Hi, friends...just a quick update. I have read a lot of your recent blogs and wish I had time to respond. There is a comforting familiarity in those blogs, and I thank everyone for simply writing what you do. Thanks, too, for all the pm's asking about my brother.
At this point, he has only a few weeks to live at best. 10 days of chemo failed to stop the spread of the cancer in his spinal column, or ease his symptoms, and his doctors at Anderson (Houston) finally admitted to him and his wife that most people treated for this rare cancer don't live more than 12 weeks past diagnosis. He was diagnosed in early February, so you can do the math. Sadly, he is not accepting visitors, as he is barely conscious most of the time. He's so fragile that the doctors told him he can't be taken home to Dallas even for hospice care. As he told my sister in law, "well...I guess that's that.". What more can I add.
Grandpa, on the other hand, wasn't as cantankerous as I thought he's be a few weeks ago during his "forced move" (his words) to "the prison" (his words again). The assisted living facility he's now in is, in a word, spectacular. The staff is friendly, the food is incredibly good (white-cloth dining at all meals), there's a nine-hole golf course on site, chapel and concert hall. As I stood in the lobby of the main building and read the "Today's Activities" calendar (beadworking, bingo, a presentation about the native birds of the Everglades, an afternoon tea with the founder of Robb and Stucky), I found myself thinking, "gee, I'm ready to move in myself". I think grandpa has accepted the necessity of the situation. The fact that he gets to keep his condo on the beach (and go home to stay there once in a while whenever one of his many children or grandchildren come for a visit) has made the move a little easier on him. Fingers crossed that he's a little more upbeat everyday.