Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
Test Results
6 November 2025
Joyce escaped the ICU today. She called from the phone in the room early in the morning to tell me.
By the time I got there, Dr. Nishimura had already visited her but Leonor the Patient Care rep came in to go over her discharge plan. She'll contact Golden Heights when she's discharged and arrange gurney transportation at no charge. "It's covered," she assured me. So I don't have to do anything.
Abiel the RN from Ohio (where he often had to work 18 hour shifts and had three patients at a time in ICU, one more than is safe) came in next and introduced himself.
I asked him if we ever found out what the original infection was, so he looked it up. Nope. A mystery.
They were, he said, keeping an eye on her blood pressure (which was low after the infection) and her sugar, which had also been a concern but was responding now.
We know that because when I brought her phone to her, we used the KP app to check her test results from that morning.
And just after that, Kate the Physical Therapist she'd had in ICU came by with Hamlet, her assistant, and a wheelchair. She got Joyce to throw her legs over the side of the bed, stand up with a walker, pivot and fall into the wheelchair. A 1950s wheelchair with leather bucket seats and chrome.
That's as much as she did yesterday. But today Kate wanted to see her walk. So she rolled the wheelchair (and IV pole) into the hallway and, with Hamlet driving the wheelchair and me in front with the IV pole, she got Joyce up to walk.
Joyce did pretty well, going about 20 feet, although she was stepping short with her good leg. Kate took that as a sign she was getting tired, so she let her sit down, happy with the progress.
Joyce remained in the wheelchair for lunch, Lea the RN (covering the Abiel on lunch himself) helped her with her food and was happy to see her eat anything (a few bites of egg salad, one blueberry, some vegetable soup, all of a chocolate drink supplement which is a meal in itself).
They had to increase her medications to raise her blood pressure, giving her another IV to get some fluids in her. They got it up to 112/63 at 77 beats before I left.
She made a few phone calls after lunch. Then Abiel came back to change her dressing.
He had been calling me "Sir" but he started calling me "Boss" then. I gave him a few supplies. Showed him where the wound was (the back of her leg) and how the Ace bandage should cover the Mepilex bandage to protect it from peeling and the wound from contamination.
He'd scheduled an hour for the 15 minute procedure (after you've done it a few times) and half an hour later he was done. "Now you take it easy for half an hour," I observed. "No, I'm half an hour behind," he confessed.