Solid as a Rock

I would like to apologize for the last blog being 13 days ago. Since Mom has been on a steady path of maintaing well, I took the opportunity to focus on my medical, professional and personal needs.

Mom continues to be challenged to maintain a balance with a positive attitude and take control personality over her AML. Thursday, April 1st, Mom went in for another Bone Biopsy. With excitement from her Oncology team, they were able to obtain enough "liquid" and bone fragments to test. This is the first time in six months they could obtain both to test. Yes, this fueled Mom and Poppies hopes to once again begin living their life and traveling together and with loved ones.

Mom continues to suffer from fatigue with physical exertion which frustrates her greatly. She battles her desire to get on her treadmill for her 6 miles, but instead walks for 3-5 minutes on her treadmill. She craves to complete projects in one step. Yes, this consists of cleaning, dusting and detailing her entire house or clearing and then replanting her entire garden to just name a few things. It angers her that her energy and muscle fatigue drops within 10-15 minutes. She is learning that is OK, to return to a project many times. After all, it will still be there the way she left it when she returns it, wink.

Mom and I have been sharing the many lessons in life that I have adopted or weaved into my daily living. Her forced life change, for now, saddens her greatly. We chat a bit and she soon becomes grateful she for all she is presently able to do. Though all she does is greatly shortened in time she is slowly learning to appreciate it. Mom is learning the difficult lesson that "less is more." She is also learning the preciousness in "being able to do instead of not being able do at all." I am very proud of her.

Mom goes back into the hospital on April 9th for her 3rd Chemo Consolidation. She will be in the hospital for a week. She then will have appointments daily, as the previous consolidations, as an outpatient. She will receive her Neupogen injections, blood drawings, IV infusions and follow up appointments with her doctors for the remainder of April.

Kimmy and I will be flying to Rochester a week after Mom gets out of the hospital. Unfortunately, we are not able to leave early do to my personal and medical responsibilities. We arrive in Rochester on April 20th in the early morning. We are so looking forward to being home with the family. Soon we will be able to enjoy Mom and Poppie 24/7 once again. Skype is great to have daily, but it does not give the "touch" value.

Oh, speaking of SKYPE. As you know I bring my laptop everywhere for Mom and Poppie to share with Kimmy, Shayna Punum and I. Brian came out for a visit in SD. I was able to get him a gig to put on a Professional Magic Show. I set up SKYPE and Mom and Poppie saw the entire show, spoke with many friends and strangers in the audience and had a ball for several hours with us. By the way, Brian truly brought "The House Down." Brian not only WOWED everyone with his show, but he was asked to do another show in a few months in a club here in San Diego's downtown Gas Lamp. I and Kimmy were so incredibly proud of him. It was great having him stay with us for a short two weeks. We look foward to his next visit.

OK, enough for now. If anything changes with Mom I will blog immediately.

Love and hugs to everyone,
Karen