I came down to my moms last night to stay over and help her with some things around the house and sorting through belongings to decide what she wants to get rid of. I got here yesterday and my brother and his girlfriend where here so her mood was better than it had been earlier in the day. We all went through the packet that we got from the ALS clinic together, had fun picking out the typos and had each other rolling with laughter...our sick and twisted humor is our coping mechanism. Once they left we talked a bit and she took a nap, then my Aunt and Uncle came so we ate the lasagna I made and sat around talking all night, feeling fairly normal. This morning was a different story however, I think her mornings are the worst and those are the times she breaks down. When she can't do the smallest thing like shaving that those of us take for granted, when someone has to help her pluck her eyebrows because she can't, when taking a shower leaves her exhausted. She cried and cried, the reality of it all hitting her and we sat cuddled up on the couch together crying. Eventually we dried our tears and got back to business, spent an hour and half going through things before she needed a nap. Now I am trying to summon the energy to get up and clean her bathroom while she is asleep. I am emotionally , physically and mentally drained an exhausted. Besides dealing with my own grief from this I also deal with a few different auto immune diseases, some other conditions and pseudotumor at the moment which isn't an actual tumor but there is too much pressure on my brain from spinal fluid which tricks my brain into thinking it has a tumor so I have the same symptoms as someone with a brain tumor, plus I have a husband with his own health issues thanks to the war in Iraq and I have a young daughter.....I'm going to need to learn how to balance it all but I have no idea how, how, when I leave here so drained do I go home and be a good parent rather than a parent who when her daughter says "its not fair" wants to shout back "lifes not freaking fair!"