Valentine's date, 92.2 pounds, Liver enzymes elevated

Tonight's picture is from this evening's Valentine's Day date. I've never been on a date to a nursing home before. Hopefully this is just practice for doing it again with her decades from now, right? We got all dressed up, I brought a card & flowers, and I gave Denise a CD of Billie Holiday singing love songs. We danced to You Go To My Head (Denise's favorite from the CD), among others. She had that feeding tube attached, so we couldn't do any fancy moves. That's my excuse. I can't do any fancy moves, anyway. That's Denise's department, as she's the dancer. The wonderful thing about swing dancing is that the guy's part isn't that tough. The gal's part is much flashier, and makes the couple look like they know what they're doing. But enough of that. Here's what went on since the last post...
Denise's folks came for a visit on Sunday & Monday. They hadn't seen her in two or three weeks. Denise, her folks, and my mom all went to several of the craft sessions at the home and made Valentine's goodies.
Today's weight was 92.2. I was hoping that the weight would increase faster. In a perfect world, Paypal would have a way to send Denise pounds & ounces over the Internet.
She's still been throwing up once in a while over the last couple of days. It's usually not very much, and she thinks it's been caused by thick phlegm from her cold lately. Yesterday she had to try to eat a zinc pill that had been crushed and mixed into applesauce. There's apparently no option for IV zinc that's not in TPN, nor should it go down the j-tube, as the granules would clog it. Fortunately, the speech therapist thought that if ice cream does well, applesauce would be a reasonable next step.
The liver results came back showing that the liver enzymes are elevated. I have to get the specific numbers, and we're going to see if we can get the doctor that's associated with the SNF in touch with the USC hepatologist. At USC, they gave Denise bear bile (urso) because of sludge building up, and that might do the trick for her again here. Remember that a couple days ago the GI doctor noted that the liver was enlarged. The ID doctor commented that it would be hard for him to imagine that the liver was harboring the cocci while she's getting better everywhere else. So as has been the case with Denise all along, she's just filled with little surprises. She's kind of like a piñata that way.
It's been an eventful couple of days around the SNF, too. Sometime yesterday or today Denise's wheelchair and seat cushion went missing. They are rental items. There are so many wheelchairs there, it would be easy to see how someone would grab any available chair in a pinch. I put stickers with our name & number on Denise's chair, so hopefully we'll find it. On a more somber note, yesterday there were emergency vehicles there when I arrived in the morning. As I left, I saw cars arriving and the people getting out were crying, so I assume the emergency vehicles were for their loved one and I also assumed the worst had happened. It reminded me of the ICU waiting room at Arcadia Methodist. Then tonight just as I arrived for our date, a "code blue" was called over the intercom. I actually got light-headed and felt tingly for a moment, as it reminded me of when that code was called for Denise in ICU in the early days of her hospital stay. The staff at the SNF snapped into action and things got better for that resident.

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