Update 5

Today was another full day. Mom has begun to forget things, so when her close friends stopped by she would say things like, "Did we teach together?" and at one point she apologized to her good friend Susan for not returning her chair. None of us has any idea what she meant by that. She slept for most of the day but every time she wakes she guzzles water due to sleeping with her mouth open. We know she's in a deep sleep when she begins to snore.

The day ended with a visit from the eight week old daughter of church friends, and as weak as Mom is she wanted to hold her. And we took pictures.

She was a fussy baby and when Mom took her after the baby ate the baby just squalled at the top of her lungs. Calmly Mom asked for a hot wet washcloth, and we all learned something new as she wiped the baby's face gently and then let her suck on the cloth. Immediately she calmed down and was downright pleasant.

Yesterday they decided to up her meds and as a result she has become very disoriented and she doesn't get up as often. We have a potty chair that she has really only used once as she really prefers to use the actual bathroom. To quote my Dad, she's still fighting. She falls asleep in the middle of doing things, like she'll scratch her arm because the drugs make her itch and in the middle of it suddenly she'll stop and her arm will still be up because she fell asleep and forgot to put it down. Someone usually goes over and helps her.

I'm sitting in the room with her as I write this post and Dad just finished giving her pills. She can only take one at a time. This from the woman who used to take a whole handful all at once. Dad stood there coaxing her. "Put the pill in your mouth, Lynnie. Atsa girl... just two more, here's another..." until she has taken all of her pills. I really admire Dad's strength, I have only seen him have to leave the room, unable to talk, once.

At church yesterday morning, after my sisters and I sang that song that made everyone cry, Dad got up and apologized but said he had to start his sermon with an unrelated story. He told about how when Mom was pregnant with each one of her four daughters she would put on music and dance and sing to each baby. BUT she wouldn't allow him to sing to the baby. "And that," he concluded, "is why they sing like that and not like me!" I now have every intention to do the same with all of my children, and the first daughter I have will be named Ellen after my mom.

Her stomach is bigger, she gets thinner. Her eyes are sunken and surrounded by dark circles. Her cheekbones stick out from her face. When she smiles the corners of her mouth don't rise. But for all of her fatigue and confusion she still has her sense of humor and when Jennie's friends stopped by, Mom heard them up in the living room and demanded they come down and join her because it was boring down here. I cherish those moments when I see little bits of the woman she really is instead of what drugs and cancer have done to her.

Forgive my language, but I think my friend Jaynell said it best: "Cancer, you are a bastard."