20 December 2022
Joyce had an appointment at the clinic today but we weren't sure until she paid her $15 copay that it was really with Dr. Tong. We'd been seeing her physician assistant for the last few months.
But this is the end of the year when Dr. Tong wanted to evaluate where things stood. When we discussed this months ago, the plan was to go to surgery after the holidays.
So are we there yet?
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THE DOOR to the examine rooms popped open a tiny bit and a small figure in a paper gown and face mask stuck her head through it motioning for me to come in. I got up and saw a crown of some sort on Dr. Tong's head.
The golden letters spelled out Happy Birthday, so I took the hint. "Thank you, thank you," she said. I didn't ask how old she was but I'm confident she's 29 again to the consternation of her physician assistants.
She took me into an examine room but the examining table was empty.
"Where's Joyce?" was my first question.
"Oh, in the other room," she said. And then we had one of the clearer discussions we've ever had.
She told me she thought the wound looked good and was improving, too. She said she took some biopsies to check for cancer because the wound has been open so long. We'll get the results in a week.
If there's cancer, she said, we have to move fast and it would be back to Dr. Fang, who did the original surgery, to do the fast moving. I think I understand what she meant. I think you might too if you think about it a minute.
But if there's no cancer, we can ride this out a little longer.
Since we both noticed that there had been improvement in the wound, that it's begun to close a bit (even though the nurses measure it the same), there's no urgency to try to close it. We can let the wound continue to close.
She might like to do a hospital debridement in January to help things along in the area where there is still yellow slough. (You can see recent images of the wound in the Wound Gallery if you're interested.)
But we can wait until February or even six more months if the wound is still closing up.
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THAT'S NOT GOOD NEWS for Joyce but it makes a lot of sense to me. Another few weeks or months to let nature take its course is better than an unsuccessful attempt to close the wound prematurely.