4 February 2021
After emailing Dr. Tong last night to ask her to explain what she planned to do tomorrow and who long Joyce would be in the hospital, she called this morning. Joyce spoke to her for about five minutes, getting a much different picture of what lies ahead.
From the photos of the wound and the recent dressing change she did, Dr. Tong said the wound is healing well but slowly. So she wants to speed things up a bit by moving to the black foam.
When Joyce is able to handle the pain with oral medication she can go home.
To do that, she wants to clean off the yellow tissue or slough to get down to pink tissue and apply the black foam to that, presumably over Adaptic for easier removal.
She will also give Joyce the option of an epidermal catheter to manage the pain. When Joyce is able to handle the pain with oral medication she can go home.
So it is possible that Joyce will have the deep cleaning and black foam dressing on Friday and come home Saturday. Although it seems more prudent to have the first black wound dressing change done at the hospital on Monday and if that goes well come home Monday or Tuesday.
Salwa the LVN would then be able to pick up on Wednesday with the black foam dressing changes. We already have the supplies.
The Monday and Friday surgery slots next week were just tentatively scheduled in case Joyce needs them. The surgery unit is quite backed up, Dr. Tong said.