May 12th

This post will be quite short as our mom is going to do a longer Mother's Day guest entry before she goes to bed. The medical updates for today are pretty much the same as in the past few days. I looked in her mouth today, and from my standpoint it looks like there is a lot of healing happening. However, at lunch time today she did feel a few new sores form - to me, they look a little different than the ones that formed before (and not as nasty), though Christine says they feel the same to her. I am hoping that they stay small and don't become too painful. She still has a lot of pain and swelling in her left knee, though her right knee and ankles are continuing to look more normal. Her skin is actually looking very good, and a lot of the dark areas (from the blistering) are starting to fade. Her O2 sats are unchanged - still hovering around 90 during the day and in the high 80s while sleeping (requiring her to sleep with O2). We also noticed today while Donna was visiting that her heart rate is quite high - it seems to oscillate between 90 and 120 even while she is sleeping. I had noticed this a few days ago, and now that we have realized it hasn't gone back down we are going to ask the doctors to investigate this more thoroughly and see if it could be connected to the low O2 levels.

I was able to hang out with Christine for most of the afternoon today, and it was really nice to spend so much time with her. I've been very busy with work things lately and so have only got to spend a small amount of time with Christine every other day or so. Donna was there with me for the afternoon, and she actually performed Reiki - the therapeutic touch that Christine likes so much. Christine said Donna was amazing at it - it was even more relaxing when she has the MGH nurses do it. I don't totally understand how it works, but Christine says its her only 30 min of ZERO pain in the whole day. Incredible! It was neat to watch too. Dad and Christine had dinner together tonight, and Dad is on "night duty" again, bunking in on the cot.

I think that's it for my part today... stay tuned for more about our Mother's Day celebration from guest author Mom!