(no subject)

I was intending to write a long entry today but I am tired and sick and grouchy and it's probably best that I just keep this short.

My mom is in the hospital at M.D. Anderson (that's the big cancer hospital in Houston). She is not really any worse than she was, except that they doubled the dose of steroids she's on and now she can't talk coherently at ALL. She seems to understand what you're telling her perfectly well, but when she goes to answer you the wrong words come out. You know how sometimes you mean to say one person's name and you say somebody else's instead? Well, she does that every single time. Like, when she means to say "Art" she says "C.L." instead (that's my dad), and when she means to say my sister's name she says mine, and I decided the other day that she may be messing up "yes" and "no" also. I think tomorrow when I go I'm going to make her nod or shake her head instead, and see where that gets us. I know I'm frustrated and I can just imagine how she must be feeling.

There is a ray of hope - or I'm choosing to take it that way, anyway. They are talking about doing surgery again. I figure if there was no hope at all, they wouldn't be considering it. I will probably have the final say on it, since she can't really tell them and I'm the one with power of attorney, god help me. I am going to ask a LOT of questions before I say yes, I know that. I'm hoping I will be able to tell how mom feels about it, too, even if she can't actually say so. Up to now she has been consistently in favor of the agressive approach. (But look where that's gotten us.)

We ended up having a decent Thanksgiving. We got invited to horn in on somebody else's dinner - one of Art's kids - and we accepted gladly. We were still invited to my aunt's in Bryan, of course, but I just didn't have the energy to go up there. The worst part was that we went to see Mom first, and she wanted to come with us to dinner. I felt so bad leaving her!

I have been sick all week - either a cold or allergies, it's hard to tell. I probably shouldn't even have been going to the hospital at all in that state, but I wasn't sneezing or anything, and I washed my hands a lot. (And how am I going to tell my mom, sorry, I can't come see you, I have a cold?) I think I was choosing to tell myself it was allergies, although the way it's been steadily progressing from runny nose to sneezing to cough all week, I suspect that I was probably wrong about that. Anyway, now I am to the coughing stage and I'm really tired of it. I did stay home and try to rest today but I don't know if it helped that much. I still feel exhausted.

(This was longer than I intended but it all poured out pretty fast. I've written much shorter entries that took much, much longer to write.)