19 June 2021
Salwa the LVN has flown off to Jordan to be fitted for her traditional Muslim wedding dress. It had been shipped to her three sizes too big (well, that was before all that fasting at Ramadan) and the final fitting is as close to the wedding as possible.
She's been busy, finding an apartment in Foster City to begin married life, arranging the wedding for August 15 and handling almost 60 nursing visits a week, many of them the time-consuming Wound VAC variety.
Ben the RN will pop in and then we'll see. Salwa assured us all the LVNs in San Francisco are very good. They're probably all in the wedding.
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MEANWHILE JOYCE RETURNED to the Plastic Surgery Clinic Thursday after missing last week for a debridement. But this time Jennifer Clark, a new physician's assistant did the job.
Joyce liked her. "She's nice," she said. And she didn't poke around painfully.
She came out to meet me in the waiting room where I was watching the Giants demolish the Diamondbacks courtesy of the UCSF Guest WiFi. I didn't ask why Kaiser was piggybacking on UCSF.
"Doctor Mike!" she greeted me. "I don't think we've met. I'm Jennifer, a physician's assistant."
We shook hands.
"Oh, I guess we can do that again now!" she acknowledged. San Francisco has just lifted Covid restrictions. It was, in fact, the first time we'd entered the building without having our temperature taken and confirming we had no symptoms.
Joyce only screamed a couple of times, she said.
I asked about any leftover Vashe. No, she used it all this time during the debridement that went over an hour. But she'll order some for us through DME. Durable Medical Equipment aka Byram, which requires Joyce to confirm any orders so we don't end up paying hundreds of dollars for stuff we don't need.
We have enough Vashe to make it to next week when Cat will do the debridement. She usually has some of the expensive water left.
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IT IS AMUSING to see how each person does the dressing differently. Jennifer added a new wrinkle, putting the two Mediplex pads on upside down so they looked like a pill.
That overlaps the wide part, leaving the pointed parts at the top and bottom of the wound. Which looks right but, when you don't use an abdominal pad, it doesn't collect the drainage efficiently.
And Joyce felt it leaking later.
It will be amusing to see how the new LVNs dress the wound. If they ask, I'll show them photos and coach them from across the room but Doctor Mike can always fix whatever it is they do when they leave.
Which reminds me, it's time to do the morning dressing change now.