Walked holding rail, No emesis so far

Here's a photo of Denise using a cane to walk yesterday. You can see that she doesn't have much hair. Rather than having a few long wisps of hair, she decided to trim it all about the same. The bald spot on the top & back of her head was peach fuzz a couple weeks ago. Now it's more like a coconut. Denise thinks she looks like a baby bird with fuzzy head feathers. The workout today included walking without a cane, but just holding onto the rail along the hallway. They had Denise trying to do squats & walking backward. She was shuffling backward yesterday... sort of a moonwalk.
As far as numbers I don't understand go, her hemoglobin went from 9.2 a few days back to 11.1 today. Very good to see that trend. Her magnesium was 2.1 Wednesday and is 1.7 today. That's low normal, but they're starting to boost that anyway. Her potassium, which was a big problem when she was home most recently, is not a problem currently. Yay!
The j-tube feeding is still doing well today. The nurses have been flushing the tube more frequently than requested, and that's paying off by keeping the tube from clogging so far. The little ice cream cups that Denise gets for dinner are staying down, too. She only had one time today where she felt like she'd throw up. My aunt aspirated some of the stomach acid out through the g-tube, rolled Denise on her left side, and the feeling subsided. For some reason, laying on the left side makes her GI tract happier. Up until this point, she's preferred to lay on her right side. Go figure.
On a sad note, we lost one of our pets today. We're lamenting the loss of Gracie's beloved balloon animal. The administrator of the SNF, upon seeing Gracie & Jacob the first time last week, promptly made up a balloon poodle for them. Gracie thought it was pretty neat that with a few untwists & retwists, I could convert the poodle into a giraffe. Jacob preferred the sword. But the poor old balloon made the ultimate sacrifice today, popping while I tried to retwist the sword back into a giraffe. So now our dog Chloe is back on center stage with the kids. Yes, we already have a dog. No cat needed. By the way, somebody posted that if I try throwing the cat upside down, it'll land on all four legs. Now, you know that if you drop buttered bread, it always lands with the buttered side down. Somewhere I heard someone ask what would happen, then, if you taped a piece of buttered bread, buttered side up, to the back of a cat. Maybe I'll try that with Clovis the SNF cat tomorrow during the halftime show. Denise invited me to the nursing home to watch the Super Bowl on their big-screen TV. I'm rooting for the commercials this year.

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