Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
Joyce the Hurdler
17 November 2025
Today was chaotic starting with the deluge I drove through to get to Golden Heights. Just as I got on the freeway, a downpour hit. I really couldn't see through the windshield until I got to the exit.
When I got there, I helped Joyce in the bathroom but when she stood up I saw her wound dressing was a mess. Wet and falling off.
So I hunted down Binita, who takes care of it weekdays, but she was "on the cart" filling in for an RN who "had an emergency." I told her what state the bandage was in and who the RN on duty was (who would normally have had to replace it) and she volunteered to put on her cape and fly to the rescue.
"No rush," I said, even though I'd said we were trying to get to the hospital for Pfizer boosters. "Really?" she laughed. "I mean we don't have an appointment," I clarified. There's always a rush.
She took some supplies from the wound cart as if she were stealing them and met me in the room. She was concerned about the peri skin surrounding the wound, which had been looking very healthy but was red and bleeding after the weekend RNs did the dressing changes.
Cassie put up the series of hurdles you see in the photo and Joyce navigated them, getting her right leg over them but not her left.
"It didn't look like that on Friday," she said. She used the polymer I bring them to protect the skin from the adhesives.
Then Joyce dressed and walked to the car and we drove to the drive-through vaccination service at Kaiser South City. No one was in line so we got right through.
We dashed back to Golden Heights so she could have her lunch. And then Kevin the Physical Therapist came to get her. He told me to walk her around the building and he'd follow with the chair. So we went down to the scale and back to the gym, Joyce yelling that she had to sit every step of the way and Kevin and I telling her it was just a little further.
But once in the gym she demanded to sit and she did. For a minute or two.
Cassie put up the series of hurdles you see in the photo and Joyce navigated them, getting her right leg over them but not her left. They were as high as a stair step, Cassie said. So that makes sense. She goes up with her good leg, not her bad one.
So she knocked them all down and apologized each time. They laughed it off, telling her she did fine. It was a balance exercise, after all, and she didn't fall.
Then they returned to the dark board except this time they flipped it over to the Velcro side and she tossing little balls at it. Cassie had the bright idea of putting an open umbrella under the board to catch anything that didn't stick.
After a couple of rounds of that, they switch to darts on the magnetic side of the board and Joyce kit her bullseyes, impressed them.
The whole time she was standing up with one of them holding onto her belt. Another balance exercise. And she didn't fall.
She did three sets of 126 steps (really 256 but don't tell her) on the SciFit after that, which always calms her down. Then we went back to the room so she could have her Ensure, brush her teeth and let me cut her fingernails.
I couldn't see them any better than I could see the freeway through the rain but the job got down somehow. And she still has all her fingers.