My sister Laura and I went down to the ‘farm’ (which only has about an acre of veggies on it but we’ve always called it that!) to check on my grandmother. She is doing amazingly well for being 84 and having an 8 pound tumor removed from her. She was being ornery when we got there, demanding to go home as she felt fine. Her blood pressure is high though since she’s been off her medication during the surgery and they want it to be low before she goes. They think now that she’s back on the pills she’ll be fine. I feel very confident she’ll recover from this and still have some good years left. Just a few days after major surgery she was standing up, sitting down, scooting on the bed and walking down the hall at the hospital.

We saw my Aunt Jackie though who has withered to almost nothing after her stroke. She can barely speak and I don’t think the nursing home is doing speech therapy like they say they are. They’re barely doing anything with her, in my opinion. Her mind is still there, but she’s trapped in an arthritic, tremoring body that can’t walk and can barely talk. She finally managed to get some words out that made my sister and I cry: “Let’s go? Let’s go for a ride?”

Ok, need to end this post after bringing back up that image.