27 November 2020
Every 30 days Tyler the RN has to do the dressing change to recertify Joyce's continued treatment at home. Or something like that. Anyway, Salwa the LVN cleverly arranged for him to do that the day after Thanksgiving. So he came a little after nine this morning.
It was not quite business as usual.
He misplaced the top of his pen when he was doing vitals. When Tyler does vitals, he writes everything down. Salwa never does. So she never misplaces a pen top. Clever girl.
It drove him nuts. He looked for the black plastic top on the floor, on the chair where he puts his bag, in his bag. Nothing.
Joyce gave him one from her Bic that just happened to fit. He was grateful because the pen would have dried out. But he was still annoyed.
As we went into the bedroom to change the dressing, he saw the pen top lying near the couch. It was like finding gold.
Poor guy. He spent a quiet Thanksgiving eating sushi from Safeway. He thought they might have a small turkey meal but they were all out. Just sushi. "We all do things we aren't proud of," he joked.
His parents, he said, are in New York and old enough to be at risk if he visited, so he didn't go home for Thanksgiving.
"Oh, where in New York?" I drew him out.
"Upstate," he said as if it were the dark side of the moon.
"Joyce is from Upstate New York," I confided, as if it were the 51st state in the union. "Rochester."
"Really?" he was charmed. His family is on a farm outside Oswego. Next to a dairy farm.
I told him we know a guy* who grew up on a dairy farm in Mount Vision near Cooperstown. We told him how the family had to sell off its cows when it couldn't get a decent price for milk years ago.
A story he knew well. "Small world," he said.
He took off the old dressing quickly after diagnosing the lily pad placement as the reason we were up all night with the Wound VAC pumping, irrigated it with Vashe a little differently than Salwa does, praised the progress, said it's impossible to predict how long healing has to go with a wound this deep and put the new dressing on.
Then he was off.
"It was good to see you," Joyce told him as he left.
"You too," he said. "You're doing great."
℘
P.S. Just a reminder to check in Sunday for the 70th birthday posting and an easy way to send Joyce a short greeting.