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Dad and I ate lunch with David at the Silver Diner (the same spot we ate at yesterday, and where Dad, David, Sean, and Pastor Kim ate breakfast this morning) after we saw Mom in the ICU. Sean didn't eat with us; he had lessons to teach. Lunch was late-- probably around 2PM or a little thereafter.

Earlier on, we had glimpsed Mom in the hallway around 12:20PM, as she was in transit from the recovery room to the ICU. We were told that we would be called when Mom was settled back into her berth, but as it turned out, no one called us. After waiting until well after 1PM, David and I decided to wander down the hall to the ICU entrance and attempt to buzz in.

Sure enough, they let us in: Mom had been all set up for about an hour. "Why didn't they call us?" I grumbled. "They probably have a lot to do, and that was the least of their worries," David guessed. We saw Mom for a few minutes, then left the ICU to allow Dad and Sean in. Sean came back to the waiting room first and said he had to go. Dad came back a few minutes later. David and I had been sitting in the waiting room, watching Fox News talk about the white supremacist who had a shootout inside the Holocaust Memorial.

Mom was down for the count when David and I saw her. She never opened her eyes, and she'd been propped up with pillows so that she was lying on her right side. She once again has a drainage tube leading out of her head and into a plastic squeeze bulb. The bulb was scarily full when we saw Mom; the last time I'd seen her with such a bulb, there had been very little fluid inside it. But we've been assured that the operation went well, and because Mom wasn't reactive, we thought it best to leave her alone to rest. I mentioned that I was dead tired from too many consecutive days with only four hours' sleep, and Dad agreed. Not only is he tired, but he's also suffering a bit from his tooth problem. (The dentist sealed off the break and will be building Dad a new tooth, to be set in place on the 17th.)

So we're seizing this opportunity to rest up, vegetate, and otherwise de-stress. I like the French verb for this: se décontracter. Even if you don't speak French, you get the idea right away.

At the moment, then, Mom is alone in the ICU. This is mainly because she needs the rest, and because we're all dead tired, too. Although Sean reported that Mom opened her eyes when he was in the room with her, I didn't get the impression that she had suddenly become highly interactive. I imagine she just lay there, barely moving, as she had done when David and I had seen her. She's sure to spend the night in the ICU, and given her rapid heart rate and the rapidly filling drain in her head, I suspect Mom will spend a second night in the ICU. Dad notes that this latest trip to the hospital-- from June 2 to today-- is now the longest such trip so far: nine days and counting.

Many thanks to Pastor Kim for sitting with us today.


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