9:45am Tuesday Morning

Mary, the nurse, was here.. she's been a nurse for 30+ years and knows MUCH better than me what's going on with Mom. She checked her all out and believes that she's probably retaining too much carbon dioxide that it's making her very sleepy and not responsive. Her breathing is very shallow... and it kind of all makes sense now because what we've been seeing the last few days is that she's making a groaning sound every time she exhales. That's most likely due to the weakness in her diaphragm, it must help her to push the air out of her lungs. Mary assured me that CO2 retention is very comfortable (which IS what it looks like) and that as her carbon dioxide climbs, eventually her oxygen will decrease. Mercifully, we shouldn't see any signs of "air hunger" which is what all the ALS literature warns us of! She hasn't had any medication now for almost 7 hours and is resting very comfortably with the sun shining in the window and landing right on her warm face. I'll keep you posted.