ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1991, my mother fell as she walked down the steps outside her doctor’s office. She had broken her hip many years before and walked with an uneven gait. When she lost her balance on the steps, she feared that she had broken her hip again. An ambulance took her to a nearby hospital for x-rays. The doctors thought she had a hairline fracture in her hip. She couldn’t walk well enough to be on her own at her apartment, so the hospital discharged her to a nursing home.
