When it rains... it pours

Maybe this is superstitious, but I swear that when one thing goes wrong in my life, it suddenly seems as if everything is going wrong. My grandpa died on Tuesday, then on Wednesday afternoon my grandmother (his ex-wife) was finally properly diagnosed, but it wasn’t a good diagnosis. Two years ago she began to get some symptoms like shaky hands, trouble gripping things, and slurred speech. The doctor at the time told her that she had just had a mild stroke and gave her some medicine and sent her home. But ever since then it’s gotten progressively worse, and she now can’t walk and has a lot of trouble talking and swallowing. The doctors kept switching up her medicines and telling her that it shouldn’t get any worse, but it did. Finally, my Mom took her to a specialist clinic and she got to see a neurologist. The neurologist diagnosed her with Progressive Supranuclear Palsy which is a very rare, degenerative disease. It’s related to Parkinson’s Disease but is much worse. It shuts down the person’s body functions one by one. But the worst part is that it took them over 2 years to diagnose it properly so the disease is already fairly advanced and during the past 2 months, the disease has progressed even more rapidly. My grandma was fine at our wedding but has lost a lot of abilities lately.

Yesterday, my grandma had surgery to have a feeding tube put into her stomach because soon she won’t be able to eat any longer. This is supposed to be a good step because it will improve her quality of life and ensure that she gets properly nourished and reduces the risk of food or liquid ending up in her lungs, which could kill her. It looks as if I’ll be flying home for a couple days sometime within the next few weeks. I’m hoping to wait until Thanksgiving because Rachel will be home and I’ll be able to spend a few extra days at home with my family too. My Mom is obviously taking this pretty hard and I’m anxious to get home to see her. If you all could please pray for my family, we would really appreciate it. And please pray that I can find a cheap plane ticket because I’d rather not spend my entire paycheck, but I will because at this point, I just want to go home more than anything.