Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
Joyce Goes to the Hospital
2 November 2025
The first day of Standard Time, after I changed the clocks, cleaned the house and put the laundry in the dryer, I drove to Golden Heights with Joyce's iPad so she could play the piano.
When I got to her room, though, I found her lying across the bed, halfway to the floor. She wasn't responding to me either. When I tried to lift her back on the bed, I discovered she was burning up. I went back into the hall to get the RN I'd seen at the cart to come in to look at her.
Why, I wondered, was I the first one to notice the problem? What if I had come in later? Or not at all?
Her temperature was 103.4 and she was shaking, unable to respond when I spoke to her. The RN got her two tablets of Tylenol but Joyce could hardly swallow them.
The weekend RN called the doctor who said to call 911 and off Joyce went to Kaiser South City's ER. I actually got there first in the car.
So it took over half an hour before they did they paperwork, moved her into a room and let me in to see her. If I'd come in the ambulance, I might have avoided that, but then how would I have gotten home?
Of course they had to see the wound and of course they suspected the wound is infected. But the wound dressing had just been changed that morning and the wound was clean so the wound, like the most obvious character in a murder mystery, wasn't likely to be the culprit.
They took the dressing off, cutting away the Ace bandage, and put on an improvisation of course. We're so close to getting that wound closed but here we are with people unfamiliar with the wound trying to replace the dressing.
They started her on an antibiotic and gave her Tylenol intravenously at the same time. She was still hot but cooling down and beginning to talk to me.
After they took blood for the labs and a urine sample, her blood pressure fell dangerously low (something around 60/40). They moved her to another room to start a norepinephrine drip to bring it back to 120/80.
Dr. Lee, the third doctor I spoke to, said they would keep her in the ICU overnight and tomorrow. We briefly went over her case history since last year at the same time.
Then she was wheeled to the ICU, complaining about a headache, and I was escorted to the ICU waiting room to wait while she was being admitted.
Nothing actually worked in the waiting room. The too-short cord on the TV was unplugged so some inventory monitor could be plugged in, the table lamp didn't turn on, the phone on the table was not connected and the phone on the wall didn't connect me to the ICU after I followed the instructions.
And the bathrooms were locked because of plumbing problems.
I waited an hour and then looked up sunset on my phone because I wanted to drive home before dark. I didn't want to deal with double vision and oncoming headlights. But we were back on Standard Time and sunset was 45 minutes ago.
So I left, unhappily, unable to see her where she had been moved.
So all I know as I go to bed tonight is that she has some kind of infection (I did discuss the possibility of a UTI with Dr. Lee) other than the wound (which is very unlikely).
She has a debridement with Jennifer the RN at Kaiser's Wound Clinic on Wednesday but I have no idea if she'll be released by then. The November surgery to close the wound was supposed to happen at Kaiser San Francisco, not South City. But we still haven't gotten a date for that.
So nothing but questions. And no answers tonight.