Older email...

From 10/20/09...

After a brief stay at John Muir and a scare of fluid in the lungs, my mom is safe and sound at Kaiser Antioch (they were the nearest Kaiser with a room available). She is in the cardiac monitoring unit because of her lungs but she is comfortable and well cared-for. She will not have calls or visitors for a while but know she loves you all and appreciates all your prayers and love!

I'm not sure how much you all know about how she ended up back in the hospital, so in a nutshell, she fell and hit her head on Friday and has a contusion on her brain (frontal lobe). The fluid in the lungs is a serious complication (and side-effect of the brain issue and its treatment) but she has begun breathing much better now and is increasingly responsive. The contusion is on her frontal lobe which controls her personality, but it is definitely my mother looking at and communicating with us, just not a lot of talking at the moment. For a "normal" person, a contusion would heal and typical mental functioning would be restored. Given my mother's obvious multiple issues, it's difficult to say what her "recovery" will be like at this point. We are grateful she is comfortable and cared-for and take each moment of improvement as just that, a moment of happiness. I will try to keep everyone posted--please forgive me if there have been holes--I'm not sure who I send things to sometimes...it's sort of like walking around in a swimming pool right now.