Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
Catching Up
11 December 2024
Sorry for the silence. Sometimes a little too much is going on to keep up. So this is the first chance I've gotten to catch up.
This week we celebrated our 49th anniversary.
On Monday morning I left for the SNF, taking a 48 to 19th (where the driver wishes me a happy holiday), a 28 to BART and a 120 going the wrong way. But I get off in time to catch one going back. The whole trip takes about an hour. So I get there after 12:30.
She's still in bed. No therapists to be found and the gym doors are closed. A meeting, perhaps.
I try to find Julian to ask about transport but can't. A nurse tells me it's in the calendar. But gurney or wheelchair?
I get her out of bed (after yelling, 'Quiet!' when she starts screaming she can't), onto the walker into the chair.
As we roll into the hallway, a nurse stops us to give Joyce her vitamins and protein shots (two now).
I roll her around a bit, which she finds interesting, and we look at the fish.
My phone shows a voice memo from Dr. Tong, so I try calling her back at the number she left. But the call fails twice.
I'd gone from the fish where some old jerk was listening to Philippine news on his phone at a loud volume to the room where I closed the door to the chorus of TVs.
Cassie pokes her nose in while we're calling. She'll come back.
When she does, we go to the far hall with Kevin where Joyce refuses to get out of the chair to walk on the walker. I whisper to her, 'Please try,' and she gets up. She walks about 50 feet, turning around short of the middle.
Then we go to the gym where she spends some time on the Spirit Cycle.
I ask her if she knows what the date is. 'December 9,' she says. And what tomorrow is? 'December 10,' she calculates. Then she smiles and says softly, 'Our anniversary.'
Cassie overhears and later promises mistletoe.
Joyce is in bed when I give her the presents on Tuesday. Parisian bonbons and the photo of us she loves that Amy took years and years ago. She's touched.
But she doesn't want to get out of bed. Running her wound over the bed hurts so I tell her to bend her knee to lift her leg and she gets up. Strongly. But Sheik the CNA had come in to help.
I wheel her around for a while.
When I park her in front of the fish and sit down to rest a bit, Kevin spies her trying to maneuver her chair closer to the tank. He gives her some instruction about making turns and asks her to go down the hall. But she doesn't have the arm strength.
Cassie joins us with a paper mistletoe she colored in. Funny. When Joyce stands up in the far hall, we kiss under it. They want to know the story. I tell them there's a photo of us way back then in the room.
So when Joyce simply refuses to walk, they promise to come back later and have a look at the photo.
But I'm disappointed. I wheel her around a bit more because she doesn't want to go back to the room. When lunch comes she eats two bites of what we learned from the posting down the hall is cheese tortellini. She drinks some coffee, all the prune juice and some milk. And she has some strange desert, but only a spoonful.
And she doesn't want a bonbon.
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THIS MORNING I tackled the ambulance billings again. With the help of this blog I traced her travel from Sept. 25. It was illuminating.
I called David the Ombudsman, who had promised to help on Oct. 23. And he did. I had a few new questions.
He reviewed those issues with me, starting with the transport to the debridement that went to the house instead of the nursing facility to pick up Joyce. I told him they were too late for the surgeon to see Joyce so she didn't get the debridement, just a dressing change by an RN, which could have been done at the nursing facility.
He promised to see if Kaiser would cover Joyce's Dec. 31 appointment for that since she didn't get the service before.
We also discussed the two ProTransport-1 copays of $250, which I learned earlier this week from a call to Kaiser were for her "non-emergency" trips home from the hospital and not the 911 calls handled by the San Francisco Fire Dept. (which does have her insurance information but keeps asking for it).
The funny thing about both of those, I told him, is that the day after or day of returning home, we had to call 911 to return her to the hospital. So both discharges were, in fact, premature.
He promised to look into that.
Then I asked if any transport to Kaiser appointments were covered because I had read that they are when I looked into it online. She has one tomorrow at the Memory Clinic.
Another thing to look into.
We arranged to meet at the Memory Clinic tomorrow before Joyce's appointment so he can copy some bills I've received.
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CHRISTINE PICKED ME UP a few minutes after I hang up and we recycled 25 bottles that had 10 cent deposit on them for $3.
Then we went to the hospital where Joyce was still in bed and, as always, said she couldn't get up. I got her up with Cassie's help on the third try and in the chair and reminded her that she has an appointment tomorrow at the Memory Clinic.
"I canceled it," she said.
"You have to go," I insisted. "We've waited two years to get that appointment."
Christina wheeled her out of the room while I called the Memory Clinic to uncancel the appointment. Anita, working from home after an injury, looked in the Uncancel Queue and found it, restoring it to the schedule.
Then I had to make sure there was still transport ordered. I been trying to find Julian the Transport Guy at the nursing home since Monday. He was missing today too. But they texted him that I had a question about tomorrow.
Meanwhile David called to ask if Joyce could get in and out of a sedan or needed a wheelchair van with a lift. Door Number Two.
He thought he found a Medicare service that would not charge us but he won't find out if she qualifies until after tomorrow's appointment. Even then, as I reminded him, it's across county lines, which is a problem for transports.
He asked me for Julian's phone number so I went back to the dest and found Julian there, just clocking in. So I put David on the speaker phone so they could make an arrangement.
The arrangement will cost us $230 round trip for the wheelchair van.
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I had gone back to the room with Julian to see if Joyce had means of payment because I won't be with her. I'm taking the bus to the Memory Clinic to meet David before the appointment.
When I came out of the room, I saw Joyce walking up the long hallway. Her furthest walk yet, astonishing the two therapists walking with her. And Christina, who had never seen her walk before.
But as she got to the end of the hall where the wood pattern changes to a darker color, she panicked and screamed for the chair (which, she forgets, is always behind her).
Then she went to the gym for a session on the Spirit Cycle.
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LUNCH WAS STEAK TERIYAKI (but you couldn't tell by looking at the brown scoop). She had two bites. One bite of mashed potatoes. One forkful of vegetables. A small cup of prune juice, some coffee and milk. And applesauce.
She hardly touched her food but it was more than she usually eats.
She had eaten two of the small French bonbons I had brought for our anniversary so I tried a David's cookie John and Kim had sent for Christmas. She said it was too big. I told her to break it in half. And it shortly disappeared.
That's more than I've seen her eat since September.
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I WENT TO THE REHAB GYM to let Kevin and Cassie know Joyce's plans for tomorrow. They offered to take her earlier or later for a walk. And Cassie offered to dress her before she goes.
I told Joyce that but she again wanted to cancel.
I told her why she can't. That she needed to be seen. I told it was all arranged and she wouldn't have to do anything but sit in the wheelchair.
But I left wondering what tomorrow will actually bring.