already in bed

Mom nodded "yes" when Dad and I asked her whether she was tired, so she's on her way to bed now. She liked her dinner, but as she had been doing all day, she kept listing to the left on the couch as if she didn't possess enough strength to keep herself upright.

Whatever has been wrong with Mom since Tuesday is still wrong. Maybe what she needs right now is indeed sleep. We plan to take her walking tomorrow-- the weather promises to be great-- but I'm not hopeful that her strength, awareness, and motivation will have returned by the time we go to the park.

We really need to talk to the docs about her condition. She spent the day almost totally nonverbal, though Dad says that she spoke a word or two not long after she'd awakened. Just before Mom got up from the couch to go to bed, Dad asked her some vocabulary questions. They were the same sort of questions that she could have answered even yesterday, but tonight, she didn't say a word. Switching tactics, Dad held up a slip of paper with the word "table" on it and asked Mom to read it aloud, but she still said nothing.

As I mentioned before, it's probably the edema. At some point, tumor growth or some other factor may push the swelling beyond the limits that Decadron can control. What do we do then? I honestly don't know, and that's another reason why it's important for us to see Mom's doctors.

We'll see how she is tomorrow. I'm left to wonder how she'll be come Thanksgiving.


UPDATE: One symptom of carboplatin, for 10-30% of patients, is extreme fatigue. Also: I asked Dad to check Mom out to see whether she'd been injured in her fall. Dad reported that Mom had a red spot on her left buttock and a small scratch very low on her back. I can't imagine what caused the scratch; she sat down hard on the couch, then slid heavily to the floor after I'd grabbed her arms.


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