Family Life and Friendship Network

I've been wanting to post something on how Julie's doing for a while, and now it shows that it's been a while since I'm getting more and more inquiries about her health all the time. I'll back up a bit to cover since the day we were on KSL together.

The same evening we were live on KSL (May 1st), Julie started having seizures. The last time she had seizures were 4 days after she gave birth to James. She seized only on the right side of her body, which is controlled by the left side of her brain, where her tumor is. She went through about 20 to 25 of them over 3 days. Earlier that week, she signed some paperwork for her hospice care, and I had remarked that for the first time in two years her signature almost looked the same again. Julie was walking around on her own for the KSL special, and by the next day she needed help walking, she started using her wheelchair, and she could no longer use her right hand.

A couple days after Julie's seizures had ended, she showed her independent spirit and tried to walk on her own when my back was turned – probably because I told her not to, and she never did like being told what to do. She fell and pulled a muscle in her right leg. She seems to have recovered from this mostly, but I still spend some time each day helping Julie stretch the muscles on the right side of her body that she can no longer move herself. 2 years ago this had happened, and she slowly re-learned how to walk and use her right hand. Now all the progress she had is reversing itself. She is also sleeping more and more often, which is another sign that she is getting closer to crossing over.

While Julie went through her 3 days of periodic seizures, we did not think she would live to the end of the week. A professional actress who does princess parties for young girls heard about this, and about Avalon's upcoming birthday, which we were not sure Julie would live to see. She gave Avalon the most amazing and wonderful birthday party 2 weeks early just to make sure Avalon would get to have one last birthday party with her mom there. I stared goggle-eyed at the very realistic Tinkerbell actress for the birthday party until I caught myself and realized maybe I should stop staring. She posted a wonderful video on Youtube about the birthday party:

Julie's health is gradually failing, though I find it difficult to judge just how Julie is doing from one day to the next because I'm with her all the time. It's become more obvious to me that she is gradually losing what little ability she once had to communicate that she had left.. Although her health declines, she remains strong emotionally and spiritually. When she can communicate her feelings, she says she is happy, and at peace. She also has begun to receive comfort from others who have preceded her. Julie has mentioned twice now that her grandmother had visited her. Tonight Julie had a moment of clarity in which she could communicate. All day she could barely say anything, and even had difficulty answering yes or no questions properly. She went to sleep a couple hours early (at 20:00), and woke up early an hour before midnight, able to speak coherent sentences for the first time that day. She told my mom and I that her mom had visited her during those 2 hours of rest. When my mom asked what she had said, Julie said her mom had said "I love you".