It only takes a second to slip and have a fall, but then what comes after that is something which can be serious especially for senior citizens.
Yesterday at midnight my mother slipped in the washroom and injured her wrist. Like a normal family we thought it was nothing much and the swelling will go down by using ice, spray and some bandage.
Luckily wisdom prevailed and I called our knowledge supporter Dr.Mrigna Nagraj, Founder - 50 Plus Assist and she told me to take the young lady of 81 to the emergency as it was clearly something which required a doctor's review.
At 1am in the emergency ward, it was a pleasure to meet some nice, polite and professional doctors who immediately understood the problem and got the necessary scans done.
It turned out that she had fractured her left wrist and now has to be in the cast for a few weeks.
The larger point of debate is not about my mother, it is about when she fell down, we did not know if we were picking her up in the right way or not. Secondly we would have probably waited till morning assuming and hoping that everything will get ok, which would have aggrevated the pain and recovery.
Falls amongst older people across the globe is a serious concern, but then how many family members are able to prevent it. Twice my father had fallen down on the floor and was lying without any help for more than 30 minutes.
These are real life situations which every family faces, but then, the question is, could we have prevented her fall and could we have responded faster when my father was on the floor for 30 minutes?
In my opinion, yes we could have done a lot like putting a grab bar in the washroom and could have given an emergency falls detection device to my father.
But then as they say, what has to happen will happen. I guess that's probably a way to convince ourselves that though we did not do our homework but then even if we had done our homework we would have still failed the exam.
In my opinion Falls can be prevented to a large extent or at least the response can be made faster, but then, the look and aesthetics of the washroom is probably more important than a small grab bar or an emergency monitoring watch (like DrRing) or a pendant.
Pankaj Mehrotra
