My dad is recovering from back surgery. He had chronic back pain, and around a month ago finally went in to have an operation to correct the problem. The good news is that they were able to fix the problem, thanks to a couple of metal tubes in his spine.
This, on top of the nice long criss cross scar he has on his abdomen from when they had to cut him open not once, but twice, to deal with an intestinal obstruction a few years ago.
Earlier this week my dad was out in the yard at his house and tripped over my half brother’s toy truck. He fell really badly, and wound up breaking his leg, right where the ball joint meets his hip. So now he’s got a couple of metal pins holding that part of him together. It happened in the middle of the night, and apparently nobody in the house could hear him screaming for help, so he had to drag his broken self all the way back to the house to get help. Talking on the phone with my brother about it, he commented that when they dialed 911, they sent not one, not two, but five fire trucks to help my dad out. I feel bad for my dad, but quite honestly the humpty dumpty reference is just too easy to pass up.
I swear in ten years it is going to get to the point where my dad will be like that guy in the Star Trek movie who was confined to this wheelchair box thingy and could only communicate by blinking this little light on and off. 