Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
An Apocalyptic Day
9 September 2020
It's been an apocalyptic day here. At dawn, the darkness yielded to a scattered golden light that gradually turned the sky black. Smoke from the wildfires to the north had blown over our fog, creating something like a total eclipse of the sun.
Red Sky. At my mother's house just a half mile or so from the beach, the sky is red. I took this shot just before noon and, yes, it really did look like that.
And it's been midnight all day. No wind off the ocean to disperse the smoke. No rain to knock it down. Ash everywhere.
The end of the world.
But first a word from our medical team.
Tyler arrived just after 10 this morning with Carla. She took the vitals and had the same trouble getting an oxygen reading from Joyce's cold fingers as he had.
But she had a trick. She asked for a cup of warm water. And put Joyce's hand in to get the blood flowing.
"Watch out, Joyce. It makes you pee, too," I pointed out.
Carla laughed, "That old slumber party trick."
But it got her fingers warm enough for a 98 reading. Normal.
Tyler did the dressing change. Both of them were impressed with the healthy tissue growing in the wound. I asked about the redness, which was normal, they said, and the yellow, which is dead skin being pushed out, Tyler said. Normal growth.
After they left, I hustled over to my mother's to rake the leaves, bring up a rose for her, take out the garbage, resupply the bathrooms, wind the clock and pay the bills. I also took a few photos of the sky.
And I put a load of our laundry in for what I hope is the last time. The new machines arrive Friday between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., delaying the end of the world as only Lowes can.
She had a problem with her TV (she'd accidentally changed the input source), so I walked her through the fix. Just keep making the same mistake. A rule nearly everyone follows anyway. It eventually cycled back to the HDMI port her cable is connected to.
Then there was low pressure from the kitchen faucet. "Don't bother," she tells me right after she mentions anything. I cleaned the aerator.
"The bathroom toilet sounds funny," she did not say plainly, beating around the bush. She has to wind up, look over to first, step off the rubber, look for the sign again, shake it off, get into the stretch, throw to first and repeat. Or something very nearly like that.
I flush it and listen. The old valve is hissing. There is a "new" one from about 20 years ago in the basement, I happen to know, so I swap it out.
Of course, the leak detector doesn't work in that tank, but I think it's a nice feature, so I leave it attached. I invite her to try it and she tells me it won't flush. The leak detector has shut the value off.
"I don't need two toilets," she tries to be agreeable.
At least the thing didn't leak, I tell myself, and pull the little detector off before trying it a couple of times, dropping the level of the lake down the street about six inches.
"Well, sorry," I apologize, "now you've got two toilets again."
Then I drive back in the darkness with a basket of wet laundry in time to catch Alpha (it is Alpha not Alfa and her last name is, believe it or not, Omega) giving Joyce some instructions. Most of the visit is counting reps, so I just observe so I can coach Joyce later.
As she leaves, she tells us how she loves her job. Steven is from New Mexico and she's from Florida but they both went to the same school in the Philippines. She laughs when I show her his drawings of the exercises he gave Joyce. No, she can discontinue those, she says. Her exercises will make Joyce better, she promises. She loves seeing people improve.
She'll be back on Friday. Or Saturday. Anything to put off the end of the world.