How's your mom doing?

I haven’t written about this for awhile. The reason? She’s kinda been the same for the past few months.

Her stroke recovery has pretty much plateaued. Her right arm still doesn’t move (and we still call it Fred). Her right leg moves a little, but she can’t feel it. She walks back and forth to the bathroom a few times a day. Her speech is the same – still slurred or mispronounced, she still often can’t find the right word to say something. She still can’t read or write. But overall we get along. We’ve gotten used to narrowing down concepts until we can guess the word she’s thinking of. (It took me about five minutes the other day to figure out she wanted ketchup with her lunch. You know, that red thing you eat.) We’re used to getting her food, taking her to the bathroom, and helping her get dressed. It feels normal now.

She’s done with radiation (and her hair is still mostly gone, though its slowly growing back). She is still doing chemo, in pill form, five days a month, every month. Her first round of monthly chemo made her ridiculously tired, so we waited an extra month between chemo rounds for her to recover.

She just finished her second round, and she’s still a little more tired than usual. We can tell because it’s harder for her to speak, and she has a harder time doing simple things, like standing up to transfer from her chair to the wheelchair. We’re hoping this round is kinder to her though, otherwise we might stop chemo all together so she can have a fuller life in whatever time she has left.

We’ve found our rhythm. It’s nice, to not see a crisis around every corner. Let’s hope things stay that way, at least for a little while longer.