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| Dad kissing Mom June 2000 - Bronson ICU |
Hi Mom,
As you know, today is Lori's (your daughter's) birthday. I will not disclose her age. Happy birthday to my sister, who will not share my walk down memory lane with this type of content as she seemed in another place than I was on July fourth for the five year anniversary of your death, Mom.
I am not sure if you or any of my readers noticed, but I have been trying to consistently do this thing since SENSE OF DOUBT post #1962 as the post numbers have corresponded to years of my life, I have tried to add some year relevant content to each post and a feature I call THE YEAR IN NUMBER. I want to go back and add some content to past posts, mostly photos, to try to at least have one element of my life characterized for each year represented. That's a goal for the next big work break.
Meanwhile, Mom, I know you and my family members will instantly know why post #2000 and thus year 2000 was marked on my blog planning list as an important post.
Back in March, I should have done a post about this as a 20 years ago this happened sort of thing.
And even though I made yesterday's post a HEY MOM post, I am posting a second HEY MOM, consecutively, which is something I do not believe I have done since ceasing daily transmission of HEY MOM on July sixth, 2018, three years to the day after I started daily broadcast of the feature:
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1096 - The Last Daily, Consecutive Hey Mom Post
I did a quick search, and I don't think I have ever done a post on ALL of this. If I have, I could not find it quickly. I don't even know how many "labels" I have, as in categories... but it's hard to be sure with 2000 posts in SENSE OF DOUBT. Without even more granular categories, I am unlikely to find the post, and any key words are still going to return more results than I can look through.
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Okay, wait. Mom, you already knew this one, didn't you? And I just added this post to a sample list.I did a partial review of this history in a t-shirt post that I reprinted here:
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1131 - Hey Mom and T-Shirt Reprint Harry Potter Saved Me
Harry Potter books and Survivor were two key things for me that year that had a huge impact on my sanity.
As explained in that post, Mom, you had bought the first three HARRY POTTER books for my cousin, and I would not have been able to read them had you been conscious, but since you were not I did, and then my sister did, and then we sent them to my cousin.
And then in the summer, SURVIVOR began it's first season. I would come home from a day of visiting you at Mary Free Bed and watch it or a video tape of it (still with VCRs in those years).
These two things became life long loves, and I cherish those memories of finding those things when you were so ill, Mom.
I am also amazed that we got to spend another FIFTEEN years with you, Mom, after this near death experience. I thank the universe for that kindness all the time. Had you died after going into the coma, the sudden loss would have been much more devastating, and even though I was somewhat prepared for it fifteen years later, it was still extremely painful.
Okay, so I did share some. I figured I did. However, I stand by the statement that I have not shared ALL the status reports I sent about my mom from the year 2000.
So, as you remember Mom, and as many of my readers may have figured out, the year 2000 was the one in which you slipped into a coma and almost died. In fact, we were very lucky to get you back.
Most of the story and the details of recovery are in the letters (below) I sent to friends and family who cared to receive them, but one thing I may have left out. It's the decision point when we called the ambulance. I said to my father: "how would we know the difference from looking at her between an extreme adverse reaction to drugs and being comatose?" And that's when he called for the ambulance.
Just before the ambulance came, Mom came awake and said something to my sister, which I think was "I am all right" or something to that effect. I should check and update this blog as I am sure I will continue to reference it.
Included with other photos, here, are pictures of Mom in the ICU after her surgery with her halo collar on that while she was alive we promised would be only shown to close family members, right Mom? Though by the time you died, I don't think you cared about how you looked at any point in the fifteen years after you recovered from the coma. You appreciated looking nice at events like my sister's or my weddings, but you were much more easy going about your appearance.
So, Mom, I am sure you are all right with me releasing the photos.
Also, it's worth noting that I have photos of you shortly after you died, which I will never share with anyone. I have only looked at them once since you died, anyway, though at the time I needed to hang on to you, had trouble letting you go, and thought it might help me to photo (and video) document your corpse.
