Halloween pics and a semi-weekly update

Friday, being Halloween and all, Mom had lots of visitors so she dressed up for the day... I asked her to smile and this was the best she could do until the babies came up. Her Mission President and his wife came up for a few minutes to visit. I had never met them.Ainsleigh slept through the first part of the non-party. She is dressed as a pink poodle.

Colleen made Lottie's costume, a pumpkin, and seeing her brought out a big smile from Mom.

I was leaving the hospital the other day and it was dusk, this is what I saw when I turned right out of the hospital parking garage.
And then I turned down A Street to get out of the Avenues and this is what I saw. It was really pretty and my cell phone pictures do not do it justice.
So for an update on Mom's progress: Last week was a little harder on Mom than she would have liked. She is really tired all of the time. Her blood counts are in the toilet and she has had to have many blood transfusions to get her back up where they would like them to be. She, so far, has had 5 units of red blood and 7 (I believe) units of platelets. They expected her to need that many red but that is more platelets than we were told she would need. Her white cell count is up to 0.3 (from where she was 0.1 last week); I read one article that said a normal count is between 1500-8000. Mom's neutrophil count is 0. Our neutrophils are our immune system. So right now especially she cannot fight any infection.

Mom has started getting sores in her mouth and especially her throat. She has been asking for pain meds because it hurts to swallow. She has not been getting a large amount of calories because it hurts to eat, so she is trying to drink boost shakes, etc, because they have the calories and vitamins she needs to live. She gets really discouraged because she hates just laying there doing nothing; that was until Dr. Asch told her to cut herself some slack because she feels like crap! I like Dr. Asch, she is from Jersey. We gave Mom her "Gloria's Big Book of Cancer" and she loved it. She cried a little when she turned to the L & M pages because there were pictures of her brother Lee and her Mom who are both dead. I guess even at 63 you miss your Mommy when she is not there.

Someone asked me the other day how the rest of the family is doing and I just said, "Fine." You know I can not speak for everyone else, but over all I think I am alright. I have moments where I can not remember what I did yesterday and honestly I do not know how I am getting my homework done each week but I have an A in the class so far, so I guess I am doing alright. One thing the hospital encourages the care givers to do is to take time away from the hospital to focus on THEM. The first week mom was in I had a sleepover with Candice, last week I went and got a pedi. This week I have a facial scheduled and will be spending Election Night watching the returns with interest. I have not had to teach my class at church for 2 months because I have the best co-teacher(s) ever and the other teacher for Special Needs has just taken over the class. I do have to teach SN next week (not Thursday this week because it is the Talent Show) and I have to teach the Sunday following that in my ward. It has been great not to have that little extra stress in my life. I went to a viewing last night of our neighbor who died last week. His granddaughter was there and did not remember my name. Michelle and I spent every single day of each summer of our teen years together. She also did not remember my sister at all. It was such a silly thing to make me sad this week, but I was really sad about it.

On a non-related side note: I liked Wretchel's post about the many many goals in 1001 days... so I think I am going to do it. But not today.