Update on Irene

Mike and I just came back from a week in North Dakota, taking care of Irene's affairs, visiting her at Manor Care (she is in room 254B and has her same home number there if you'd like to contact her). She is having good days and bad. We spoke to her doctor and the biopsies they did didn't turn up a significant amount of cancer - her main problems are her back and some leg swelling. She can't walk right now, but she is going through therapy. I don't think she'll be running a marathon anytime soon, though.

We packed up her things at assisted living - the doctor tells us she'll remain at the nursing home and they will keep her comfortable. She was having eating and sleeping issues, but they switched her meds and she seems to be doing better. She is sounding more 'with it' and alert, but when we were there she occasionally became confused - it seemed like a touch of short term memory loss, probably due to lack of sleep and the narcotic pain meds they have her on. She loves company though - every visitor that came in got her smiling and her sense of humor hasn't left the building!

We also visited Mike's friend Howard twice, who is in a nursing home, as well as another friend's father, who is in another assisted living facility.

Outside of the bug attacks on the road, buckets of rain on Friday (can you say soggy?), it was really just running around Minot between getting paperwork taken care of, packing up her apartment, and spending as much time with Irene as we were able to. We did have some breaks where we spent time with a couple of his friends and just acted stupid and had a few laughs....a much needed break during an otherwise sad and pathetic time.