Mt. Everest

At the hospital

• A good day today. All labs trending in the right direction, at least a little. Rach slept comfortably last night, without the soft restraints.
• They've been trying to wean her from the ventilator almost every day -- she gets to about 20-30 minutes, and then it's too hard to breathe, her heartrate goes up, etc. Today she went 4 hours without a problem, and only stopped because she had a CT scan to go to.
• Rachel wrote out a few questions today on a pad of paper. Her handwriting was really hard to read, but I figured it out. Her first question was "Why am I in the ICU?" She had a few more that showed she's a little confused, but this was definitely a step forward.
• The neurosurgeon was encouraged enough by her progress to schedule an MRI for later this week, to undertand better the extent of the brain tumor or tumors.

At home

• First day of school today, and the kids stopped pretending not to be excited.
• Conor finished his ascent of Mt. Everest, i.e. the summer math packet. It was a long, hard climb -- we crossed the Marshes of Multiplication and the Word Problem Wilds, almost lost a Sherpa in the Great Quotient Crevasse, and finally climbed the rocky East Face of Division this evening. But it was worth it. (One underrated parental activity is taking the ol' SarcasmMobile out for a spin every now and then.)

Pat