27 December 2020
We did hear from Dr. Tong just before Christmas Day. She had a suggestion for a slight change to the dressing (along with her advocacy of the black foam) but she also addressed the surgery question.
Not yet.
Kaiser itself has halted elective, non-urgent surgeries and procedures until Jan. 4 at all of its Northern California hospitals. That reflects the situation statewide and across other healthcare providers.
That, though, isn't saying much. By mid-January she could be in there after all.
We didn't discuss where the supplemental tissue is coming from. Apparently it can be harvested from another site on her body or from a cadaver. Cadavers are preferred, one friend in the business told me, because you don't have to recover from the harvesting operation.
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ON CHRISTMAS EVE, Kaiser left a message that a nurse would do the Friday dressing change on schedule between 9:30 and 10 a.m. on Christmas Day.
Salwa the LVN had said Tyler the RN would be doing it but the last time we saw her (Wednesday), she thought he might miss it because he wasn't feeling well.
And indeed he missed it.
Instead, Toni Bella came again. It's a trip for her. She lives in the East Bay. But traffic on Christmas morning was non-existent for a change. She got here by 10:30.
She does the dressing a bit differently. In fact, each of them does it differently.
But we're learning that where you put the lily pad makes a lot of difference. When the Wound VAC sucks out the air from the wound, you can see quite a depression. If the lily pad is in the middle of that, we don't get good suction. If it's on the wall of the depression, where it's flatter, we do.
Good suction means the pump operates quietly, maintaining a pressure of 125 without constantly huffing and puffing.
Tony the LVN got the lily pad in the right place and the last couple of days the Wound VAC has been quiet and we've both caught up on our sleep.
So we're ready when Kaiser's ready.