Anyway, a couple of weeks ago my paternal grandmother -- my last living grandparent -- had a simple heart operation, or at least as simple as a heart operation ever gets. However, when one of her sons went to visit her today she'd gotten totally puffed up. She was taken to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. She responded well to the treatment she was given, and there's a chance she could get over this, but given how old she is and how poorly she's been treating herself since her husband's death, I don't know if she'll really live that much longer.

In other news, while I'm almost entirely over whatever this bug was that screwed me up for so long, my mother is still dealing with a bad case of pneumonia. Her voice has been croaky for almost a full month now, and it really worries me. Mom doesn't keep herself in good shape, either, and she's getting up there in years too. Part of me worries that she'll never talk right again. I know pneumonia takes a long time to get out of the body, but given Mom's poor physical condition I can't help but worry about her.

Anyway, I have to get back to all the schoolwork I missed while I've been sick these past few weeks. There's a real temptation to just slack off here and chat online all night long, but I have to get to work here. Between all the catching up of past work and all the stuff I have to get started on for my end-of-semester papers and presentations, though, I don't know if I'll have too much free time for the next few weeks. No one count on me making any big road trips until mid-May or so. :(