A long day...

hey Mom,

You're sleeping right now, for a good 2 or so hours after being up and restless all day. Today was one of your more painful days, as you were gritting your teeth and shaking your head, but still told us you aren't in pain most of the time. Once it got unbearable, you were finally put on pain medication and within a half hour were asleep, and still are! Kinda peaceful listening to you snore, odd as that is. That's when we know you're fast asleep and not in so much pain.

So today was definitely one of the harder days. Kyle just couldn't stay away through the night and came in and sat with you around 3 am. A little after Dad and Megan arrived shortly after one another, Kyle was leaving to go home and sleep when he was involved in an accident in his beloved brand new black Accord. He was sitting at the light by the gas stations when leaving the hospital in the pouring rain when someone ran a red light, slammed into another car, and ran right into the front of his car, pushing him into the car behind him, causing his airbags and seatbelt to deploy. Don't worry though, he's okay. Just a little sore in his shoulder and neck, but he's a tough guy ;) . His poor car isn't though! But it wasn't his fault and besides, that's the smallest of our worries right now...

After that lousy start to the day, it wasn't much better that you seemed so uncomfortable all day. It's pretty hard watching your mom be so uncomfortable and agitated. When you saw Megan and Dad over your bed in the morning though, you did flash us a smile, which is always warming to see. Everyone was getting pretty aggravated by the doctors seemingly lack of attention to your case, and failure to report back to us with your MRI or EEG results. All the new information that we got out of Dr. Mann (with Carpenter's practice) in the morning was that he was concerned about you getting an infection due to your heightened white blood cell count. Dad ended up having to hunt down Dr. Dan, another oncologist that is partners with Dr. Boyle, in the mid afternoon. We weren't too happy with him during your battle with breast cancer, but he proved to be more approachable this time around...

While we finally got some answers, we couldn't help but be let down by the results. Dr. Dan wasn't too sure about the MRI results yet, but explained what was taking them so long to read them. They had to send them to something called NightHawk elsewhere in the country that's kind of a central location for the readings of MRIs, as well as have the neurologist here take a look at them, and it wanted them to be read very accurately. He also reiterated to us the complexity of your case and how difficult the prognosis may be. He assured us that he would get answers for us and do all that he could to assist in your case. In addition, he finally put you on some pain medication similar to morphine. Soon after he left, the neurologist paid us a visit, bearing bad news. He was able to read the MRI and said he saw possible nodules around a couple of your thoracic vertebrae as well as lumbar. Wants to do a special kind of spinal tap on Monday that is x-ray guided so they can see where they are going due to your restlessness. This is to verify whether or not there are cancer cells in your spinal fluid. Not the report we wanted to hear, and wasn't a real happy rest of the afternoon for us.

You did have a lot of visitors today though, you're quite miss popular these days. You knew who they were too, altough you could hardly mumble their names. We know you knew who everyone was though. Everyone's still thinking about ya constantly, and wanted you to know that. Got a lot of people pulling for ya. Even the nurses love you! We know their heart goes out to you, and do all that they can to make you, as well as all of us, as comfortable as possible. They really are wonderful.

The four of us have been here mostly all day...the kids went home to eat dinner then Megan and Tyler came back out to join Dad and give ya some company. The IV nurses just came in to give you another IV due to your Adivan and Dialudid not being compatible (they would crystalize in the tube), and discovered that your left arm is really swollen so that they are unable to stick it again at the moment. They're now getting ready to take you down to get an ultrasound to see if they can find out the cause of the swelling. Since they can't use your right arm due to your lymph nodes being removed from breast cancer, the doctors may have to insert a PICC or PIC line. It would be inserted through a peripheral line (your arm) and fed up through the progressively larger veins, ending in your heart so that there is a direct feed to your blood supply that can be kept in for a long period of time.

Just thought you'd want to know that Tyler got his report card today, which was pretty darn good. You'd be proud! He also thinks you'd be proud of him for two other things...one being that he found a "robot" in the hospital that delivers medicine and even got it on video, and that he asked Megan if we could go to 7:30 am mass with him tomorrow morning before visiting you. We know, we thought we'd never see the day Tyler ASKS to go to church!

Although the day has not gotten our hopes up at all, we aren't giving up. We're still praying for a miracle to happen, and you to get through this and be healthy again. We cherish every moment with you, and pray that there will be MANY more of those to come. There will be a lot of waiting around until Monday when we hopefully get the results of your spinal tap so that we can begin planning your further treatment and decide what is the next step. These days aren't easy, in ANY way, but we know that we have to be strong for you. Trying to keep our hopes up and spirits high now, and if need be, there is plenty of time for sadness later.


Stay strong Mom, got your whole team behind ya. Gonna beat it.

Love you.