Blood draw for liver, Short home visit

Blood draw for the liver happened at 4:45 pm today. That means we won't hear results until sometime tomorrow. The pain overall has been diminishing as the days progress, however there was a very painful time this morning for her. She said that once in a while she can just find a comfortable position and the pain disappears completely. Interesting. Also interesting is a pattern for the pain, hot flashes, dizziness, and nausea... It's the worst overnight and during the morning. Might correspond to the milk of magnesia they're giving her each night to keep the GI tract moving along. And in going in the direction of digestion, the feeding that they're giving her has contained fiber, which clogs the tube fairly frequently. The word today is that they're going to change out the brand of feeding and give her one that has no fiber in it (this is in compliance with what the GI doctor recommended in the first place when she moved to the nursing home). We'll have to stuff her with peaches, pears, prune juice... Hopefully she'll be able to keep it all down. She had one 150cc emesis today right after drinking some milk with supplement powder in it (and she likes the taste). The calorie count has been put on hold for a while, until she can start to eat more food by mouth. Jumping back to the emesis, Denise's caretaker said that Denise frequently complains of feeling very hot (she's not running a fever) before throwing up. She sometimes complains of dizziness when laying down. She's been itchy, too. Maybe she's allergic to something, but it's hard to see what's changed that would cause these things all of a sudden. I believe that these things started on Friday or Saturday, and we'll keep track of everything in hopes of giving the specialists clues that might help them figure out how to help Denise.
She was sleeping this morning when I visited her, then she was all wound up during the afternoon. That seems to be the time when she's the most wired. I don't know... maybe her feeding tube should be flushed with caffeine-free Coke instead of regular? The occupational therapist thought that it might be a good idea to stop bringing the kids to the therapy sessions for a while, because Denise has started becoming more distracted... no surprise... they're cute kids. The OT noticed that Denise has been hyper for a few days, and also brought up something that I'd forgotten to mention that happened yesterday. During therapy, the OT told Denise that her lips were dry. Denise didn't even respond. I tapped her on the shoulder and asked if she heard what the OT said. She hadn't. That worried me, as it reminds me of a mild version of how she was during her seizure. The doctor requested an appointment with the neurologist (hopefully we'll get to see the same one that tended to her at Huntington for the sake of consistency). I received an email suggesting that we look into the possibility of Denise being mildly (I'd think *very* mildly) bipolar. Perhaps that's worth a look-see if things don't eventually even out. But I thought that perceiving one's spouse as being bipolar is simply a result of being married for any significant length of time, each person thinking that the other is completely bonkers at times.
Denise had big plans for going out on a pass tonight. But all we did was come home for about an hour. Never again will we try to take her out during rush hour. We spent a disproportionate amount of our pass time in traffic. By the time she left she was losing her hyper edge, but during the day she talked about wanting to shop for pets, visit the jewelry store, see a movie, go to the Robinson's-May sale, start up as an independent Avon consultant, look at housing closer to work & church, paint a mural in the nursing home's dining room, start taking summer classes to become a physical therapist (she's loved her PTs & OTs), adopt children, fill out an employment application at the nursing home... Yikes! Too much stuff!
I distracted her by snuggling when we got home on our pass.
That worked.

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