1 September 2020
If you ever get impatient waiting for some phone call, the trick is to turn on the stove. One burner will do but two is quicker. And if you drop some nice piece of fish that can only flounder in the skillet for less than two minutes a side, the results will be instant.
So last night with the pasta boiling in the water and the pesto waiting for it in a sauce pan and the skillet smoking with two tuna steaks searing, the phone rings.
It's Apria, the company that supplies the Wound VAC. No, they can't make it tonight to replace the power cord. How about tomorrow? Well, we have surgery in the afternoon. Before noon, OK? Yes. And not just the power cord. The thing won't stop beeping. OK, we'll swap everything.
It really felt like one person talking not a dialog.
I turn the tuna over and keep an eye on the second hand of the kitchen clock. The phone rings again.
It's a physical therapist who would like to come by tomorrow for an in-home evaluation. Well, we've got the Apria guy in the morning and surgery in the afternoon.
I pass the phone to Joyce so I can fish the tuna out of the skillet.
I wish that were the end of the story but our evening was just beginning.
He'll call again Wednesday to set up a time.
I wish that were the end of the story but our evening was just beginning.
Joyce devoured her caprese salad before I put the tuna in the skillet. And she ate almost all of her dinner. She'd only had that strawberry banana Ensure smoothie all day.
After dinner I put on a lovely French movie called Just a Sigh but the subtitles made it difficult for her and she went to bed. I went downstairs to do my end-of-the-month work for the site.
But I could hear the pump beeping.
Another "Leak Alert!" I checked for a leak but really didn't detect anything. And it was pumping. But it persists and stops pumping -- but still beeps. There was no way we were going to get any sleep with an alarm going off at the side of the bed.
I called the home healthcare number and left a message. Just as a formality in case I decide to cook the tilapia tomorrow night.
And we called the surgery number and left a message for Dr. Tong there. At some point, I don't remember when.
But, following Tyler's1 example, I call the Kaiser Advice Nurse.
"It's your lucky night!" Dana the Advice Nurse tells me. "I'm an expert on Wound VACs. Worked with them for years."
I consider adding him to my list of pall bearers. You can never have enough pall bearers.
He has me turn the unit off completely and turn it back on. Sometimes, he says, the startup routine will suck the leak closed. But not tonight.
I can, I tell him, now detect a faint hiss near the lily pad2 but when I gently press around the wound and that area specifically, I can't stop the leak3.
He has me get some scrap adhesive for the wound from our pile of supplies. Tyler had used some of it, in fact.
And I try to plug the leak. To no avail. Good thing I'm not trying to land a 747 with nothing but the help of the control tower over the radio.
My hunch is that Joyce ruptured the elbow of the tubing where it enters the lily pad when she forgot to bring the pump along with her on some little trip around the house.
He wishes me well, this expert on Wound VACs. And I consider my options. None.
But I have learned how to shut the thing off. And that the world will keep spinning if I do. The pump doesn't lose its settings.
Having read the manual a few times, I remembered the warning that after two hours failing to pump, the sponge should be replaced. Dana told me the cutoff was eight hours. And, after all, he's an expert.
So I put the two together and bargain with the devil (I mean the pump).
I will turn the pump on, start the pumping cycle until it complains about the leak, go to the diagnostic page with the leak graph that keeps it running and repeat that three times every hour. I'll tell Siri to wake me up in an hour and go back to bed.
So through the night, I get up every hour to force the pump to run for 15 minutes. And Joyce sleeps like a log through it. The pumping noise doesn't wake her and neither do the beeps. They barely keep me awake, come to think of it.
At 8 a.m. I stop the routine hoping someone will call around nine. Maybe Tyler will drop by to swap the tube or Dr. Tong will call to tell us to come in early. Or the Apria guy will turn out to be another pall bearer candidate with a super self-sealing pump that saves the day or beeps in sign language.
We'll see.