Mom updates

John's Mom continues to mend slowly. She needs to be driven to the doctor several times a week, and also taken to the store. She has been able to eliminate pain killers during the day, but still needs to take one at night so she won't wake up in severe pain. She has a great attitude about her injury and loves for people to visit. We wish she didn't live so far away, so we could visit her more often.

My Mom went in for Gamma Knife radiation on Wednesday. The doctors are optimistic for her short-term recovery. The tumor is still there, but will hopefully begin to shrink in the next few weeks. In the meantime, she still has a lot of difficulty speaking, comprehending, and reading. The doctor believes this will likely improve as the tumor shrinks.

Unfortunately, the nature of melanoma is that once it has spread (called metastatic melanoma) through the lymphatic system, it is nearly impossible to irradicate from someone's body. It will find somewhere else to concentrate. Chemotherapy doesn't usually work very well with melanoma, and with my mom being almost eighty, the chemo would be more likely to kill her than help her. The survival rate for metastatic melanoma is about 10% living after five years. So needless to say, we are preparing for the end of her earthly life. My siblings and I are all taking a week or two to go out and be with her, to help as best we can, and spend some time with her. I will probably go from Aug. 14 to 22nd.

My Dad has not done too well in the nursing home. He keeps trying to escape and studies maps to figure out how to get back home. He doesn't understand why he can't be with Mom. Unfortunately, she is just too incapacitated to take care of him. Even when my sister brings him home for a few hours, he makes too many demands on my Mom, stressing her emotionally and physically. We are not sure what the next few weeks and months will bring, but of course there will be many changes and I am trying to prepare myself emotionally for those.

Denise and I had planned a trip to South Carolina to rent a beach house with my two brothers and their families. When we found out about my Mom, Denise decided to go to be with her, but only on the condition that I would still take my kids to the beach. My Mom was upset that Denise gave up her beach vacation (they share a great love of the ocean, my Mom was raised in So. California), and she would have been horrified if I made the kids miss it as well. So off I drove with my three crazy kiddos, 16 hours. It was worth it though, we had a great time, and I was able to worry about Mom together with my brothers. While we were gone, John did a little remodelling on the family room. He worked on it the whole week, and did an amazing job. I'll put up pictures of our beach trip and the new family room soon.

We would welcome your continued prayers in our behalf, for all of us. Though I know the eternal nature of my family, it is so difficult to prepare to say goodbye, not only to my Mom, but also to the father I have always known as he declines rapidly without the support of my Mom caring for him. Here are my parents at our wedding:

Love, Lajuana