Of all the years I tried to annually attend Tigers opening day, starting in 1997, I missed the year 2000, not that it was easy to get tickets in the first year the Tigers played in Comerica Park, but also because the first home game of the season -- April 12, 2000 -- was just a little over a month from when Mom slipped into the coma.
Somehow, while my mother was in the ICU for three months, I did six weeks of Creative Writers in the Schools residencies and organized the Centrals Ultimate tournament with 25 teams all by myself. Still not sure how I did that.
I tried to have a vacation at the Neahtawanta that year, and I did, but I had to drive down to Mary Free Bed in Grand Rapids to spend one night -- I think it was one, it may have been two -- while Dad was on a business trip to Cleveland. It was a really rough night (or two nights). You didn't sleep. You were full of anxiety as Dad was your anchor, your whole support system. And at one point while he was gone we realized we did not have numbers for how to reach Dad if necessary. Dad had a car phone but no portable cell phone. YOU actually had a portable cell phone, Mom, which I used for a few years after this incident. I also started driving your car more and more as mine had problems.
It's also important to note that this six months of hospitalization for you, Mom, three months in Bronson's Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and there months in Mary Free Bed in Grand Rapids, a rehabilitation facility, my already fairly high opinion of nurses sky-rocketed to an exaltation and apotheosis that continues today. And then, after all, I married a nurse.
Also, I was very sad that when we brought you home in October of 2000, you did not want to be there. You had become so accustomed to the life in the hospitals and constant nursing care that your anxiety was through the roof, worried that we would not be able to take care of you without nurses. I had made a welcome home banner, and Lori got some flowers, but you were not happy at all to be there. This changed, of course, but at first, it was not what I was expecting.
Here's the story:
MARJORIE TOWER STATUS-ICU DAY 05
to all,
You are dear dear people to me so you're all getting this. Forgive the mass email but my time is extremely limited.
I am not well at all or rather my mother isn't...
We took her to the ER last Tuesday (3/7) after she had passed out. She stopped breathing on the way to the hospital and then shortly thereafter her heart stopped. They revived her. She had another major cardiac arrest on 3/8 and some "funny heart rhythms" the next day.
She has bacterial meningitis and bacterial pneumonia.
This all began on 2/26 while I was in Connecticut. She woke on 2/26 with extreme neck and back pain, which is not unusual for her given her chronic problems int hat area. She cried in pain all night on 2/26, Saturday. Sunday morning, my Dad and sister took her to ER and after x-rays the docs diagnosed her with a herniated disk, gave her some very heavy duty pain meds (Lortab 10s) and sent her home. After 21 Lortabs in 4 days my mother was in what our family calls "Zu Zu Land" -- hallucinating. This was no surprise to us as even Valium puts my mother practically in a coma.
They took her off the pain meds and slowly she became more and more lucid. But she was still too weak to move about the house without assistance and had double vision and motor control problems so severe that she had to be fed.
We all believed this to be the residual effects of pain medication and her reaction to it. I am still in Connecticut.
Trying to return her to normal, Lori and Dad start giving her the bazillion pills she takes each day for her bazillion health issues.
When I returned from CT, my mother still seemed REALLY out of it. She was falling asleep while eating or brushing her teeth or on the toilet and she still had severe motor control problems though her lucidity was all right. She seemed to fade in and out of Zu Zu Land now and confuse her dreams with reality, which again we figured to be the pain meds thing.
While I was gone she had an MRI and saw her primary care physician.
Monday (3/6) we gave her Norflex, a muscle relaxer she takes for arthritis.
She returned to Zu Zu Land BIG TIME.
So we took her off the Norflex and Monday night, really late, she insisted that we all be gathered together and gave us this speech about how sick she was and how we had to love each other and love her and how she needed our support, and how she was going to get better. She made it sound like she was worried that she was dying as she had been a lot with all sorts of questions about Lori's boyfriend and stuff that made it seem as if she was making sure everyone was all right in case she checked out.
We still believed it was pain meds.
