8 January 2022
Yesterday Quoia the LVN came with a trainee named Carolyn to change Joyce's dressing. She had asked if that would be OK with us and we had said of course it would. If there's any benefit to going through something like this it's that others will profit from your experience.
But it's also interesting to hear yourself described.
On Monday, Salwa the LVN had said we were here most compliant client. By which she meant that we follow the course of treatment. We don't circumvent it or drop the ball or throw up our hands.
And when Quoia described us to Carolyn, she said we were quite unusual in that we bought our own supplies (mostly) and had a close relationship with our doctor (so they don't have to report every detail) and even laid out the supplies needed for each change (which I'd do anyway for myself).
'We're a team,' Quoia puts it.
Both Salwa and Quoia appreciate that sort of cooperation. "We're a team," Quoia puts it.
But the operating principle is communication. The people helping you can't do nearly as good a job of it if you don't communicate well. If you don't tell them what you've observed or send photos of the wound to the doctor or ask questions when the conversations starts running away from you.
Two technologies have made that easier on all of us in this case than my prior experience with, say, my father, nearly 20 years ago.
One is texting. The nurses and I are able to unobtrusively check in, ask questions, confirm arrivals, request supplies and give updates with just a few words or sentences.
The other is email.
Contacting a doctor has always been a black art. You used to have to call the office where a well-meaning but delusional secretary would play gatekeeper and dispense with amateur medical advice until the doctor was free to respond.
But Kaiser's secure and private email system allows us to contact any of her doctors and provide photos to document our concerns. The system promises a reply within 24 hours and we usually get that. If not from a doctor, from a physician's assistant. But our concerns are addressed.
It's allowed us to maintain the wound without any back sliding for a year and a half. Dr. Tong always expresses her appreciation for our work (all of us nurses) and thanks us over and over as if we've made her job easier.
Maybe we have.
℘
WE ARE SWITCHING GEARS next week. The in-home nursing outfit held their annual review last week over Zoom at 7 p.m., going through each case to see what the upcoming case loads will be.
We're an unusual case. We should only be getting two visits a week but because Joyce was on a Wound VAC order we've been getting three. We'll go back to two next week.
Quoia will be on extended leave for surgery after next week, so we may not see her again, although she said she'd be back Friday. And we've asked Salwa if she would do Monday and Thursday instead of switching off on Friday (which she takes off).
It's short term, we hope, in any case. I hope Joyce gets back to the hospital this month. And just to improve the odds, I've made a dental appointment for later this month to ensure some sort of conflict.
Never fails.