Darleen and I arrived in Hanover, NH, on the night of the 3rd and stopped in to see my mother. She had been lightly sedated for the night by then because she had been thrashing around a bit on her left side and raising her blood pressure, so it just made sense to make her comfortable. She was on a ventilator and had other IVs rigged up, but she did indeed look comfortable, in spite of all that.

The next day she was mostly out even without the sedation. She kept moving her left side, and I'm pretty sure she was vaguely aware of us there. Darleen and I were there, as well as my brother, my uncle (her younger brother), and of course my father.

The team of doctors that are working on Mom have not seen a case quite like hers, and they can't find anybody that has, either. The source of the bleeding in her head is at an unusual place and was caused by an unknown reason. It's in a small cavity in the center of her brain, and the blood has expanded into the space between the hemispheres of her brain and clotted. Catscans and angiograms and so forth show no structural abnormalities in the blood vessels -- there is no AVM or aneurysm or anything that might have caused bleeding like this. The primary doctor's best guess would be that this was a stroke that was followed by hemorrhaging, but he said he would only commit to that if he was forced to decide on a cause based on his best guess. So what actually happened is still completely up in the air, and we may or may not ever find out.

He talked to the five of us yesterday afternoon. She was "a little worse" than the day before. The day before she would squeeze and release his hand on request and hold up two fingers on request (this also shows her speech recognition functions are still good, too); today she is squeezing and releasing but not doing the two fingers.

The two primary courses of action are to wait and hope her body can absorb the blood on its own, or perform surgery and have it removed. The blood, unfortunately, is an irritant to the brain, and as it breaks down, it causes swelling in the brain tissue. So there's a bit of a hump on the road to recovery. The doctor said that we were still climbing the hump, but he didn't know if we were on top of it yet or still had more to go. If we're on top, that would be a good thing. If there is more to go, then, well, there is still more to go. His inclination (as of yesterday) is to continue to wait and see. He considered surgery and wavered on it, but decided it was still worth waiting out. If she keeps getting gradually worse, at some point he's going to have to decide that surgery is necessary.

The problem with surgery is that he's pretty sure that surgery would disrupt Mom's chances of regaining the use of the right side of her body. Right now she doesn't move her right side, but she will react to sensations -- she flinches from pressure and sometimes twitches. If her body can take care of the blood clot without the aid of surgery, there is a good chance she can recover the use of her right side motor functions. With surgery, the doctor was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to. Consequently, if the doctor performed the surgery, it would be an attempt to save her life.

This is how things were yesterday afternoon. By now the story is different, I'm sure. With more tests and observations of her behavior come new information that changes the outlook one way or another. There is no accounting for the future at this time, and each day -- each chunk of a day, in fact -- requires a complete re-evaluation of what's happening and what the next step should be.

So continued prayers are still very much needed. As for the rest of us, we're hanging together pretty well. My father is realistically optimistic, which seems like exactly the right frame of mind right now.

It seems my mother is in excellent hands. She is in God's, first and foremost, and so if things went wrong, I would grieve but not worry or fear. But she appears to be in excellent human hands, as well. Of my seven aunts and uncles, six are either doctors or nurses. My uncle, who is a pastor primarily but works as a nurse to help pay the bills, observed that the quality of her care was excellent. The primary doctor has an excellent reputation, apparently, not just as a doctor but as a goodhearted, ethical man. My father's sister, an anesthesiologist (a type of surgeon), spoke with the doctor on the phone for a fairly long time, and she seemed assured of him, too. We were all impressed by everyone, but of course it means more when someone in the profession thinks so, because they know what goes on beyond what others normally see.

Everyone seemed genuinely concerned, and the nurses on duty were always making sure we were taken care of and had all our questions answered and so forth. It was more than just their conscientiousness about keeping us informed. They really understood and cared. We connected with them on a human level rather than just a professional level. I've never really hung out in a hospital and gotten as great of an impression that this is more than just a job to the doctors and nurses. I don't know how they do it. I don't think I could take the strain of being a doctor or nurse and NOT be jaded by what they see every day. It's exhausting to care. God bless them for it.