Saturday Morning May 23rd

Yesterday was a very good day. My mom tends to be pretty tired throughout the day. Her body is doing some pretty hefty repairing. She is having some problems with her right eye still. Her vision (which got us to this point in the first place. See the post below "a little context") has gotten worse. It is only in her right eye and it is mostly her peripheral vision. She describes it as "dark" and she can't see you if you are standing on her right side and she is looking ahead. The eye is also slightly blurred. It becomes more evident when she walks. She moves very slowly and with assistance. From when she first started walking (a few days ago) to now her walking is 100% better but still not quite there. The physical therapist has given her some exercises she can do to get her back in the normal flow as quickly as possible. The therapist also told us your muscles start to atrophy after just 18 hours and for every day you are in bed and only get out to use the restroom, it takes 3 days to get you back to normal. She didn't tell her this to scare her, she told her to encourage her as she moved so slowly. The biggest issue causing her to walk so unsure is that eye. When she walks the eye throws her off balance a bit. The doctor said she should regain some of the vision back but there is a possibility she will not and it is unlikely that she will get all her peripheral vision back. God is bigger than her problem and we are praying for complete vision restoration! This news didn't seem to bug her. Given all the other news of the week, this was pretty easy to swallow. She didn't seem to care because she has lived with this vision problem for more than five and a half years. This doesn't mean she will walk like this the rest of her life, it means that her brain will have to adjust to seeing the world in this new way.

I forgot to tell you all this, modern medicine is pretty amazing these days. Right this minute the tumor they removed from her is is getting cultured in a lab. What they are doing is testing all sorts of chemo / radiation treatments to see what cocktail best dissolves her actual cancer! Not like the chemo of yesterday where they say, "well you have this cancer, lets try this chemo." No, it is tailored for HER EXACT TUMOR. The neurosurgeon said that she will more than likely taking a chemo pill in the morning with breakfast. She will still be able to keep her hair and it won't make her violently ill. Now this is not for sure. We are praying it is but it is whatever the lab results yield. We don't want to see her have to go through radiation or nasty chemo. So pray pray pray. We will know the treatment plan within the next few weeks.

If you were to talk to her, it is completely normal and so many visitors have been pretty amazed by this. She seems pretty normal. Mom is on ZERO pain medicine (not even Tylenol) and is now able to take her other medicine orally but again she just gets worn out pretty quick from all the trauma in her head. They have her taking pepcid for her stomach and an anti-seizure medication which is standard practice anytime you do surgery on the brain. The surgery was pretty intense. I will talk about it in greater detail a little bit later.

We are hoping she will go home today and there was a glimmer of hope that she might have been able to last night but both her Neurosurgeon and Neurologist are on vacation so when the new doctors had taken over they are being a little more cautious but the problem is we are getting a little more anxious. Both my mom and dad are ready to sleep in their own bed! Dad has been there every night.

I am at home cleaning the house and getting ready to go over there but I thought I would give a quick update.

Bottom Line: God is good! Pray for her full vision restoration, that the results of lab will call for a simple chemo treatment, that she will be able to go home today and for her fear. She still has times where the reality settles in and it is difficult.

-Marty