Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
Back to the Clinic
24 September 2024
It was a circus this morning as we left for an 11:30 appointment with Dr Tong.
The bus ride itself is about 40 minutes. But Joyce has to walk to the bus stop at the top of the hill for a block and walk two blocks after the second bus to the clinic. That adds half an hour.
At the Pharmacy. Joyce is waiting for her name to appear on the screen.
I had mistakenly thought we had to leave at 9:30 because I had the wrong appointment time, confusing it with the departure time because, well, I'm not much improved from my concussion.
So we should have been ready to leave at 10:10 which would have gotten us to the top of the hill in time to catch the 43 Masonic at 10:20.
But Joyce didn't have bus fare.
Yes, she knew we were taking the bus again. And she knows she has to pay $1.50 each way. But she had not remembered to corral some bus fare before we had to leave.
(Earlier this week I made an appointment for her at the Kaiser Memory Clinic, something we've been trying to do for two years now. We're going for a "consultation appointment" on Oct. 24.)
I told her to get started up the hill because she walks so slowly but she had barely gotten out the door by the time I found some quarters and caught up with her.
We did make it to the 43 and the 38 Geary and the appointment.
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DR. TONG HAD ASKED us to bring both Vashe and Santyl so she could do the complete dressing, minimizing the time the wound was not being dressed with Santyl. I did but it was the last of the Santyl. Before we left I checked the pharmacy site and saw we can't reorder until tomorrow.
Naturally.
So I asked Joyce to ask Dr. Tong to see if see if she could release the order today so we could pick it up while we were in the neighborhood. Not being able to drive makes little inconveniences like this into major challenges.
Dr. Tong came out to the waiting room to ask how I was doing and tell me she'd taken care of that so we could pick up more Santyl today.
She also said she had looked at the problem area again and thought it wasn't serious, even though it was still sensitive. I mentioned that Jennifer the RN had also not thought it anything other than dead tissue.
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BUT BEFORE we did that, I persuaded Joyce to visit the medical supplies store on the ground floor of the building to buy some compression stockings. She's been wearing old ones that have no compression and fall around her ankles. Over the past few months I've sent her links to online options recommended by the home-care RN and others I've found but she hasn't followed up on any of them. "I don't know how," she says.
But a young lady clerking at the store was very helpful, measuring her ankles and calves and getting a pair of low compression stockings from the wall. She took Joyce's old ones off and wrestled the new ones on with the help of a specialty glove made for just that purpose (and because she had very long decorative nails). The fit tightly but they were the least compression available for Joyce bought two.
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THEN WE VISITED the pharmacy, checking in and waiting a couple of minutes for the order to be filled.
I saw her name come up and got in line while she gathered herself to join me. So we were waiting at the window when I heard the automated announcement system call her name.
"Ah-bat, Jay," it said, accent on the second syllable of her last name. Which, all things considered, figures.