Sunday, March 5, 2006

First time back at church

Here's our family at church, finally with Denise again. It was her first time back in over seven and a half months! She sat in her wheelchair the whole time but stood up for this picture. She wanted to show off for you all. She loved seeing a bunch of people she knows through my school, including a couple young ladies that were students when Denise was a teacher aide at my school. She also had a visit from one of her sisters that hadn't seen her since Christmas. I see Denise every day, so it's sometimes hard to see improvements. But it was nice for Denise's sister, since Denise is so much better now than when they last saw each other.
Medically, here's the stuff... she threw up about 200cc near the end of our car ride to church. After that, she was fine. Again today, based on what she was saying and how she was acting, I was wondering whether or not to be concerned... I don't know if she's just wound up and excited to be out for a coule hours and ready to tackle the world, or if there's something going on neurologically. Denise was much less manic today, though, and was very tired by tonight. She also started itching all over during the night. We're looking into the possibility that withdrawls from Reglan (stopped in hopes that it was causing high liver enzyme numbers) can cause her to be hyper & itchy. My nurse aunt did find a case wherein a child had a seizure when Reglan stopped. Wait and see, wait and see. Tomorrow she has an appointment with the cardiologist. She's a miracle from a cardio standpoint. There was a point where her ejection fraction was 10-15. Last we heard she was closer to 55-60. Should be interesting to hear what the cardiologist has to say about her tomorrow.
Tonight while we were visiting, we talked about what she remembered of her seizures. At Huntington there was a point when she was hallucinating about fecal material on everything. She told me last night that what triggered that was an episode of Fear Factor that she saw just before her seizure. She couldn't remember what may have triggered her obsession with numbers and when she was going to die, though. She also recalled many of the rather disturbing things she was saying and paranoid about while at USC. She couldn't make any sense of where those things came from, but she did remember many of her fears. She was also able to recall more new memories from her hospital stay at Arcadia Methodist, like touching nurses on the face to thank them (she had a tracheostomy and couldn't talk) before passing out again. I think it's impressive that she can remember that much while heavily sedated.

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