My niece is still alive but in a deep coma.  She is by no means out of the
woods, and there is no way of knowing if she will ever come out of the
comma.  The pressure in her brain has gone down slightly, but not as much as
they had hoped for when they decided to remove the piece of her skull.

The clot was in the main cerebral artery on the left side.  It was an "old"
clot that had been somewhere else in her body, probably since the twins were
born, and moved into her brain Wednesday night.  The artery tore when they
tried to remove it, causing massive bleeding in the brain.

Every hour she survives gives us more hope, but the reality of what is ahead
for her, her husband, and the rest of the family is just beginning to sink
in.

Amanda is done with her dose packs and the inflammation and fatigue are back
in full force.  She is being a real trooper though.  I rarely here a
complaint out of her.  We see the RD again in two weeks, but I am going to
call him Monday and let him know how she is doing now that she is off the
prednisone.

I saw the hand surgeon yesterday.  He thinks the nodule on the palmer aspect
is a ganglion cyst.  He injected it to see if it would go down.  If it isn't
significantly better in two weeks, we'll just take it out.  I will only miss
one day of work for that.

The nodules on my MIP and PIP joints are growing larger but he doesn't want
to look at them until my RA is back under control.  I talk to my RD on
Monday about that.  She should have all the labs by then.

Anyway, that's the update.  Thanks so much for the cards and prayers.  You
are all the best.

Walt