Mom is doing no better, but not necessarily worse either, but not much progress might be considered worse. After coming home Thursday, she had to go back in Saturday night after higher temperature spikes. Her counts were down to ~400 from the ~1000 two days before, so the release was premature. The doctor thinks the steroids she was given artificially increased her progress, and she wasn't creating neutrophils (good white blood cells) on her own so once the steroids stopped, so did progress.

So she is still going through cycles of chills and high fevers, she is still exhausted and her shoulder is killing her. It's probably because of all the time in bed and the effect of the chills, but her muscles are all tight and knotted up. I've been going over on my lunch break to try to rub out some of the knots and the effects of lying down so much, but hopefully her friend Nancy the masseuse will be able to make it up there tonight to better effect. She said I was the third to ask if she would be willing and/or able to make the trip to the hospital to help. It's a sign of how bad it is that Mom was willing to ask for help. She was in tears from the pain when I visited on Tuesday, and seeing that, on top of everything else she's dealing with...it was too much.

I can tell how much weight she's lost in a very short amount of time. She has it to lose, but not this way: she just feels so frail. I remember feeling Grandpa lose his strength the very same way and it was devestating then. Mom is at least 10 years younger than Grandpa was when he was going through this, and somehow that makes it worse.

I don't even know how Dad is dealing with this.