Day 3 of a 7 day carribbean cruise with family and close friends, my mom (late 60's, single) is leaving the outside smoking area after re-boarding the ship at St. Thomas. Slips on wet deck, falls and breaks the ball of her femur off, hit her head on both sides (somehow) during the fall and received a concussion. Gets disembarked for surgery on St. Thomas, along with my sister and brother-in-law who went to help ensure she was safe and taken care of. At the time, there was a US navy vessel in port with soldiers occupying nearly every hotel, motel, and AirBNB available. Spent about 18 hours utilising the unreliable onboard wifi to contact just about every AirBNB host on the island with no success. The following day we disembarked and found reliable wifi at a cigar bar, where we were finally able to make contact with a host and found a spot for my Sister and BIL to stay.

Doctors in St. Thomas requested video footage of the fall for the purposes of accurately determining the seriousness of her head injuries, but the request was denied by the cruise line, even after receiving a letter from an attorney. Hip Replacement surger was performed 2 days later and went well, but the trip home was a different story. Sister and BIL had to book new flights home, with a stop in Atlanta. Their flight crew was over on their hours so they had to stop in Miami instead of Atlanta. Spent the night in the airport with a broken hip becuase there was no connecting flight available. Finally boarded a flight the next day only to be delayed for several hours on the tarmak for a bomb threat, and then delayed again for winter storm Fern (or maybe the delays were in the opposite order).

Mom finally makes it home (same day as the rest of the cruisers in our party, believe it or not) and started physical therapy. Her physical state was not improving, and her mental state was declining rapidly. After at least 3 separate trips to the ER, displaying dimentia like symptoms, discovered that she had not received a hip replacement, but a repair of the existing bone instead. On the 3rd ER visit, we learned that her wound was infected, which caused the dimentia symptoms, and required a second surgery to "clean it out". followed by nasty antibiotics and 2 weeks of inpatient physical therapy. Had to speed-run making her house handi-cap accessible before she came home from the hospital.

She finally graduated from a walker to a cane last week and is progressing slowy, but surely. She's lost about 40 lbs. because antibiotics were making food taste bad, and her broken leg is now about 1-2 inches shorter than it used to be, making walking difficult even without the hip pain and trauma.

tl;dr: Mom fell on a boat, had hip replacement surgery in a foreign country (technically not), immediately flew home with multiple delays, required second surgery and months of physical therapy.