Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
'If This Is an Emergency, Please Hang Up..'
27 November 2021
At 11:30 yesterday I drove Joyce to Kaiser Hospital on Geary where the engineers are still on strike, demonstrating outside the main entrance. I parked in the white zone and walked in with her. The guard said I could go to Admitting with her even with the car in the white zone, so I did.
But to go up to the fourth floor surgery unit, I would have to get checked in, so I wished her luck as she turned toward the elevator and moved the car.
She was scheduled as an add-on surgery for sometime between 2 and 3 p.m. but that just means be ready by then. It could be any time after. Even the next day, as happened to her the last time she was in there.
So around 2 p.m., I took my phone out and kept it handy waiting for Dr. Tong to call with the results of the procedure.
Joyce said she didn't get in there before 3 p.m. and just after 4 p.m. Dr. Tong called.
"She did well," she said. And when she comes out of recovery, if she has no pain, she can go home. The recovery nurse will let me know in an hour.
Meanwhile, back to wet-to-dry dressings twice a day, skipping the Santyl ointment. Just Dakin's Solution, Vashe or sterile water, whatever we have handy. She'll see Joyce next week and we'll talk about where to go from here. "I have some ideas," she said. But she wanted Joyce to make the decisions.
Around 5:15 p.m. the nurse called to tell me she'd be ready to go in half an hour. And just after 6 p.m. I picked her up and took her home.
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She hadn't eaten anything but a snack in recovery so the first order of business was to make dinner.
I thought I might make shrimp burgers, but it was easier to put a baguette of frozen La Brea bread in the toaster oven, boil some water for spaghetti, wilt some cherry tomatoes in oil and saute some jumbo prawns in the same oil.
So that's what I did and we had a lovely dinner by candlelight. Listening to the Warriors pregame show.
At 7:30 p.m., dinner over and the game in full swing, I put the game on the TV in the bedroom and watched a sluggish start turn into a double digit victory.
Joyce remained at the table looking out the window beyond the candles and finishing her wine.
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I heard a cry for help as Joyce stumbled to the bedroom doorway. "I'm dripping blood!" she screamed.
And she was. From the dining room, through the kitchen into the bedroom where I told her to lie on the bed face down so I could look at the wound.
The dressing Dr. Tong had applied was completely soaked in blood. It had become detached at the bottom and blood had run down her leg.
I cleaned her up (and the floors and rugs before the blood could dry) and then took the dressing off to see what was going on.
It wasn't pretty. Blood had pooled at the bottom of the wound around the muscle and I could see another pool on the side of the muscle. All the surgery had occurred above that, though. So there would be no broken blood vessel I couldn't see.
I texted Salwa a photo and asked for advice. I'd just texted her to let her know about the surgery and plans to continue the wet-to-dry dressing changes with her on Monday morning.
She was very helpful. If the bleeding doesn't stop, call an ambulance. If it does stop, it will be OK.
So I put some gauze in the wound to try to absorb the pooling and we just waited a while to see what happened.
Meanwhile I called Dr. Tong's clinic number and got that dreaded message, "If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911." I hung up.
When the gauze didn't absorb any more blood and the pools seemed coagulated, I dressed the wound with Dakin's Solution so the gauze wouldn't stick to it when I removed it.
In addition to the Mediplex sacrum bandages, I used a full sheet of drape to seal the wound. If it bleed through the bandages, it wouldn't get through the drape but we'd be able to see the bleeding. And we'd go to the Emergency Room.
But she spent a relatively peaceful night with no further bleeding.
