9 May 2023
I took Joyce to Kaiser this morning at 10 a.m. to have two MRIs, one without dye and one with. The MRIs are done in a trailer across the street from the hospital so I sat in a sort of porch to the building housing the reception room while the banging commenced.
They are noisy things, those MRI machines. One woman was in the trailer with her. The roll-up steel door on the side of the trailer was up a foot to let some fresh air in (or some magnetic resonance out, I don't know).
Joyce had to climb some stairs to get into the thing. They she was rolled into the machine to scan her spine, rolled out for a shot of dye and rolled back in for the second 10-minute scan.
When she came out, she forgot her trekking pole but I heroically reminded her before the technician returned to the trailer and she graciously retrieved it for her.
Then we got in the car parked conveniently nearby on Geary and went home.
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BY THE TIME I returned from Golden Pavilion where I was helping my mother with lunch and physical therapy, Joyce had heard from Dr. Brenman.
The MRIs showed no further deterioration in her spine and the puzzling white spot, which had sent us to the chief of surgery for analysis before the pandemic, was still a small puzzling white spot. No growth.
So she won't have to worry about that any more.
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THERE WAS MORE good news. Her sisters Carol, Mary and Judy plus her niece Whitney and her daughter Viv are coming to California for a visit in July.
It's been a long time since she's seen anyone, let alone family from the east. I'm sure it will do her a world of good.
And no, I don't worry that Dr. Tong will elect to do the final month-long surgery to close the wound then. No, I don't. I don't. Not at all.
Well, maybe a bit. We see her later this month.