30 March 2021
Last night was fast food night. Burgers and pizza. If you can believe that.
Well don't.
We started out with a shrimp cocktail. Medium shrimp mixed with diced red onion and sliced celery before getting a sprinkling of lemon juice and a roll in seafood sauce. Parsley on top with a slice of lemon in a chilled glass. The best part is drinking what's left in the glass.
Next was the leftover pizza. A piece each of garlic clam pizza.
We cleansed our palates with lime tortilla chips and green salsa before piling up a tower of a veggie burger made with Impossible "meat."
Fast food. Our plates were clean in seconds.
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TODAY WAS A FIRST. Our first home application of Lidocaine before debridement at the Plastic Surgery Clinic.
I had emailed Dr. Tong to ask about the best way to do it and Alex called to explain. She somewhat succeeded.
I have to apply a cream directly to the wound, the whole wound, half an hour before we leave. So Joyce has a dressing with Dakin's Solution for about five or six hours, then the Lidocaine with just gauze held in by drape because it's just temporary, coming off as soon as we get to the clinic.
It's all about communicating.
The hard part was getting the cap off the tube of Lidocaine. No two caps are ever alike. There's apparently a law about it.
I read the embossed but tiny white legend on the small cap top in strong sunlight. At an angle. It still wasn't easy because the little arrow indicating which way to twist the thing to open it had s tail that looked just like the head. (Sometimes, Would Be Graphic Artist, asymmetry is your friend.)
We squeezed little dollops of cream at strategic points in the wound and spread them around with a long swab to get into crevices a fingertip would miss.
Joyce screamed bloody murder.
Which might not have mattered except our reclusive neighbor was having a couple of guys over to look at his side door across from our front door near the room where we go all this. So she was audible.
We got out of there as fast as we could.
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I WROTE ALL THAT in the waiting room on my phone after it downloaded an update and updated six apps because, you know, it has priorities.
Dr. Tong came out to get me after the office had shut down at 4:30. She was very pleased.
She only had to inject about 20 percent of the Lidocaine she usually does. So she was very pleased with the cream application. And impressed by the dressing of dry gauze and drape.
"Where did you get that?" she wanted to know.
We never reveal our sources.
She said she went "to the top" to get us more Vashe but was told Joyce didn't qualify.
"But we got two bottles," I confessed. I told it was on our Byram list now so we should be able to reorder it.
We only have to find a source for the Dakin's Solution and, since you wants to continue it, the Lidocaine cream with the adult-proof cap.
On the way to the clinic, as we were walking down the street, Cat the PA called to go over supplies and promised to talk to Dr. Tong after today's session to see if she should reorder that. She said she'd reorder the Dakin's Solution.
That should be funny. The pharmacy said it couldn't get it, remember? And ordered it from Amazon.
We'll be seeing her early in April. Dr. Tong said she could fill in for the week she isn't available before the slate of appointments I made with Alex while my phone was updating itself. I had to wisdom to ask for a printout and she vaguely remembered how to send something to the printer.
Which is what I showed Dr. Tong so she knew the schedule.
It's all about communicating. And eating dinner. Which I'm going to do now.