10 September 2025
So on Monday Joyce had an evisit with Saroya the Nurse Practitioner at the Memory Clinic. We did manage to reserve the Fireside room, a small conference room next to the Pacific room, so we had some privacy.
But we couldn't start the evisit on her laptop. The Kaiser server kept throwing a 400 error. Maddening. It has always worked before.
So I ran to her room, retrieved her phone and accessed the appointment on her Kaiser My Doctor app.
That worked fine. And Saroya walked through her checklist of questions and we gave the usual answers and she confirmed the medications. She also promised to follow up on the scheduled toileting Golden Heights is not doing and remind them to give Joyce more than the one high protein Boost I make sure she has each day.
When I asked what weight she thought Joyce should be, she asked her height. Joyce said it was 5'8" so Saroya suggested 125. Joyce's daily weigh-in are about 113 (minus two for clothing).
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TODAY I CONFIRMED her hair appointment with Jose tomorrow. He's had a stomach problem since dinner last night but expected to be back at work tomorrow.
After the hair appointment, we'll go to Kaiser for a shot in my tendon (at least one) in my hand so I'm able to grip the cork on the Prosecco bottle on Sunday morning. There are disabilities and there are handicaps. You learn to live with both but gripping a cork is something of a requirement for survival these days and admits of neither.
Then we will dash back to the house to pick up her laptop for another attempt at an evisit. This time it's her first therapy session (which I had to reschedule today to avoid a conflict with the make-up dental appointment she canceled) with a psychologist about her anxiety.
This anxiety announces itself each day when I arrive and she doesn't want to get out of bed because she's afraid she'll fall. "How far do I have to walk?" she ask. "Will there be a chair there?" And then, "Will you be with me?"
It doesn't matter how many times you answer these questions, the anxiety is not quenched.
Similarly today when I took her to her debridement, she repeatedly asked, "What do I have to do?" and "Am I all right?" and "Then what do I have to do?"
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BEFORE WE LEFT for her debridement (a bit early so we could both get flu shots, although the Covid vaccines aren't being distributed yet), I took her laundry to the car. And as I did I got a call from the Family Caregiver Alliance that I took in the car.
Someone a year ago had signed me up for respite care, which I thought was for Joyce but is apparently for the caregiver. They pay for someone to attend to your charge while you visit the Photographer's Club for a martini, apparently.
They'd called before and left a message. I had planned to call to tell them to forget it because she was still in the nursing home, which they wouldn't have know a year ago.
But I told the woman on the other end of the line that I was trying to get her home so she said she'd keep me on the list. By the time she gets home, she said, you'll be high priority.
I'll say.
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THE DEBRIDEMENT went well. Jennifer thought the wound looked good, mostly pink without as much odor. Good signs.
I was appalled, however, to see Golden Heights had used paper bandages despite the new shipment of Zetuvit bandages that arrived Saturday. Apparently Once Again the staff had failed to communicate that small fact.
So naturally when we returned to Golden Heights, I unboxed them (should have made a video) and put them on the chair near her bed. I also asked the desk staff who the treatment nurse is. No one.
No one? No, the cart nurse (the one of four RNs serving the 100 patients) does it when there is no treatment nurse. What about tomorrow? Who is the treatment nurse tomorrow? We won't know until then.
Absurd.
So I told the nurses at the desk that Joyce had received the proper bandages and I'd put them out for them. "Thank you, Mike."
I had also let them know just before this that Joyce's roommate, a fall risk, was trying to get out of bed to go home. "Oh, it's too late today, Silvia," I told her. "Get back in bed now and maybe tomorrow, when it isn't raining, you can go home." Which was nearly persuasive. I told the cart nurse to get in there on my way out, just in case nearly was not enough.
Thank you, Mike, she said. Sir Michael, I should have corrected her.
But when I got home, I devised a game plan for tomorrow in case no treatment nurse is there so I can do the dressing change at home on the way back to Golden Heights for the evisit.
It has to be done every day by someone who knows how to do it. It isn't like changing a diaper. The wound can become infected and years of work lost.
Jennifer thought she might refer us to a new plastic surgeon for a second opinion on closing the wound. We've been this close before. It would be a shame to have some bureaucratic incompetence spoil it now.
Which is precisely what I will tell the state ombudsman.