Tuesday (3/7) she seemed all right though still weak. We should have realized that how she was having trouble moving and using her left arm WAS NOT something that a reaction to pain meds would cause nor was her FEVER and a million other things.
(Like I had to make a sign for her so she could remember what day it was.)
Tuesday night while I was in class (6-ish), she passed out while on the toilet. My father carried her to the easy boy chair we had been using for her and she did not move for several hours. When I came home about 9:30, we began to discuss what to do. When we couldn't wake her, we called 911.
The paramedics found her blood pressure to be normal.
On the way to the hospital, she almost died and then she almost died again in the ER as I wrote initially etc. etc.
Once they finally got her stabilized on Friday, after over 24 hours with no "funny heart rhythms," they felt they could disconnect her from the monitors, respirators, etc. long enough to do an MRI to learn all sorts of things.
The MRI was normal. The blood vessels to the brain are all open. There is no sign of brain stem injury. No sign of stroke. etc. etc.
She should wake up. This may take many days as meningitis causes swelling to the brain and she may have had it since 2/26!! She started receiving antibiotics in the ER on 3/7 but none for bacterial meningitis specifically until spinal fluid analysis proved that's what it was on Thursday morning (3/9).
Until she wakes up we will not know more. There still could be some brain damage. She still could be paralyzed. Some of the problems might only be temporary and overcomeable.
We just don't know.
She has not made very many voluntary movements since she passed out on 3/7. She has some reflexive movements, though not enough. Apparently involuntary reflexive movements are not proof of no paralysis.
So we're waiting. Spending all sorts of time in the ICU waiting room.
We are usually home by midnight and then leave by 8:30-10ish in the a.m.
It's a very very very difficult time. I have never been so scared in my entire life.
I would trade places with her in a heartbeat.
I just feel so helpless.
Please do what you do in terms of prayer, good energy, whatever.
I have been told that actually scientific studies have proven that the more prayers that are said for an ill person the quicker and better he/she heals.
Doesn't matter who prays, to whom, how, whatever.
Please, do what you do.
The best place to reach me is at the ICU at 616-341-7798. There's usually a member of my family there answering the phone or nearby.
love
chris
"if you lose your faith, babe, you can have mine
if you're lost, I am right behind
because we walk the same line."
-- Everything But the Girl "We Walk the Same Line" _Amplified Heart_
MARJORIE TOWER STATUS-ICU DAY 12
My mom is better and awake and improving.
Thursday the docs did an MRI and found two infected areas that they suspected were abscesses. If they were abscesses, they had to be drained surgically since they are walled off areas of infected stuff (pus) antibiotics would not reach them. However, if these areas were not abscesses but what one doc called "angry tissue" (IE. infected) then antibiotics would reduce their size and inflammation and so on. That's the best they can tell with the MRI.
One was located in the throat, behind the pharynx, a retro-pharyngeal abscess (or not an abscess). The other is in the back of the neck in the top bones and vertebrae of the spine. The vertebrae disks and ligaments there are definitely infected and all but destroyed by infection, the bones are very very weakened.
The docs seemed pretty certain that the throat one was indeed an abscess, and so we okayed surgery for Thursday night. And yes, it was! An abscess full of pus. The doc drained it.
The next morning my mother woke up.
At first we did not know if she was 100% awake-aware. She still couldn't move. She mostly just had the left eye open and only opened the right once in a while and then only slightly. But later in the day and definitely Saturday, she was awake-aware, nodding in response to questions. She can't talk because of the breathing tube. Saturday, we were also concerned that she could not close her left eye because she still has some swelling because of all the fluids in her system.
Finally, last night, Saturday night, she managed to close both eyes and was obviously sleeping peacefully.
Today, Sunday, the neurologist saw her open and close both eyes voluntarily and wiggle toes voluntarily. Still no ability to squeeze hands with fingers or move arms, but these abilities may come back slowly. The neurologist was also pleased to see increased brain activity in an EEG they gave her Friday.
