Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
Back to White
14 December 2020
Salwa the LVN just did Joyce's dressing change this morning and that's news. On Friday, she replaced the black foam with white foam and asked Tyler the RN to do black foam today. So we were expecting to see him but he thought it was best for Salwa to stick with the white.
A Dressing Change. Salwa tends to Joyce.
For some unknown reason, Joyce has neglected to take any pain medication before the dressing changes the last two times. And Friday was exceptionally painful when the black foam adhered strongly to the new tissue.
I mean she was screaming.
Rather than put her through that again, Salwa reverted to the white foam for the weekend and hatched the plan to have Tyler evaluate her today. But he saw no sense in making her suffer.
So Salwa came at 9:50 and replaced the white foam with white foam. She'll contact Dr. Tong to let her know and consult on any other option.
At this point, though, it hardly matters because Joyce will need surgery to fill the depression anyway. So we're really just treading water until then.
As Salwa said, the tissue is growing and healing with the white foam, so no harm is being done by not moving to the black foam.
℘
THERE WAS SOME other news this weekend, too. Salwa got engaged to Muayad in the Japanese Tea Garden during a break in the storm on Saturday.
She has known something was up for months now. But no one in her family (who all knew) wanted to spoil the surprise. Even the ones who have a hard time keeping a secret.
But she was pretty sure a little over a week ago when Muayad invited her to have a little picnic at Baker Beach that he'd be packing a ring along with lunch.
There was some other news this weekend, too.
And there they were, having climbed down the cliff to the beach with the Golden Gate Bridge to their right and the Golden Gate itself in front of them with the Pacific Ocean going as far as they could see to the left.
He was getting up the nerve to reach into his pocket when she saw his phone had a message. "He never checks his messages," she told us. So she does.
She noticed it was from a nurse, so she insisted he read it immediately.
He's a software engineer working at home but his company provides regular Covid testing. And he'd just gotten the result of his latest test.
Positive.
Salwa was alarmed. She realized she'd just been exposed to Covid-19. They drove to Kaiser in South San Francisco where she told them at the Emergency Room she was a nurse and needed a test and results before she could go to work on Monday. She didn't want to expose her patients.
The rest of her family who had been with Muayad that weekend had to be tested too.
By the time we saw her on Monday she had found out she was negative, her family was negative and Muayad was negative too. It had been a false positive.
And prevented the proposal.
But he persisted this weekend, suggesting the Japanese Tea Garden because the restaurant has open walls so remained open during the lockdown. She'd never been. We told her that whatever happened, she'd love it.
And she did.
When he got down on one knee she got "all emotional," she said, and he got up. But she wasn't too emotional not to order him back down. "You haven't asked me yet!" So he got back down on his knee and completed the proposal.
She said yes.
They took a selfie (they really couldn't ask anyone to take a photo in these days of social distancing) and texted it to us. That puzzled him but she explained we'd been following the situation very closely.
"Who's that?" Joyce asked, bewildered, when I showed her the photo.
We'd never seen Salwa without her mask, of course. Or with her hair down, for that matter. I covered her mouth and nose with my finger and Joyce figured it out. "Salwa!"
"The wait is over!" she announced.