Fever crept up, but so did Denise's spirits, Kids visit

Fever going up a bit. She was at 101 tonight for the first time since leaving USC. We don't like to see that. She feels pretty good in spite of that, though. They're taking blood & urine samples for testing. Other stats include a BP of 120/88, heart rate of 110, and administration of coumadin, coreg & lanoxin (digoxin) for the heart, plus the usual antifungal & antibiotic meds. She had a much better day today than yesterday. Still minimal therapy, being a weekend. Here nurse team today went way above & beyond, taking care of Denise plus four other patients while also taking up the slack while the therapists were on light duty for the weekend. Denise said she felt sorry for the nurses, likening them to a parent having to take care of five different babies, each in a different room. The kids got to visit mommy in her "new home" today for a while. Jacob is still not too snuggly, but was an easy laugher while Denise was playing with him. Gracie was all about snuggling, though. One of the nurses custom-taylored Gracie's gown so that it was the pefect length, and said she looked like Cinderella. Gracie liked that comment. I drove back & forth a few times to visit, and we talked up a storm for a few hours. She had her moments of pain & frustration, but we were getting pretty good at getting comfy. I've had a few months to learn a few tricks about tugging sheets & tucking pillows, and Denise is getting stronger and more able to pull herself to the side, or sit forward on her own. She said she thought I should be a nurse or a doctor, as she thought I could zero in on what she needed fairly quickly. Yesterday Denise had pain & redness at the site of the g-tube. Today the doctor adjusted something, and the pain subsided. Also yesterday, she got to wheel around the halls much more than she did the day before. She didn't remember that until today.

A correction to Thursday's post: I mentioned that at one point Denise's blood pressured jumped up. That was according to what she told me. Today the nurse said that the pressure dropped instead, to 80/60. Workable, but not as good as it's been lately. However, it did go back up again. My hope is that the cuff wasn't tight enough, or was off-center and gave a false reading. Through it all, Denise still maintains that she didn't feel much worse than usual; she was more concerned with trying to use that bedpan with an audience.

Yesterday I became aware of a sudden loss in the lives of two of Denise's caretakers from Arcadia Methodist that lost a teenage daughter recently. I know the feeling of losing a highly-anticipated baby, and of anticipating the loss of a spouse of 8 years. I can only imagine the devastation of losing the daughter into whom they have poured their all for 19 years.

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