Part of her continued neurological problems could be caused by the infected area in the back of her neck. This infected area, be it tissue or abscess, is definitely putting pressure on her spinal cord and thus may be impairing her motor control from the neck down....though not the toes, for some reason. ;-)
My family has a giant decision to make. Surgery. An MRI yesterday showed whatever it is in her neck is not getting bigger or smaller. We had hoped that if an abscess, it was connected to the other abscess and would drain when that first one was drained. This is probably not happening.
Taking pressure off the spine will help her to improve neurologically. And with the deterioration of bone and ligament and vertebrae there, she may need surgery eventually anyway to have any kind of control over her neck. But should she have it now or later? If that is an abscess back there, then she should have it now. If it's infected tissue, probably a little later, but not too much later.
Tough choices. We will look at another MRI probably Tuesday and decide.
Still it's a long haul. We have to be happy with tiny little minor progress every day. We are keeping a constant vigil in the room and cheering my mother with stories and our love. But still it's a difficult time. Difficult to focus or work, though my father and I have managed to do some work...
I am still not ready to grade any papers, but I expect I can start up again next week. So far I have just been writing and reading, both of which are very comforting for me.
We all appreciate all the phone calls, emails, cards, and whatnot from all of you. Thanks. I don't spend a lot of time at the home computer each day, and am only here now to get ready for school, but all of your efforts are very very appreciated.
THANK YOU
I will send another update when I know more.
Until then, do what you all do. Pray, meditate, send positive energy. It all helps.
peace and love
chris
MARJORIE TOWER STATUS-ICU DAY 19
I have actually been receiving requests for these reports. Thanks!
As always, thanks for all the cards, letters, emails, and phone calls. I don't have the time to promptly respond right now, but as I catch up on stuff, I will respond to everyone and everything. It means a lot that so many people love my mother and our family. Thank you.
Monday the 20th brought some troubling news. Mom has an infection that's resistant to a certain kind of anti-biotics, Vancomicin and such. This makes the bug very very difficult to kill. Also, it means, because of hospital policy, that for the rest of her life, in years to come, any time she is in the hospital, we have to put on gloves and gowns to see her and be with her. It's a pain! ;-) But the hospital does not want to risk transporting such a tough to kill bug out of the hospital. Not that we can as it is inside her body and not an airborne thing, but that doesn't matter.
It's a relative of E Coli, the bacteria in her system, called Enterococcus.
Cinercid is the anti-biotic that they switched her to when they determined the nature of the bacteria.
Given the bug's resistance, we elected to do surgery on the remaining abscess, the one in the back of the neck, infecting areas around the vertebrae and putting pressure on the spinal cord.
We discussed also having bone spurs removed. These spurs are in the lower back and may (probably are) also putting pressure on the spinal cord.
But the doctor (Hopkins, known as God in the hospital) and we decided that this would be just too much darn surgery for Marjorie, who as many of you know would not want any surgery at all, no matter what.
The infectious disease doctor used phrases like "probably won't survive unless we go in and drain that other abscess."
So we chose surgery.
Mom had the surgery Tuesday March 21st starting at about 2:30 p.m. I watched her fave soaps with her and then they took her down. First she was getting a trachea tube for the breathing machine to get the tubes out of her mouth, prevent further damage to the vocal cords, begin healing the sores on her lips, and to just make her more comfortable. When the ENT doc did the trach, he also drained her sinuses. All went fine.
Then Hopkins did the neck surgery, taking off three and a half of the shell bones (2,3,4, and half of 5) in her back that protect the vertebrae and spinal cord. Two of these bones were "mushy," he said, from the infection. We've been trying to guess from that comment how long she many have had the infection, but it's hard to guess.
There wasn't much pus in the abscess there, and so maybe most of it drained out the front. There was a lot of infected tissue, and so Hopkins cleaned out in there and sampled some for a culture. The whole process took several hours and Mom did not return to the ICU until 7:30-8-ish.
Hopkins said the whole thing went swimmingly.
She has stainless steel staples in the back of her very upper neck and had a drain for a while, but they took that out when no more pus drained.
