Sorry for two posts in one day.

It's just that there's one thing I forgot to mention in all this mess.

My grandmother has had non-Hodgkins lymphoma since I was a junior in high school. She's gone into brief periods of remission, so brief that I hesitate to call them 'remission.' Originally, it was discovered around (not inside) her brain; when it came back last year, there was an orange-sized mass in her spleen. My junior year, my grandmother was hospitalized for a sepsis infection (for my Catholic readers, that's the thing that supposedly killed JPII); she nearly died, but she's pulled through since then.

Usually, my grandmother goes through weeks of treatment (usually eight weeks of treatment, chemo twice a week). She's already lost her hair and wears a wig. She's always had trouble walking, but her back especially (and hips and knees) are now so bad that she rarely leaves the house. She's never had the best diet to begin with.

In the middle of August, we were notified that her lymphoma has returned, this time as a mass around and possibly inside her colon. The mass is around the size of a small cantaloupe (yes, it's bigger than a grapefruit, which is the largest fruit-termed measure I've ever heard used for a cancer mass). Originally, it was thought that she would need to be hospitalized for treatment, but after a long debate over a treatment from Europe that has now received FDA approval, it was decided that she could go through her 'normal' chemo treatments and not have to be hospitalized.

During the course of her treatment, she has been getting weaker and weaker, and my mother had told me that one of her legs looked drastically more swollen than the other. As it turns out, my grandmother has a blood clot in that leg, and she's been hospitalized after all.

I wish I could say that her husband, my grandfather, has been a reliable source of strength through these hard times, but it's not true. He's been gradually getting more 'forgetful' throughout the last several weeks. We can't figure out any possible causes, but he's lost his way to the hospital from their house (it's right down the street, but he took a wrong turn and became so lost he had to ask for directions) and also become disoriented on the way to the bank (even closer than the hospital), so disoriented that he had to return home (and couldn't find his way) to ask for directions. He's also had fainting spells. We really can't figure out what's causing it, but we have it narrowed down to mini-strokes, mild dementia/the beginning of Alzheimer's, and an overdose or wrong mix of the medications he's taking. Whatever the case, it's not going well.

These are both my mom's parents, and between caring for both of them she and my aunt, her sister, are becoming rather frazzled. It used to be that they would go out once a week and help their parents, my grandparents, to clean their house minimally, but it's become so bad that they've hired a lady to come in once a week and do basic cleaning. Now, with my aunt back at work (she teaches fifth grade and so works constantly during the school year), the brunt of caretaking falls on my mom. She's so worn out by it that she's been drinking more than usual (my mom drinks four times a year, one drink, usually, and lately she's been having a stiff one once a week), crying more than usual, and falling behind on things that need done at our own house.

Really, it's just a mess, and I don't know what to do. I can't go out and help because of the amount of work I have (I couldn't even go out to visit my grandmother at the hospital tonight because of the work I've had pile up on me). Everyone, please pray for my family and their continuing good health or their swift recovery.

tl;dr prayers plox?

- Jen -