Life goes on

I talked to my oldest sister this afternoon. While we were gone last week, she sent a family-wide email about Mom's health, and she sounded ... down.

Well, the upshot is that Mom will probably have to move into a nursing home within the next few months unless she pulls out a massive turn-around in her health, her attitude, and her general skills.

That ain't hap'nin'.

So we continue on the slow road to incapacitation. Marie says she really noticed Mom's condition deteriorate after Jean visited in the winter. She, unlike Mom, seems to be on the downslope on the fast road to incapacity. A new term came up: Massive Systems Atrophy (MSA). Once that begins, apparently (and I haven't done any reading up on it yet), we are down to two or three years.

So, all in all, we ended up crying across a thousand miles of phone line.

Afterwards, I started to wonder if Mom, either consciously or not, isn't setting herself up to die before another of her daughters dies. Regardless of timing, I have a very clear view of the next 5 years: there will be at least two family funerals.

Added to the pall of this day is the news we received this morning of the deaths by murder-suicide of the parents of a friend of ours.

My next (last) call of the day is to another friend. The last we heard--before leaving for Mississippi--was that she needed to have gallstones removed but there was a problem with her pancreas and the doctors were leery of doing surgery until they had that sorted out. Anyone who has had gallstones knows that the thought of waiting when these flare up is horrifying.

The best news of the day is that Beast's family seems to be holding their own, and that Sparky seems to be in a particularly Zen place right now (for a 13-year-old). There are, to my knowledge, no worries here at home.