She now has a tube into her stomach and so has no tubes in her mouth.
She woke right after the surgery and has been pretty awake and alert since then, except when too doped out on morphine or Benadryll, which they were giving her for a rash.
She can't nod to us anymore as she is in a halo collar, which she will have to wear for at least six weeks if not much longer.
She may also require extra surgery to fuse cartilage (sp?) in her neck and to remove those bone spurs.
As of today, Sunday, 3/26, she started grimacing when Dad squeezed her hands, which is an EXCELLENT sign that feeling is returning to her arms and that she may move them soon. Rah rah!! ;-)
She's also off the Benadryll and so more awake as well as having been stepped down to four breaths a minute. We hope to get her off the respirator by sometime next week.
We continue to pray, send positive energy, commune with the cosmos for mother's full and complete recovery.
My mantra is that she will be returned to herself. I want her to be as she was before all of this happened not because how it would affect my life if she wasn't but for how it would affect hers.
Thanks for all you have done so far in support and kindness.
I and my family appreciate it all.
It looks like we're on the road to recovery. It's just a very very long road.
peace and love
christopher
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| after she recovered |
MARJORIE TOWER STATUS-ICU DAY 26
I hope I am not tiring out any of you with these reports. I have had many nice emails asking me to keep y'all posted. Hence, another in what had become a weekly thing.
Again thank you for all the nice emails, cards, calls, dinners out, food, flowers, and whatnot. I apologize for not having time to reply to them all but I am whittling away at my piles of stuff and promise to eventually reply to everyone in one way or another.
Right now, I wish there was two or three of me, like Triplicate Girl in the Legion of SuperHeroes because I could really use a me that's grading papers, while the other does my taxes.
Anyway, this email's not supposed to be about me. Sorry.
This week's report is not really lengthy.
She continues to have feeling in her arms and has pain when you squeeze her too hard there. The blood pressure cuff that tightens hourly for a reading also causes her discomfort. But she's hanging in there. Still no voluntary movements in arms or legs but that will come in time, we hope and believe.
Her vitals all look good. The feeling in her arms and legs makes us very hopeful that she will have fully restored movement and access to her limbs after much physical therapy.
Her breaths have been reduced to four/minute and she's on 20-21% oxygen, which is room level, normal oxygen (what we breathe). We want her stepped down to two breaths/minute and thereafter none for an experimental time. That's what they do, I guess. They just shut off the breath machine and she breathes on her own without knowing that she's doing so. I mean, you don't have to be told to breathe. We had hoped they would do this yesterday, kind of a neat April Fool's trick. And if it was up to us or the respiratory therapists, it would have been done. The docs and nurses are FAR TOO cautious in this regard, IMHO. We plan to start making some noise if they have not stepped her down by Tuesday. The breath machine will not go away completely. So as not to stress her, they will keep it there and use it intermittently, work her back slowly to breathing on her own 24 hours a day. The good news is that she will be able to talk after her vocal cords heal (if they are swollen or bruised, we don't know). She may talk right away.
Her other vitals, such blood pressure, heart rate, blood sugar, electrolytes are all great. The swelling has all come down and she looks pretty much normal. The sores around her mouth are healing rapidly, and she had an enormous bowel movement Friday, her first for the week, I believe, or at least since Monday- Tuesday. She's on 30 CCs of the Impact Two food solution and they have stepped down her TPN, which is some kind of blood sugar- glucose type goop, I think. Forgive me for not knowing ALL the details. ;-)
The big issue right now is her depression.
I have theorized that up until maybe Tuesday or Wednesday of this last week she has not been 100% conscious. I think that before her surgery she was not all the way awake. She seemed to nod distantly and her eyes did not look very alert. She still had all that infected gunk in her system and her spinal cord was under pressure, so that's no surprise.
After surgery, between morphine and the swelling in her back coming down, I don't think she was all the way here yet either.
