Sharon's health (Stan's Facebook updates)

[Maka]

She is beautiful. Congratulations to your whole family. Peace, maka

[Marco Polo]

Such a cutie, Congrats to you and your family

[Steve Hubbell]

41 minutes ago
The Usagi auction is coming up, and there has been questions about what exactly is Sharon's illness. I have posted this information before, but here it is again. Sharon has a type 3 atypical meningioma brain tumor. It is benign, but it is debilitating. The type 3 is also very rare. About 2% of meningiomas are type 2. Type 3 is much, much rarer than that. We were told that in all of Kaiser (presently about 9 million members) there has only been 3 cases similar to hers, so there is no standard operating procedure for it.

In 2004, Sharon woke up to discover she was suddenly deaf in her left ear (everything happens on her left side). That led to the discovery of the tumor. It is irregularly shaped, very large, has spread through the brain and skull, and is inoperable. The doctors thought the best bet would be daily radiation therapy. We did get a second and even a third opinion, and they all concurred with the Kaiser doctors. The radiation would not reduce the size of the tumor, but the best we could hope for was that it would stop its growth. It seemed to have worked. Sharon went in for regular MRIs every 6 months for about 4 years, then every year thereafter. There was no growth at all.

However, to the surprise of all, especially the doctors, it returned in 2011, and quite aggressively. It paralyzed the left side of her face, including her throat and vocal chords, and deteriorated her neck bones to the point where a fall locked her head into position where she cannot move it left, right, up or down. This time, chemo therapy was prescribed. As I said, this is very rare, so doctors took their best guess as to what will work to halt its growth.

There are many effects of the tumor, medications, or just coincidence including diabetes, high blood pressure, rapid heart rate, a frozen arm, etc. She could not eat much because of her frozen throat--it would literally exhaust her to eat. Two hours at the dinner table, and she would barely eat a third of what I had. She could hardly speak because of her frozen vocal chords.

She fainted in April of 2013 and I rushed her to emergency. She had infected fluids in her chest and fungus in her lungs. She was in ICU, then the hospital, then went into nursing care. She came home five months later. We curtained off and turned the dining room into a ward with her hospital bed, air compressor, pumps, oxygen tanks, her feed, etc. She breathes through a tracheostomy tube and is fed a liquid diet through a G-tube directly into her stomach. It could be fatal if any food or even water passes through her mouth. She is bed bound, blind and deaf on her left side and the eyesight and hearing is slowly diminishing on her right. We got her a large screen TV, but she cannot see it even with her new glasses. She still has her spirit, though, and her intellect is untouched. Any type of physical activity exhausts her, even rolling over in bed is an effort. She gets medications every three hours. Pills are ground and fed through the G-tube, injections are given into her stomach, and inhalation drugs are through her trach. Her trach need to be suctioned out about every 2 hours, and the inner tube replaced daily. She pretty much requires 24 hour care.

She has good days and bad. She has gained weight, which is good but it is also more weight for her to move. She was 77 pounds when she returned home. She is now just over a hundred. She goes in for an ongoing series of bi-weekly chemo treatments, and an MRI every three months. She is in palliative care, which is a step above home care and one below hospice card. We have weekly nurse visits, and we are told we are doing a very good job.

We are truly overwhelmed with the outpouring of support we have received from fans and pros. The Usagi books looks amazing. I am glad I am not the one deciding which pieces to include, because each one is wonderful.

Thank you all.

[Steve Hubbell]

38 minutes ago
Here is a list of artists in the first round of the CAPS auction. Thank you.

52 minutes ago
CAPS is happy to announce the list of artists whose work will be represented in our first round of offerings on eBay this coming Thursday, March 6. All of our Stan & Sharon Sakai Benefit Auctions will be sold under the eBay seller name of "CAPSauction" - http://www.ebay.com/usr/capsauction , and each will be a ten-day auction.

