The Fall

Dorothy fell and suffered a broken hip on Sunday, April 6.
Rounding her bed, her foot caught in the drape of her quilt. She tried to correct for the catch, and fell straight in the other direction with a CLACK.
Randy accompanied her to the hospital ER.
She waited in the halls of the ER until late the following afternoon before there was an available bed for her.
The hip was replaced post haste. "We get at least one of these every day!" the doctors boasted. There is a team of specialists who go from operating room to operating room, replacing hips. Hip replacement surgery has apparently become one of the most routinely performed operations in the repertoire of Modern Medical Science. The procedure is such common knowledge, you're getting a new hip whether you want one or not. Hell, you might get one even if you don't need one.
Rehabilitation was scheduled.
She abruptly ended a telephone conversation with the bleak statement, "I feel terrible!"
A return call informed that the inevitable was imminent.
Since the surgery she had developed an ulcer to her duodenum.
Coughing up blood, she wouldn't last the night.
It's the end of an era.

Dorothy Mae Watters Franken

b. July 11, 1915, near Boston, Massachusetts
d. April 16, 2008, at New York Cornell Hospital, Manhattan, New York.