More of the same.....

Hi guys. I'm sitting here with M'Lys and A'Lise on a naugahyde couch in the waiting room. How many Naugas does it take to make a couch? No one seems to know around here, and I'm not sure anyone but me thinks that's funny.

Things here are tough. Mom's vital signs are bouncing around like ping-pong balls. She looks somewhat better today, but medically that doesn't seem to be the case. Her blood volume goes down quite a bit on occasion, and they aren't totally sure why -- ulcers? internal bleeding? No one seems to know for sure.

She's not as alert today as she was yesterday -- it's harder to get her to come out of the depths to get an answer. I had her listening to my IPod while ago -- Jim Brickman's piano music. I asked her if she wanted to listen to more -- she said, "yes." So we did.

We've decided that the much-talked about "Dr. Rose" must be her latest crush. (If I can have a crush on Craig Biggio, I guess she can have a crush on Dr. Rose. He is quite a "looker.") Anyway, she will answer him far more than any of the rest of us -- when he asked her if she was in pain, she said, "no," and immediately followed it with, "but I lie a lot."

We look for humor wherever we can find it. Nelva used the men's restroom all day on Friday -- she preferred it. Apparently it has a window -- she liked that.

We're hanging in there -- it's tough but your prayers mean the world to us. It's like Carla and I were talking about the other day. We've known that the dialysis route would be coming at some point. I guess I always thought that when we go there, we'd know it was time to really worry. But then, this tumor stuff came up in June. At that point, I thought once we got a game plan and knew what was going on, I'd sort it all out. And now we're here. It's all way too fast.

There is a new tumor or something near the one on her skull -- they aren't sure what it is. The morphine helps alleviate any pain, so she's comfortable. The ICU nurses are amazing -- they just let us in whenever we want, for however we need to be there.

I'm going to sign off for now -- We love you all.

- d.