I was shocked to come back to the forum and read that you and your family are going through something like this. All my thoughts are with you.

> 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.

A couple of years ago, I knew a man who had a stroke. (He ran a company which was an advertising client of the magazine I worked for.) His stroke was a serious one and he was told he would be paralysed for the rest of his life; he would certainly never walk again. This elderly gentleman, one of the strongest minded people I have ever met, decided he was going to prove all the experts wrong. He was able to move under his own power within six months of the surgery. Today he is walking and talking and the doctors still say it wasn't possible.

Of course I am not saying this to raise any false hopes, or to apply this to your mother's situation, but only because it illustrated to me how little we can ever know of what the future may hold. Nothing is written in stone. None of us know what good can come out of bad, or how different things may look in a month or a year or ten years. Believing in the love of God, you must believe that all these things happen for the best.

>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.

Somehow it didn't surprise me that a family which produced Sam also produced six doctors or nurses. Caring is not something you can learn in medical school, but I know that if the doctors and nurses who are looking after Sam's mother have even half the love and compassion for others which we have seen in Sam, then she is in good hands indeed.