Matzos

Late afternoon

Lara has conked out. In fact, she has been sleeping much of the day since she woke up around 8:30AM. That is a pattern we are told will unfold more and more in the days ahead, with increasing intensity.

Besides a few sips and bites for breakfast, she has not eaten anything, and the little she ate she returned. Anemic and in aplasia, with no food, there is small wonder she is as feeble as she shows herself. Saturation is at 99 (almost too good), her temp is below 37.0C and her blood pressure at no more than 9 over 4. At noon her morphine was scaled back to 10 mg a day, from 12.5.

We will try and make her eat something like pumpkin soup with cilantro, a bit creamy for her taste normally, but, hey, she won't exactly gain weight over it now. Maybe some crackers (matzos), and later this evening some rice pudding. At least she drinks regularly.

This afternoon, Lara performed a complicated transaction on line, and even though I coached her a little (she types very slowly), she was literally in the driver's seat. She was shivering with adrenaline by the time it was successfully over, walked from her desk without oxygen and slumped back on the bed. Twenty minutes later her brother Gordon invited her for a Skype conversation, and the two talked for about ten minutes, setting a date for the next one (a hopeful sign somehow). Then promptly fell into a deep sleep.

Several people are cueing up to call her from abroad: California, New York, Spain, France. I have to master it carefully, so everybody gets a small piece of her. Not that she doesn't care to speak to her friends, she just doesn't muster the oomph.