20 January 2023
Joyce has notoriously been unable to give an oxygen reading as a result of her Raynaud syndrome. The finger oximeter tries to read the blood vessels that are not legible.
We can get a reading fairly reliably from her Apple Watch (which reads her wrist) and sometimes we do. But recently we discovered a sure fire way to get an oximeter reading.
And it isn't by warming up her hands in hot water.
No, it involves ordering supplies from Byram. The process is so annoying, she gets angry and her blood boils, making the blood vessels legible to the oximeter.
You think I'm kidding.
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A WEEK AGO Thursday I tried to reorder 100 of the $27 9x9-inch bandages we use to close her wound after putting in half a roll of Kerlix soaked in Dakin's Solution and an abdominal pad to soak up any discharge from the wound.
Byram wouldn't accept the order because she owed $78.20 on the previous order. That's her 20 percent of the deal.
But she won't use a charge card. She has them invoice her and she pays with a check. It takes them 30 days to conjure up an invoice from an order and a week to process a check. She pays promptly but you can see that, by the time we are out of bandages (100 lasts less than two months), we're out of sync.
So I waited a day until they had processed her check and placed the order.
Nothing happened.
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WHEN WE CHECKED the Byram site to check the order status, it had been canceled. So we used the Web site to chat with Blanca who told us the order authorizing the bandages had expired.
Who knew?
So we emailed Dr. Tong but when we didn't hear back after a day, we called the clinic and Jennifer the Physician's Assistant called back 15 minutes later confirming she had authorized the order.
Two days later and nothing has happened.
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DURING THIS PERIOD, Kristine the LVN has been able to get oximeter readings from Joyce's blue fingers even though the temperature outside is around 50 degrees.
All you have to do is boil her blood.