From Steph in Cupertino, California:
I am sitting here at six in the morning looking out over the valley, the sun rising in a golden line behind the eastern foothills. My mom's house is quiet; I'm the only one up. I'm thinking about my mom.
I've spent the last two days with her at Stanford Hospital. She is weak and fragile and reflective, and she is herself: funny, wanting to talk, engaging, spiritual, beautiful. Suzi laughed that she'd better look a little sicker, or no one would believe how ill she had been. All the doctors who streamed through the room at this teaching hospital--a parade of residents, interns, fellows, and staff from oncology, surgical oncology, and general surgery--were amazed and buoyed and cautiously optimistic about her progress. As you can read in Suzi's blog, my mom was extremely sick, leveled again and again by serious side effects of the chemotherapy: vomiting, shaking, fevers, delerium, fear, nasal-gastric tubes, oxygen, pain meds, obstruction. http://walkingpapers.wordpress.com/
But she is improving, yesterday better than the day I got here, and last night restful. She started on "full liquids:" tomato soup, yoghurt. Her gut is bubbling and rumbling, the blistered lining sluffing off in small strips, slowly beginning its work again after nearly two weeks of shock and paralysis. Her sisters Heide and Traute came visiting, and the four grandkids--Tia, Sasha, Griffin, and Adrian--descended on her, laughing and questions and holding her hand, snuggling to her side in the oncology family room.
I will be here for the next while, and will share with Mom any comments written here. Thanks to everyone for their prayers and energy, their care and concern.
Love, Steph
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