Mom went in today to have the staples removed from her shoulder incision. She complained of continued soreness in her left knee and showed herdoctor that the swelling above her knee had still not receded. They did more x-rays and discovered another fracture, along the plate that they had affixed in October. The x-rays look crazy - I can't believe she can get around at all, considering what the bones look like. So, on Wednesday, they're going in again and replacing the plate with something more substantial. It doesn't push the time table for her walking back much, since she'll have to let the arm heal for another two months anyway, but it is dispiriting to say the least. My parents didn't seem too upset - went right off to a potluck for the LSU-Ohio State game. It's just part of their routine, I guess. Still getting used to it, myself.

Got home from the camera prep at Panavision in LA. Had been home less than an hour when mom fell in the kitchen. She'd been on the phone with her doctor and making soup for dinner. She screamed and my dad and I ran in to find her on concrete floor (unfinished kitchen renovation). Her doctor called the paramedics. My mother has the pain threshold of a rabid wolverine - and she was screaming like nothing I'd ever heard. I got her pillows for her arm and arm; held her hand. Things turned surreal - my father was on the phone with my mom's doctor and was running around looking for the phone my mother dropped, because "he heard an echo" in the phone he was on. I was at my mother's side, useless, and occasionally she would reign in the pain and tell me to add the cream to the squash soup, or take the bread out of the oven. I'm serious. Six paramedics  (one of whom was an ex-student of hers) arrived shortly and carted her to the hospital. We followed, and my dad hollered impotently at the Paramedic for not knowing all the shortcuts out of our suburban oasis. We stayed with her through the night - she got morphine immediately, and we waited for x-rays til around eleven. The radiologist was a curt, impolite prick when we came in, but once he saw those first x-rays of my mother's legs, it was like he met Keith Richards. Soon there was a half dozen radiologists in the room, oohing and aahing of the images - they snapped off more than thirty x-rays, the bulk of which were for themselves. My mom is huge in the radiology scene. We got the results around midnight: severely dislocated shoulder (I saw the x-rays: the ball of her shoulder socket had been rammed down into her armpit; and multiple fractures of the upper arm). The orthopedist and his team put her under shortly thereafter and shoved the ball back into its socket. This was apparently a rare and difficult procedure because the ball was in danger of separating from the shaft of the bone. We brought her home, arm in a sling and a bag full of Vicodin, at 3am. She's sleeping now and we're trying to work out the logistics for Christmas. After Christmas, she'll go in and meet another Orthopedist and decide if surgery is the way to go. It sounds like that's how they're leaning: the bone will heal quicker, and her arms need to be strong to support her legs. She is exasperated and sad and all the most frustrated for having gotten that taste of independence. As far as my film: everything changes. I'm scrambling to incorporate this into my script (my third act now looks like my second, and the happy ending took a bit of a hit) and to reschedule what I was going to shoot now for Spring Break.