Sedated vs. Alert, Mirror, Sneakers

Been a rough couple days since the last post. Denise has had some more sedative a couple times, and when she starts coming out of the stupors, she's still asking about the baby & we're reliving the bad news over & over. At this point, I just show her the picture of her holding Danny & say, "Don't worry... he's being very well taken care of right now." I'm a little discouraged, because I kind of thought we'd be beyond all this after bringing her to full-throttle alert and telling her about the baby a couple days ago.
The more Denise becomes alert, the more uncomfortable and aggitated she gets. Yes, it's good that at least she's well enough to be awake sometimes & be able to know she's miserable. But I don't like seeing it. I'm also having to explain the tubes & hoses once or twice each day. I finally brought her an unbreakable mirror (a baby toy) so she could see herself. Her eyes teared up and I reassured her that she's getting better and stronger, and eventually all the hoses will be gone. On the light side, she'd complained over the years that as she gets older, her jawline gets broader like her dad's (who has no neck whatsoever... he's built like a fire plug). So I reminded her of that gripe, and said that she doesn't have that problem right now. She raised her eyebrows & nodded.
The gastro doctor called to say that Denise's isn't tolerating the tube feeding very well. Today they did a third paracentesis and drew off about a liter (the previous one drew 1.7 liters... think of that... almost a 2-liter bottle). They're going to test the fluid for infection. Speaking of infection, my last post stated that we're dealing with only cocci and clostridium difficile (c. dif). I forgot to mention the pseudomonas aeruginosa. The cocci (Valley Fever) didn't show up anymore, but there are still those other two infections that are causing quite a bit of trouble. And we can add vancomycin to the current arsenal of meds. Same story with raging fevers, colitis/diarrhea (eew!), nutrition problems (especially protein... she looks to me like she's pretty bony lately), and need of transfusions (to those offering, they say there's not much point in directed donations if she's not scheduled for a surgery), and a few other things that I can't even think of.
On the positive side, she got her hair done, legs shaved, feet pampered, and some other nice things yesterday, courtesy of the nurses. She really liked that. She also has an unlikely medical apparatus: classic Converse Chuck Taylor high-top sneakers, black (trivia: that's what I and the groomsmen wore to our wedding). They were needed to prevent ankle problems, and the inflating boots they had were too big.

Movie Note: Parking yesterday was a royal pain in the bohonkus during the movie shoot. Denise's dad saw a stunt double for Tom Cruise get out of a car & jump over some shrubs. Funny, I thought Scientology might enable Tom Cruise to do that, too. Oh well. For those of you that plan to see Mission Impossible 3, the Arcadia Methodist hospital will have "Virginia Regional Hospital" on the doorway and parking lot banners, and the sign for the building will say "McGrath Medical Tower" (in real life it's the Nor & Fran Berger Tower). That's the entry way that we rolled Denise through 5 1/2 weeks ago when this nightmare started.

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