get name tags put on, so
her clothing has just arrived here at noon Thursday so this
afternoon they can start physical therapy. The speech
therapist/swallowing expert here says she can start eating and
drinkling normally (she has been on thickened fluids and small
bites) once she is sitting upright, probably later today.
3 PM -she has been dressed and used a
wheelchair briefly.
5 PM - we have received word that money
actually reached the people in Morocco, that the doctor and hotel
have been paid. Now that we know we can get money to Morocco, we
can start work on the problem of how to get our baggage back.
April 28.
While I (Chip) spend a lot of time here at the Jewish Home, the
physical therapists seem to have completely unpredictable hours
and I sometimes miss them. A few days ago I saw Eunice
slowly walk about 17 feet on a walker, with a helper on each side
to be sure she didn't topple. But her arm strength and flexibility
is returning quite strikingly - she can now maneuver her own
wheelchair for short distances, and do most of the work of
pulling herself into a standing position with a grab bar.
Considering how much muscle she lost in three weeks flat on her
back, the progress is pretty striking. I hope in the next few days
that they will let me transfer her between wheelchair and car so
we can go for drives or go out to eat at a drive-in.
The hip surgeon sees Eunice next on May 7
(Eunice's 89th birthday is May 3). If all is healing well,
at that point she should be able to start putting some weight on
the hip. I'll be out of town May 8-9-10 going to
daughter Jilana's Ph.D. graduation in Chicago, but we very much
hope that shortly after our return we'll be able to take Eunice
home. We are planning a major open house / 30th anniversary
party for May 18, if at all possible. (If you haven't been
invited, e-mail me at edward@ordman.net).
The longer term is still highly
unpredictable. Once she can put weight on the left foot,
will the nerve damaged in surgery recover or will she need an
ankle brace? Will she need a heart valve replaced?
(And several other questions we can't really raise until she is on
her feet again.) But she is intellectually as bright as
ever, and we expect that she'll get back to a state in which we
can very much enjoy life, as we have in the past.
May 1. Major progress continues. Eunice
has now passed 25 feet on a walker, still slow and with a helper's
hand ready to grabher if needed. Yesterday I loaded her from a
wheelchair into our car and ook her home for lunch! She
stayed in the wheelchair at home this time. We surveyed the first
floor and moved some furniture slightly to create routes to get
around in the whhelchair. Not a long visit, but one that
cheered us both up immesnsely. Emotionally, we are ready to have
her home, and we'll have a conference with the rehab home people
tomorrow - but our present imprssion is that the medical people
still want her in the rehab home unil about May 11 - 14,
(depending in part on the result of the x-rays planned for May 7)
and we'll live with that but now ought to be able to have
visits home at least occasionally. I'm hoping that by May 11
she'll be good enough on a walker that I won't have to wrestle the
wheelchair up our front steps (counting the curb and doorsill, I
have to go up four steps but with planty of landing space
between). If it turns out we will need to use a wheelshair to get
her to therapy for a few weeks, as we did with her broken foot a
few years ago, we can put a ramp over the steps but that would
need a carpenter as we've put in a handrail, narrowing the steps,
since the ramp was built.
May 7. At the one-month
checkup and x-ray, the surgeon said that healing was doing fine.
Restrictions on putting weight on the foot have been removed and
this morning she started walking on a walker with weight on both
feet alternately. The therapists express confidence that by
the time she comes home (now set for the 14th) she'll be able to
do our front steps on a walker and I won't need a wheelchair
ramp. We'll get therapy at home for a week and
then decide whether to shift to outpatient therapy.
Back in February Eunice had invited many of our Memphis friends
to a party May 18, to celebrate our 30th anniversary (which is
actually July 3) before people scattered for the summer.
That party is still on, as a pretty much all day open house to
celebrate her homecoming, her 89th birthday, and our
anniversary. By doing it as an open house all day we hope
people will spread out over the day so she can talk to more of
them. If you read this and haven't been invited, call or
e-mail us for an invitation.
May 16. On May 8 Chip was in Chicago
for his daughter Jilana's Ph.D. commencement, then returned to
Memphis the next day. On Sunday May 12 we took a few hours
off from the Memphis Jewish Home and Rehab, went out to dinner
with Eunice walking from the car into a restaurant on her walker,
then put in a brief appearance at a friend's home for a law school
commencement celebration, with Eunice remaining in her wheelchair
during the party. On May 14 she was released from the Jewish
Home, went to a church book club meeting (in a wheelchair), then
came home for the first night at home since we left for Morocco on
March 25. On May 15 she started physical therapy at home,
which may go on for as ling as four weeks. She is now
walking 50 feet on the walker at least twice a day plus shorter
walks. In addition, one of the two involved insurance
companies has agreed to pay somewhat over half of the medical and
transportation costs in and from Morocco; we now get to start
negotiating with the second company. We are thrilled to be
home together again, and while there is a long way to go, things
are looking up. We are having a an open house Saturday, as a
combined welcome home and 30-th anniversary celebration.
Consider yourself invited.
I have a picture of the air ambulance (airplane) on Facebook
at
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151599875366187&set=t.548161186&type=3&theater
and will organize more pictures in a few days.
June 7. Eunice has now climbed a
flight of stairs (once) and is getting off a standard height
toilet seat without assistance. The physical therapists are
impressed! She is exercising very conscientiously, getting
everywhere on the walker and refusing a wheelchair when
offered, and is getting pretty exhausted most days. She is
looking forward to leaving for New London on June 23rd (although
the cardiologist is still doing tests - there was a doppler
sonogram of the aortic valve today) , getting to Jenny's wedding
on July 5, and having our own 30th anniversary party in New London
on July 13 (all readers of this invited!).
By now the insurance companies have come
through with about 95% of the cost of the air ambulance. We are
still working on the medical costs in Morocco and ancillary
expenses, but the air ambulance was by far the biggest item so we
are out of the woods financially. And today (June 7) our clothes
etc. finally arrived from Morocco! The hotel lady there got tired
of exploring other options, none of which seemed workable, so she
packed all the contents of our suitcases in a single large FedEx
box (the "25 KG international" box) and sent them FedEx - still
absurdly expensive, but much cheaper than shipping the two
suitcases. The cases themselves we'll abandon in Morocco, as not
expensive enough to worry about. Eunice is very happy to
have back her favorite fall coat!