25 June 2021
Yesterday Joyce had her "weekly" debridement at the Plastic Surgery Clinic. This time Cat did it. That's a $10 copay instead of the $20 for Dr. Tong. Both of which are routinely refunded.
As we were sitting in the waiting room, Dr. Tong popped out of the door and stopped dead, pointing at Joyce to say hello. She dashed on right away to get a cup of coffee and returned to ask how things were going.
Joyce told her things were going pretty well.
Dr. Tong said, surprisingly, she's hoping to keep her out of the hospital.
'Who is this Doctor Mike anyway?'
And here we were thinking we had an August hospital date set.
A nurse came for Joyce and I opened my book to read in peace for an hour. The place was pretty deserted, partly because one person was half an hour late for her appointment.
Cat usually breezes through Joyce's debridement in half an hour but this time she spent nearly an hour. Afterwards when she and Joyce came out to the waiting room to tell me how well it had gone, she said the wound is looking good, healing well if slowly.
"She only screamed twice," Cat said, smiling.
I asked her why the surgery was pushed back as far as August. She said they were completely booked for July. And they hoped to avoid it with the clinic visits.
I also asked her about the CT scan. She hadn't seen it but suspected Dr. Tong just wanted to confirm there was no cancer.
I told her the report didn't mention anything. "If the report didn't say anything," she said, "that means they didn't find any cancer."
Another surprise. So the CT scan was not a question of guiding new surgery at all. Just a checkup. In fact, the hospitalization would be for a more intensive debridement. And the "weekly" clinic debridements would be a way to put off the necessity for a more intensive series in the hospital.
It was all coming into focus.
"See you in two weeks, Doctor Mike!" Cat said as we wrapped it up. That's the next "weekly" appointment.
"Who is this Doctor Mike anyway?" I asked. She laughed. Probably some dentist, I thought.
Later that day, Vic the LVN called. He can't do the Friday dressing change until 3 p.m., he told Joyce. We do two a day, 12 hours apart, around 9-10 in the morning and 9-10 at night. So 3 p.m. stinks.
That may be the nightly dressing change today. We'll see. If it doesn't work out for Joyce, I can always depend on Doctor Mike.