As of about Tuesday (3/28), she seemed more responsive and alert but more upset, too. She keeps her eyes closed almost all the time. It's not because she can't open them. We think she's either too weak and it takes enormous effort to open them, and that's why she usually opens them in response to a major disturbance like being turned in bed and stuff. She opens for us only once in a while but usually at least once a visit. The rest of the time she keeps her eyes closed. She will squint and blink in response to questions. But we also see her twist her face in emotional pain and cry a lot. This is heart wrenching. But then, when I thought about it, and considered that maybe she is now actually coming awake and realizing where she is and what's going on, that it is no surprise that she would be very upset and very very depressed. Those of you who know my mother well understand this response from her. She does not take stuff like this very well.
But we think she is getting better and better. She usually hates it when we have to leave for the night. But we have started to read a book to her. This is a book by a fave author of hers and is a book she anxiously awaited for a year. She received it as a gift for Christmas but hadn't finished it yet since she never takes time for herself to do things like that, like reading, which she enjoys so much. We may end up reading it more than once, as we don't know if she is always conscious, but I don't care. Anything to cheer her up.
The docs want to have a summit this week to discuss what our plan is for the future and what the prognosis for my mother is. I suspect an upsetting meeting in which they have misinterpreted her closed eyes as lack of brain activity, which is just not true.
Mom had two MRIs this week. (Should have been just one but there was a screw up.) One showed that the abscess in the front is smaller and the other showed no return of an abscess in the back and that the spinal cord looks perfectly normal. We were worried as Mom had a fever that reached 102 this week. It's down around 98-99 now. The brain MRI was inconclusive, so far at least, but it did not show anything SEVERE, meaning if she has any brain damage from lack of oxygen to brain during cardiac arrests and breathing trauma, the effects are probably minor. But we won't know more until we get her off the respirator and talking.
Again, thanks for all the well wishes and prayers and happy thoughts.
I will keep you all posted.
Peace and love
christopher
"if you lose your faith, babe, you can have mine
if you're lost, I am right behind
because we walk the same line."
-- Everything But the Girl "We Walk the Same Line" _Amplified Heart_
MARJORIE TOWER STATUS-ICU DAY 33
As always, thanks for all the nice emails, calls, and cards. I promise, some day, I will respond to everything. Right now, I am buried with research papers.
If you're new to the list and you want the full story, send me an email with "WANT THE FULL STORY" in the subject line and I will send you a batch of all the emails to date. There's been one a week and this will be week five that we're entering.
News is starting to be less traumatic, but we still have a long way to go for full recovery.
The big news of the week is that the docs took my mom off the respirator today and wheeled the thing out of her room on Thursday.
We had an early in the week scare when an old lung culture came back positive for what might be, could possibly be, a form of tuberculosis.
Unfortunately, since my mother was in the room when the doc explained this news, she freaked out because her grandmother had died of TB.
We had a tough time calming mother down.
Also, because TB is airborne, we had to put her in TOTAL isolation and wear masks as well as the gloves and gowns for the vanco-resistance. This scared Mom even more.
No one thought she really had TB. I guess, TB is a very very slow growing culture and sometimes you can never be sure if the culture growing is actually TB (or one of its many cousins).
Anyway, on Friday, the DNA probe culture came back negative for any kind of TB and we did away with the masks and the total isolation. Also, we did away with the gowns. Apparently, someone had misread the instructions originally and we only have to wear gowns if we're dealing with bodily fluids from the patient (which is mostly done by the nursing staff). So no more gowns or masks, Just gloves.
We had to really push for a new trach tube. With the respirator shut off, we wanted to switch Mom to a fenestrated trach tube, which would allow her to talk. At first, docs were telling us that this would not be possible AT ALL. Unwilling to accept that, we pushed more and made progress. On Thursday, Salish, the ENT doc, deflated the balloon of the full-cuff trach that had been in her throat since the surgery. This balloon carries the air and prevents secretions from oozing down her throat and possibly into her lungs. She needs to exhibit a good gag reflex to keep those secretions out of her lungs. After 24+ hours of showing she could gag and cough her lungs out, Salish put in the fenestrated trach Saturday Afternoon (4/8). No talking yet, but we hope there will be some soon.