Artists are listed in alphabetical order, which is not necessarily the order in which the items will be listed on eBay:

Mike Allred
Dave Berg
Bob Bolling
Dan Brereton
Josè Luis Garcìa-Lòpez
Guy Gilchrist
Joel Gomez
Steve Greenberg
K. Heller
Andy Hirsch
Bill Holbrook
Richard Horie
Tyler Kirkham
Scott Koblish
Roy Krenkel
Roger Langridge
Terri Libenson
Mike Mignola
Eric Muller
Michael O'Hare
Michael Avon Oeming
Gary Shipman
Stephen Silver
Jeff Smith
Paul Smith
Dan Spiegle
Chris Tirri
Dean Yeagle

[Steve Hubbell]

8 hours ago



Granddaughter Catherine (and her parents) came home from the hospital last night!

[Steve Hubbell]

5 hours ago



She still has that new baby smell.

Granddaughter Catherine

[Ian_B.]

5 hours ago



She still has that new baby smell.

Granddaughter Catherine

Congratulations Mr. Sakai!

[Steve Hubbell]

March 8
I made meatloaf stuffed with jalapeño cheese tonight. It turned out surprisingly good.

[Steve Hubbell]

4 hours ago
Dinner tonight! I pan fried a chicken thigh, then used the drippings to sauté a medley of baby Brussels sprouts, asparagus and carrots. It was really good. Must have been the chicken fat.

[Steve Hubbell]

6 hours ago
It's a little early for St Paddy's Day, but corned beef is on sale so that's what I made for dinner. Thanks, Chris Sparks for the Lusty Monk Mustard you sent me. It's really good.

[Steve Hubbell]

21 hours ago
Dark Horse will be releasing Emerald City variant covers for 5 of their books. One of them is a Witcher cover that I had done.

http://www.darkhorse.com/Blog/1630/dark ... ty-comicon

[Steve Hubbell]

5 hours ago
Whole chicken is on sale at Sprouts this week so I made a rosemary roast chicken. I stuffed the cavity with some lemon halves, and it turned out great--crispy on the outside and moist and juicy inside. I had it with saffron rice and a medley of roasted veggies--Brussels sprouts, sweet potatoes, carrots, red bell pepper, and garlic cloves. I also roasted some beets separately so as not to turn everything red.



I set the oven for 425, and it took about an hour and a half. I had coated the chicken with olive oil, and sprinkled salt and pepper, and a generous amount of fresh rosemary.

[plasticplayhouse]

congrats to you and your family stan! that is awesome news!!

[Steve Hubbell]

photo posted by Tyler Chin-Tanner

March 30
Sharon was taken to Emergency. She had been stabilized, then her blood pressure dropped dramatically. I am still in Seattle, but was able to rebook to an earlier flight back to LA. The staff at the Emerald City Con has been terrific in helping me with this. My apologies to those who expected to see me there today.

about an hour ago
I just got back from the hospital. Sharon has pneumonia and fluid in her lungs. They will do a procedure to drain her lungs tomorrow morning.

[Steve Hubbell]

14 hours ago
Sharon has pneumonia and fluids mainly in her left lung. The chemo treatment for her brain tumor also weakened her immunity system and she is susceptible to all kinds of illnesses. As you can see in her x-Ray her left lung, the shaded parts, is much smaller than her right. Doctors will drain the fluids this morning and, hopefully, the lung will re inflate.

3 hours ago
What an exhausting day. I had forgotten just how much sitting in a hospital takes out of you. Doctors did not get to drain the fluids from Sharon's chest until early evening. Putting in the pick line, something that takes about an hour, took 2.5 hours. Sharon has very small veins. The actual draining went pretty quickly. They took out 1.5 liters of green fluid from her chest. It did not look infected, but analysis will determine that. She still has pneumonia in her left lung which they will treat with antibiotics. She is being released from ICU to Step Down to stabilize her and get her off the ventilator. From there, she will go to a regular hospital room, then home. Yay!

Thank you all for your good thoughts and prayers. They are very much appreciated.