Did we do something wrong?

It is scary how fast things can change. One minute you are on top of the world, and the next it all comes crashing down on you.

Jason's mother suffered a stroke November 23rd. It turned out that she had been born with an Intercranial Arteriovenous Malformation. Her recent problems with high blood pressure caused the AVM to hemorrhage. She was transported immediately to Utah Valley. We have been on a sick roller coaster ride watching her get a little better, and then worse again, over and over. On the 27th, a decision had to be made. The swelling in her brain was getting worse and it began to put pressure on her brain stem. To save her life, surgery had to be done. The catch was that along with the clotted blood from the bleed, a piece of the temporal lobe needed to be removed to give room for additional swelling.

The surgery went well. The surgeon finished a half hour before he expected, which was hours before WE expected. Afterwards she got a tiny bit better every few days.

Me, Jason and Riley visited her on the 5th of December. She had had her eyes open for the previous few days, but this was the first that we felt she knew who we were. She looked right at us, and she watched us as we moved across the room. We were overjoyed.

The 6th she went downhill again. She has slipped back into a coma. There was a second bleed. We knew about it before, but we thought it had stopped. This one was too deep to be able to consider surgery. It turns out it started bleeding again. We have a family meeting today at the hospital at 4:00 pm. No one knows exactly what is to be discussed, but it is obviouly not good news.

And it doesn't end there. A second of Jason's siblings has been diagnosed with cancer. Brenda has Multiple Myeloma. They have started her on chemo, blood transfusions, and a really interesting process where they remove the plasma from her blood and replace it with synthetic. I did not even know they could do that.

All-in-all the whole family is just in knots. I wish there was something, ANYTHING I could do.