Finally home

Today we finally arrived home after one of the most stessful weeks of my entire life. We basically were living in a state of crisis for a whole entire week.

Long story short...Mark's mom, Catalina, is alive and recovering! Praise God! There was a time period of about three or four days when she basically was hanging between life and death. She was in a coma but is slowly waking up.

For those who don't know...they removed the brain tumor and found it to be benign. Awesome. However, the recovery from the surgery was awful. She started swelling really bad and less than 24 hours they had to go back into surgery and remove half of her skull to allow for the swelling. At this point they didn't know if there was major brain damage or if she would ever wake up.

She is slowly, slowly waking up. she still cannot open both eyes and cannot speak. Her whole left side is paralyzed. However some good things are happening every day....

Some highlights....
--she squeezes our hand and shakes it as a response.
--she waves
---she gives a thumbs up
---she can point to things when they hurt
---she knows who we are and knows our kids
---she knows she had surgery
---she can write sentences in Ukrainian, Spanish and English

The doctors say that the recovery process can take a year. So we have a lot of waiting to do. Meanwhile, we are so thankful that she is alive.

And I am also thankful to be home...