Yesterday was a really good day for Amanda. She woke up at 5am and she was AWAKE awake. She was awake enough and feeling so full of energy that she was...bored. Just so powerfully bored. She's still not able to go anywhere though, so we spent most of the day watching Junior Bake Off.
The hospital's chaplain came to see her later in the morning, offering religious services in multiple denominations...or reiki, which she's done with Raquel before. So i took a walk while they had a reiki session, which was good for her.
She somehow got put on a low sodium diet, which none of the nurses, the nutritionist, or the cafeteria staff could explain. The nurses were checking through her charts and couldn't see any reason why she needed it, but it was really limiting her food options, and she couldn't find anything she wanted to eat. As i've said before, she's been having a lot of food aversions in the last few weeks, so we really need to find options that she finds palatable or else they're not likely to go down, and if they do, they're definitely coming back up. The nutritionist and two nurses separately contacted her doctor to figure out if she needed that, and it took several hours to get a response, but it turned out that she had been flagged for low sodium by mistake. That opened up a lot more options, so she was able to get the vegetable lasagna for lunch. She liked it so much that she got it again for dinner! The desserts have been pretty great as well.
We had a long video call with Nat, Cal, and Marc that went well; she stayed awake and talkative and fully participated the entire time.
Alyssa, who works at this hospital, came in on her day off yesterday to spend time with Amanda. She brought her new home manicure kit and did Amanda's nails. Alyssa's doing the whole, "well i'm new at this so it's not as good as if you went to a professional" bit but it's like. Dude. They look great. She's very happy with them.
David sent her a package to the house, which Alyssa brought in for her. It's a LEGO flower arrangement! The three of us worked together to assemble it, and now it sits next to the flowers Tammi sent.
Alyssa stayed until about 10pm, and Amanda went to sleep after she left. She was awake the entire day, no naps. She was feeling really good the whole time. It was a good day.
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This morning, she woke up early again, and was still feeling pretty good. Pretty awake. Pretty bored.
Then things started to go back downhill.
Fair warning, there's gonna be a lot of poop talk coming up.
I was still asleep when the nurse helped her to the bathroom this morning. She was feeling constipated, so she asked if she could get a stool softener. She had to wait for the doctor to approve it, which he finally did right about the time they were going to give her ondansetron. Ondansetron is an anti-nausea drug that she's been taking as needed for the last few years. The last couple days, they've been giving it to her about a half hour before meals, to help her keep food down. So she got both at once.
The timing was off though, the food took longer than expected to get here after that, and she started having pretty serious stomach cramps. Right as the food finally arrived, she suddenly needed to rush to the bathroom. She had what she considered a pretty normal bowel movement, and then was comfortable enough to eat her breakfast. She thought the episode may have been caused by having those drugs in there too long on an empty stomach.
Not long after she ate, she rushed back to the bathroom for a bout of bad diarrhea. Afterward, the nurse asked her to rate her pain from 1-10, and she said 5 or 6. For reference, when we first got to the ER on Tuesday, she rated her pain at 4-5.
They gave her hydrocodone, and i tucked her in for a nap. She dozed off for just a few minutes, then sat up, awake, asking if i want to play a tabletop game. I had brought a couple small ones just in case. She said she wasn't sleepy and she didn't want to take a nap. Within minutes, she was asleep again. Which is where we are now.
She's hoping all of this was caused by the Miralax, it's not the stool softener she's used to, and we've already seen during this stay how her body sometimes reacts to different versions of medications than her usual. Her body is a very fickle thing these days. We'll have to wait and see if she's better in the afternoon.
We were really hopeful she'd be going home today. Doesn't seem likely now. Hopefully tomorrow.
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