2 November 2024
If Halloween proved anything it's that Joyce isn't able to be at home yet. She's not mobile, won't eat and can't take care of herself even with my help.
Kaiser suggested a Hoyer lift and hospital bed with an air mattress to return her home. But that really isn't practical.
So the trick is to ensure wound care continues at the SNF, where she will get more intensive physical therapy.
To do that I packed a case of dressing supplies for several changes, got a copy of Dr. Tong's order and had the ER patient care coordinator arrange for me to meet with the wound care nurse when we go over there today.
Or thought I did. I had the supplies with me at the ER, but transport didn't arrive for several hours and by then there was, as I feared, no wound care nurse at Golden Heights SNF.
I was going with Joyce by ambulance. To get home I'll have to walk up to Seton Hospital to catch the BART shuttle, take the 28 that stops there to the L on Taraval and on to the 43 at Forest Hill. Which should only take a week.
My friend Carol drove me and the supplies to the Kaiser ER and my friend Annette still goes to Golden Pavilion, which is next door to Golden Heights so I may be able to hitch a ride once a week.
Just trying making the best of of a broken situation.
Which I can't say of Kaiser. The ambulance was supposed to pick us up at 1:15 but two hours later only a clerk from billing came by to try to get Joyce to put her first ER bill on her credit card.
She hadn't received the bill in the mail, which would only have been sent this week. And my bill for the same thing was cut in half when I paid online.
We tried to call member services but there's no cell service in the ER. A nurse told us to forget it. Now isn't the time for that.
Indeed.
But as we left the ER at 4:30, they explained they have a new policy that requires payment at time of service. Patient-centric care, you know.
Even though it was over an hour after the 3 p.m. shift change at Golden Heights, Edna the RN said the SNF has better chronic wound care around the clock than the ER. So we have to take our chances. Which neither of us is happy about.
She was assigned room 115A, transferred to the bed and Eileen, a nurse of some kind, came in to see if she wanted to eat the meal that was waiting for her. I asked her to do the wound dressing change first so I could leave.
Manika, another nurse, did the wound change with my help. She isn't a wound nurse, she said, but she did well. I left them with enough supplies (Santyl, Vashe, Mediplex) to do another change while they order what they need.
By the time I left it was long past the last shuttle from Seton. I walked in the dark some 12,000 steps to Daly City BART as the rain began to fall.
I didn't have to wait long for a 28, which seemed like a golden chariot, or an L Taraval or a 43 Masonic. Too bad Muni doesn't go to Daly City. Still I didn't get home to bring in the garbage bins and make dinner until after 10 p.m.
During my trip, Joyce left me a voice mail as well as a message on the machine at home. "I don't know why I'm here or how long I'm going to be here, I don't have anybody to give me any information about what's going on. So I'm sorry, I don't know what's going on. Please let me know."
I talked to her this morning, reminded her again she's in rehab to get her strength back to climb the stairs and take care of herself. But it really feels more like Kaiser has warehoused her. And, as I told the "patient care" coordinators, the Daly City location isn't accessible for me.
All Souls Day. A bleak one.