Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
An Improvement
3 November 2025
I drove over to the hospital this morning, checked in at the front desk in the lobby and buzzed my way into the ICU to visit Joyce for a few hours.
I'd had an earlier call from Admissions to get my authorization to treat her. And to acknowledge that if I felt they were releasing her too soon, I could protest. I've done that before (last year).
At the same time I asked the Admissions clerk who her doctor was at the moment. Dr. Jane Chu.
Armed with that knowledge, I confirmed with Chance the RN taking care of Joyce this morning if the lady behind the computers was Dr. Chu. Yep.
So I asked her to drop by to fill me in when she had a change. Of course, she said.
And so she did.
Joyce is suffering from sepsis, she said. Which doesn't say as much as it seems. "Sepsis is the body's extreme reaction to an untreated infection," I read online. So we still aren't sure what the infection is.
Dr. Chu was pursuing the open leg wound as the most likely source. And Joyce had an X-ray of her leg in pursuit of that. Don't ask me why. That's a first.
Joyce and I looked over her lab results from the day before online using her phone. Her urine test looked clean so a UTI, I'm guessing, is not likely.
But there could be a bacterial infection somewhere. She had a lung X-Ray yesterday but we saw that report showed no infection.
But whatever it is and however she got it, she was much improved today. Not very energetic still, but the fever was gone, her blood pressure was closer to normal (100/54, for example) with medication and she was able to talk a little, smile and laugh. And eat lunch.
She had calls from Christina, who also dropped by, and Alice. Christina encouraged her to each lunch and she did her usual a bite of this and a bite of that approach. They did give her a supplement like Boost or Ensure with 16g of protein. Vegetable soup, lemon chicken, mashed potatoes, couscous and cut-up peaches.
I did send a message to Jennifer the RN that we wouldn't make the debridement appointment on Wednesday. Dr. Chu said their wound care team would take care of it. And dress the wound. And they had supplies so wouldn't need the Santyl and Vashe I brought (just in case, having been through this before).
I left while the sun was still up this time. There was enough time to stop to buy gas at the nearby Costco -- because I'm coming back tomorrow.