16 November 2021
You would think things would be on something of an even keel after nearly a year and a half of this. But here we are with no clue what's going on. Except that it's pretty clear the wound is not healing.
That's a rather drastic thing to say but it needs to be said.
Whatever advances were made during the month Joyce spent in the hospital with three deep debridements of the yellow slough have been negated since whether we were using the Wound VAC therapy with black foam or twice-a-day wet-to-dry dressing changes with Santyl debridement ointment.
We just can't beat the yellow slough.
To make a difficult situation absurd, the sudden change to move to wet-to-dry dressings from the Wound VAC without providing supplies has been maddening. It is two weeks since that order came down and we still have not received the supplies we need to execute it.
Of course, the Kaiser employee strikes are partly to blame (although every healthcare outfit is striking, not just Kaiser). When she was in the hospital, the engineers went on strike. Then the nurses went on strike. And this week the pharmacists went on strike.
So the surgery that was scheduled last Friday was canceled, as we mentioned in the last post.
But one nameless physician's assistant had the gaul to suggest we let them know two weeks in advance when we need more supplies. Yes, dear, if you will not change treatments serendipitously. We aren't the problem here. We scrimped through a week with what we had expecting her to go to surgery but we can't scrimp indefinitely.
As it is, we've gone on our initiative to once-a-day dressing changes because we simply don't have supplies to do two. In America, not Afghanistan.
It isn't Kaiser. It's the for-profit healthcare system. Doesn't matter if you need something. What matters is if it is authorized. If someone, that is, will pay for it. And it takes a few days to authorize things and often they are the wrong things.
Of course, even if we volunteer to pay for what we need, we can't get it. It's the system. It's sicker than we are.
And so we get $50 of Kerlix when we don't need any more and no Mediplex (although that's coming at $150, which is only 20 percent of the cost, with far more than we'll ever use before her next surgery). And who knows what else they'll deliver too late and too much of for too much money.
We can send things back, fortunately. And we will. Home healthcare continues to help with one or another product intermittently. But we are waiting for the surgery to be rescheduled and put an end to this scramble. The news is that there has been some progress on the negotiations with a "last-second deal."
But believe me, the "last second" happened a long time ago for us.