Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
Whirlwind Week
26 March 2021
It's been an unusually busy week. Monday Joyce had a debridement at the clinic with Cat the PA and we ordered supplies from Byram for the first time. Tuesday she had another with Dr. Tong after Salwa the LVN changed the dressing in the morning and I ran down to Costco and Trader Joe's so the frig would have something to do. Winnie and I had a chat about what to do to speed the healing up on Tuesday. Wednesday we started the new routine and I ran over to Mom's to pay bills and take out the garbage. Thursday Salwa continued it, I shopped for Mom's groceries while Alice is visiting her own mother in Texas and we got our second Pfizer shots.
Vaccinated. And pretty weary of the whole thing.
TO PULL JUST ONE ITEM out of that hat, the chat with Dr. Tong about the wound was the most important.
She said it has continued to heal slowly. I noticed, I told her, that the yellow slough seems to come back pretty quickly and it seems to insulate the Vashe from getting to the pink tissue that should be growing to close the wound.
"Exactly," she said.
That's why she's doing these debridements at the clinic. She or Cat scrapes away some of the yellow after numbing the wound with Lidocaine. A little more each time.
Which was what she was in the hospital for last month for 10 days. But it seems like all that work was undone by the growth of the yellow slough.
We did get more Vashe.
So Dr. Tong suggested using Dakin's Solution, a dilute bleach, once a day to inhibit the growth of the yellow slough. The second dressing should continue to be Vashe.
We did get more Vashe. Cat gave us what was left from her session, so did Dr. Tong, but today two small bottles were delivered. We went through five small bottles in a month.
I asked Dr. Tong if the Dakin's Solution would irritate Joyce. She thought it might. But that's a good sign. That the nerves are exposed and growing.
Except it hasn't seemed to irritate her.
WE WERE BOTH GLAD to get our second Pfizer vaccination today. In two weeks we'll be at maximum protection. With all the running around I do (Costco, Trader Joe's, Home Depot, Papenhausen Hardware, Tower Market, CVS, the clinic, the hospital and those long walks I take every day), I'm lucky not to have met the enemy.
Things went very smoothly at USF. Joyce forgot her mask and appointment card but I had an extra mask to lend her and my appointment card sufficed to get in. We checked in and waited about two seconds to get to a vaccination station.
The crowd was surprisingly much smaller than a month ago, Didn't all those folks have to get their second shot today too?
We waited our 15 minutes without keeling over (although, as you can see in the photo above, Joyce considered it). And then we drove home. I took half an hour at the most.
Joyce has a slightly sore arm but I'm unaffected nine hours later. Except, you know, my body has become a lean, mean, Covid-fighting machine.