Huntington Visiting Information, Phone Number

Denise is now at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena.

• Room 4124 in the La Vina building (best parking lot is off of Pasadena Ave.)
• Phone number is 626-535-6458 directly to her room.
• Visiting hours M-F are 3pm-8pm.
• Visiting hours Sat & Sun will be decided when she finds out more about rehab schedule.
• She'd like to eat dinner alone (served 5pm-ish).

Denise has requested no visitors tomorrow (Friday Nov. 11), as she'd like to get to know her new surroundings and meet everybody that she'll be working with. Visiting hours were set by her, based on her desire to have her therapy sessions consist of only her and her therapists. Again, don't feel offended... she even told one of the prayer moms that was planning on coming today that their visit should be postponed (and Denise was asking for them). She felt that if people visit during therapy or meals, she'd feel compelled to make small talk, or feel self-conscious, causing her to lose focus on the tasks at hand. Eating is something she has to concentrate on doing for now. She also wanted to batch her visitors in one time window instead of having people in all during the day.

You can send an email to her room from the hospital's web site... be sure to put "Denise Williams" in the subject line. There's a link at the top of the "Links" section of the blog. I will still check her pullingfordenise@yahoo.com email, but if you could go through the hospital's site instead, that'd be one less thing for me to do.

Denise happily signed her own signature on the transfer papers this morning. We had a bit of a detour once we left USC (ambulance driver got on I-5 south instead of north... whoops!), but she got there. As the ambulance was backing into the parking space, we saw her USC doctor (who's also associated with Huntington) through the back window. I think he cloned himself... he's always at USC and now at Huntington, too. He lives & breathes hospital. When he came to Denise's room to get the rehab doctor up to speed, we mentioned that we saw him from the amblulance as we arrived. He joked, "I was wondering who was trying to back over me."

She's elated about starting rehab and is jumping right in, making friends with her nurses & therapists. We have a neighbor whose relative was at this facility for a few months last year, and the neighbor said that all the nurses & therapists were wonderful. I saw plenty of evidence to support that today. The rehab mindset is different... now I understand why it was decided that rehab would be better than a "regular" hospital for Denise. She has much more control & freedom in this setting, and I could see the positive effects on her morale after just a few hours. She's excited that people can bring things from "the outside," that she can wear sweats, shorts, jammies or a nightgown instead of a hospital gown, that she can put on makeup if she wants to... the list goes on. Encouraged by the recent permission & encouragement to set down guidelines for how she wanted things to be, she stopped to apologize for sounding so "determined" about everything. Notta problem. It's about time for her to get some control of her life back. I thought back to the book about suffering I read, in which it stated that we can help suffering people feel better by giving them control of some aspects of their lives. I'm seeing how therapeutic that concept is.

As for the medical stuff today, heart rate was 88, temperature 97.6 (oral strip thermometer), and blood pressure 110/60. There was a time today when her gut was really working overtime, she was huring, and the BP went up higher. She had to use the bedpan, but four doctors were checking on her. That kind of anxiety would my blood pressure go up, too. It came back down to normal again. While her USC doctor was giving the rehab doctor Denise's info, he mentioned that the lumbar puncture did reveal antibodies or antigens (sorry... don't remember which word) for cocci (valley fever). That's what we anticipted, as an ID doctor at USC said that there was a mold growing from that sample. I also overheard that the MRI revealed that the cocci was probably in the brain at some time. During the first couple days at USC, the ID doctor said that cocci NOT being in her brain was the ace up our collective sleeve. I would need to search back through the blog, but I recall hearing that an earlier MRI showed signs consistent with possibility of cocci. That may have foreshadowed what I heard today. The doctor pointed out yesterday that we almost lost her because of the cocci. Bearing that in mind, and looking at where she's at today, I can't begin fathom how much hard work and how many miracles have been poured into her.