The next step is drinking water. We have been pushing for a swallow study for a week now. She can't even have it until she received the new trach. I realized how thirsty she must be on Monday and we have started giving her little sponges soaked with water which she sucks dry. This is cheating as these sponges are meant only to clean out her mouth. But she's obviously swallowing the water fine. Lori seems to think that Mom could not drink water through either a straw or a tube because of the halo collar and how she can tuck her chin. I hope she's wrong because those of you who know my mother (or me) know how much water she drinks, so this is something we need to make happen: PRONTO!!
On other fronts, Mom is very awake and all week she has been mouthing words galore. Often, because we totally have no lip reading skills, we have no idea what she's saying. I am sure she will be happy to yell at us and complain about how we repeat things too often when she can talk.
There's more movement. Mom started physical therapy this week. The therapist found either movement or muscle resistance in all limbs. Mom started shrugging her shoulders early in the week and has moved her right hand a couple of times. She continues to jerk her legs and feet a lot. She has also shown an ability to nod her head "yes" ever so slightly. If the movement returns like the feeling, from the shoulders down, within two weeks, Mom should begin to move a little bit through all her limbs and eventually her fingers.
Unfortunately, with the good comes some bad news. She started having severe muscle spasms this week, too, and her back hurts so much sometimes that she needs morphine for the pain.
Her temperature continues to go up and down, but often that's due to some cause other than infection, such as receiving blood or something. Her vitals are all strong. She had great blood pressure and heart rate. Her blood sugar is great. She doesn't have bowel movements regularly enough, but we're working on that.
In terms of the future, Dr. Hopkins told us that once THE INFECTION GOES AWAY, then she has another 6 weeks in the halo before we check it. As of today, the infection doctors have not given a thumbs up that the infection is gone and Mom will need another MRI this week or next. The neurologist also wants another sample of spinal fluid. Anyway, Hopkins said that if Mom's muscles and cartilage fuse together she will not need another neck surgery. However, Hopkins would like to remove the bone spurs in the lower back. But we shall see. We may not need to do that surgery. However, they will keep a trach in her throat throughout her hospital stay just in case, and it's quite possible that she will be in Bronson until a decision is made about future surgery (another 6-8 weeks after the infection goes away).
That's about it. Mom's in better spirits this weekend, blowing kisses and smiling. We tell her we love her lots and we pass along all the well wishes from the rest of you daily. Dad has been with Mom every day nearly all the time. Lori and I come and go. I have had to stay home this weekend as I have tons of research papers and stuff to do. But I will go back when I can. Lori went to church with Noel (her boyfriend) for the first time in over a month today. I installed a new hard drive and cd rom in my computer since I last wrote. So this is being saved to a new 13.6 GB HD. Cool, huh? (Bought a Western Digital HD, a 48 speed cd rom, and a Voodoo 3 graphics accelerator card.) Not that my computer purchases really matter but I know some of you are interested.
That's about it for the news this week.
I love you all. Thanks for all your continual care and concern and prayers (or whatever form of energy you focus in Mom's name).
Peace and love
christopher
"if you lose your faith, babe, you can have mine
if you're lost, I am right behind
because we walk the same line."
-- Everything But the Girl "We Walk the Same Line" _Amplified Heart_
THE YEAR IN NUMBER: 2000
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/us/day-in-life-2000s/index.html
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2j6SZdsHLrnNd8nGFB5f5S/20-things-from-the-year-2000-that-will-make-you-feel-nostalgic
http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/2000.html
https://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/55-things-from-2000-that-feel-like-both-yesterday-and-like
https://www.buzzfeed.com/tictaccanada/11-reasons-why-the-year-2000-was-the-best
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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you soon, Mom.
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- Days ago = 1864 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2008.09 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27 and 1907.04) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom. Dropped "Talk to you tomorrow, Mom" in the sign off on 1907.04. Should have done it sooner as this feature is no longer daily.
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