It's been hard...

As some of you may have heard, my grandma had to go into the hospital at the beginning of this month. She had a urinary tract infection that we got her antibiotics for but her condition continued to worsen. After getting to the hospital, we found out that the UTI had cleared but her condition (confusion and shakes) were coming from high blood calcium. After a week of testing and scratching possible reasons off the list, it was down to lymphoma. The cancer doctor said that it was an aggressive lymphoma and that it advances so fast that symptoms usually only show once its at stage 4. They said that scans shows that the lymphoma had spread just about everywhere and that because of her existing conditions and her age, treatment would be a painful failure. Several doctors came in and pushed towards quality of life over length of life. Without treatment, she will be gone in a few weeks to about 2 months and with treatment (only a light treatment as the full treatment regimen would not be suitable for her) she could live 4-6 months...that is only if there were no complications with the treatment. It's an absolute shock, as she was pretty much okay just a few months ago. After talking it over with her and the rest of the family, we have decided that quality of life was the better option. We watched her sister go through a fight with a rare blood cancer a few years ago and it was brutal. For about 3 days now, she is now back home here in hospice care (getting everything set up and her back home is another story...). She is mentally herself, can't really get out of bed just because she had spent too much time laying and not moving while in the hospital. She absolutely doesn't want to die and can't believe that she has cancer. It really is hard to believe. There really is no saying how long she has, everyone has been praying for a miracle.

Anyway, that's why I haven't been on the forum too much lately. I know I have a Engine of the Month Black Lynx .049 drawing to do, that only takes a few minutes of setup to get done though. I really want to get the World's Smallest Traveling Engine out and about before the summer has a chance to get away from us.