Black Clotted Corridor, 37th Day of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Helios): The kid sister is still in the hospital - eight days now and counting - recovering from her cancer surgery. The doctors expect that she'll be discharged on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day.

She's still got a long road ahead. The tumor was in her jaw and her mouth still isn't fully functional. For at least some period of time, her husband will have to feed her and give her medicines via a feeding tube. Tomorrow, she'll endure yet another procedure to have the tube moved from her nose directly to her stomach. If that's successful, then she'll be ready for discharge on Thursday.

I can't imagine the psychological strain this is putting on her. Pain, the institutional indifference of the hospital, day after day of being face-to-face with your own mortality. The mid staggers thinking of what she's going through. 

It's been a rough couple years for the little nuclear family in which I was raised. My father passed in 2006, and my mother just left us last January. My kid brother died a yar ago September, and my cat, Izzy, the December before that. Impermanence is swift. 

The doctors say the surgery was successful and they were able to remove all the malignant tissue from her jaw, but on top of everything else it's a heavy, heavy burden, especially as the ordeal drags on day after day.