UPDATED BELOW.
Okay, I'm back for a while. If your curious as to the family crisis...it was my mother. She had been having some trouble with digestion etc. for about a month and when she finally shared her all of her symptoms with her doctor he immediately put her in the hospital. A gastroenterologist had a look and after all the x-rays and cat scans decided he could only be sure of what was what by doing a little exploratory surgery. To make a long story short what started out as a minor procedure to assess turned into a 10 hour major surgery. Ten hours of surgery is not kind to a 78 year old woman and at some point during or after the surgery she had a stroke on the left side of her brain and some damage as well to the right. She is now on a respirator and will have to have a tracheotomy and feeding tube inserted. Very bad.
The current plan is to wait and see what happens over the next 3 - 4 weeks and see if there is any improvement from the stroke and at least get some healing from the surgery. If we are very lucky she may make some good progress though the doctor warned us that she will probably never be able to live alone again unassissted. The very real possibility is that she will be unable to make it without breathing assisstance or the feeding tube. Very, very bad.
My two younger brothers and I are probably going to have to make some very hard decisions in the next month or so.
Saturday Morning Update: Things are much better this morning. Respirator removed and no need for a feeding tube. Talking some and taking liquids and Jello. Some movement in the right arm so evidently the stroke wasn't too severe. Overall an astounding improvement over even yesterday. Encouraging and most welcome.
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