Arrangements were still uncertain tonight for U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's sudden return to Honolulu to visit his ailing grandmother, such as where Obama will stay, what time he'll arrive on Thursday and when he will leave.

Campaign officials traveling with Obama today said details of the Honolulu trip were still being arranged.

Obama on Monday canceled his campaign appearances for later this week after his grandmother's condition deteriorated.

Today, Dunham's brother, Charles Payne, who is Obama's great-uncle, told the Associated Press from his Chicago home that Dunham, who turns 86 on Sunday, "has not been well for a long time. Then she fell and broke her hip fairly recently. She's unhappy with the condition that she's in, I can tell you that."

He said his sister is "gravely ill."

Payne, 83, said told the AP that he spoke to his sister briefly on Monday and is planning to fly to Honolulu for Dunham's 86th birthday.

"We had a short and as upbeat as possible conversation," said Payne, a retired university library administrator. "She hated the hospital."

Payne declined to speculate on whether his sister had the strength to see her grandson through the election on Nov. 4.

"I think, of course, it's been terribly important to her," he said. "And she would like nothing better than to see that."

Obama is expected to fly to Honolulu following a Thursday rally in downtown Indianapolis.

Dunham later returned to the two-bedroom, 10th-floor apartment on Beretania Street where she raised Obama, along with her late husband, Stanley.

In August, during a family vacation in Honolulu following his Democratic Party nomination, Obama told reporters that Dunham was struggling from osteoporosis that limits her mobility.

In his speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama talked about Dunham when he said, "She's the one who taught me about hard work. She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me."

Obama attended private Punahou School on a partial scholarship and through tuition paid by Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, according to Honolulu journalist Jerry Burris who, along with journalist Stu Glauberman, wrote the recent book, "The Dream Begins: How Hawai'i Shaped Barack Obama."

During his childhood in Honolulu, Obama's life centered around a five-block radius that featured Dunham's apartment at the epicenter, Burris said.

"It was the center of his universe," Burris said today. "From there, he walked to school at Punahou. From there, he walked to his job at Baskin-Robbins on King Street. Although the family wasn't particularly religious, the church where they had his graduation convocation was right there across the street, at Central Union Church. That was his world and that was his life."

Obama had three strong adult influences — his grandmother, his late grandfather, Stanley, and his late mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, Burris said.

But for much of his childhood, Stanley Ann Dunham was traveling through Indonesia and Africa pursuing her University of Hawai'i master's and doctoral studies and becoming an expert in "micro-lending."

"You had his mother, who was this free-thinking, aggressive internationalist, who told him he could be anything he wanted to be — just fantastic in telling him his world was bigger than just his little world," Burris said. "And then you had his grandfather, who was kind of a free-thinker and a kidder. Stanley was a furniture salesman and then a life insurance salesman — a good salesman, but he just couldn't make it selling life insurance."

So Madelyn Dunham, who became one of the first two female vice presidents at Bank of Hawai'i in December 1970, provided Obama's foundation, Burris said.

"Dad was not in the picture," Burris said. "Stanley was a personable kind of guy and his mom was traveling around trying to save the world. Grandmother was straight down the middle, no nonsense. She could run a bank department as well as any man. She worked all the time but she was back at the apartment when he got home, and she did the cooking. So Obama had these different channels coming in. But the steady center was grandma."

Alton Kuioka, vice chairman of Bank of Hawaii, is the only Bankoh executive manager still around from Dunham's tenure, following her retirement in the mid-1980s.

Although most Bankoh employees did not know Dunham, Kuioka said a generation of female bank executives in Honolulu owe a debt to her professional achievements.

"She was one of the pioneers," Kuioka said. "She leaves a legacy behind that opened the door for many other female vice presidents. We send our prayers and our thoughts to her and her family. We hope she gets well."