Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
A Visit With Andy
5 February 2025
After yesterday's storm, the sun shone full force today, nudging the termometer over 50 degrees. And nephew Andy drove down from Sacramento to visit Joyce at Golden Heights.
We got her out of bed and into the wheelchair right away. Then we whisked her off to the Pacific Room so we could all sit around a table and catch up.
He told us all about the kids. Nora's dancing and Little Andy's basketball (and pending third-grade marriage),
Then he showed us a video of a local news segment in which he appeared at a blood drive. He was the only guy in the room who spoke to the reporter, so she pulled him aside for an interview in his Notre Dame cap.
So we had some laughs. And Joyce greatly enjoyed the visit.
When it was time for lunch, I brought it to her in the Pacific Room so we didn't have to go anywhere. And the party continued.
Then we took her for a ride, weighing her on the scale. She was 159 with the wheelchair, which means she's now down to 122.
"Oh, no," said Daisy the RNA who helps walk her. "She's lost more weight."
Daisy suggested we get her to walk, so we met her by the gym after she got Joyce's walker. Joyce wasn't happy about that. At all.
But four of us persuaded her to stand up and walk back and forth in the hallway. It took five trips and Andy in front of her encouraging her and lots of screaming that she can't do it doesn't anybody understand but she did walk.
He'd never seen her walk before, so he was encouraged.
Then we went back to the room and sat with her for a while before our 3 p.m. video conference call with Jennifer the RN from the Wound Care Clinic.
It was the usual confusion. We used Kaiser's KP app on Joyce's phone to join the call. But it wasn't listed. Only a Feb. 14 visit, which had been canceled, appeared.
So I call the Wound Care Clinic, otherwise known as General Surgery (for some unknown reason) and asked the clerk to put Jennifer on the line so we could resolve this.
Jennifer came on and said she'd sent me a text to log into a Zoom session. So I find the text (I'd just been texting Loren the Social Worker, who had just visited us in the room to discuss a Medi-Cal application), click on the link and fail to have noticed Safari wasn't configured for Zoom.
Jennifer suggests taking some photos, sending them via Joyce's KP app and she'd call back.
Binita had taking the dressing off and took some photos and I sent them but we didn't hear back. Meanwhile, I did get Safari unprivatized enough to Zoom with audio and video. So I clicked on the link again and waited for Jennifer.
When nothing happened for a while, I called General Surgery again (this time on Andy's phone) and we connected with Jennifer and discussed the photos.
I won't go through the whole conversation but the conclusion was that we would stop the Wound VAC dressings for now, go back to wet-to-day each day and watch for the wound to heal enough to resume the Wound VAC dressings. Jennifer set up another call for a week from now to discuss whether the wound had healed enough.
Binita put a wet-to-dry dressing on Joyce, which itself was painful because the wound is so raw from the Wound VAC foam.
And shortly after Andy and I left. I had told him he didn't have to stay for the whole thing because I was afraid he'd get stuck in rush hour traffic returning to Sacramento. But he insisted. And gave me a lift home.
Which certainly lightened my load today.