Joyce's KP Adventure mikepasini.com headlines
Activities
13 January 2026
Being bedridden for a week is no fun. "What did I do wrong?" Joyce asks, meaning to have deserved this plight. She was down today but she'd been in good spirits.
I had been glad to see her reading the book Carol in Sonoma sent her to engage her wits after anesthesia by figuring out the culprit in a series of two-minute mysteries. She said she could figure out about half of them, but she skipped around.
And she was alert and communicative with friends Dan and Alice visited yesterday, leaving a lovely orchid I put on the shelf by the TV. She likes it there, she told me today, where she can see it.
But she had the TV on this afternoon, tuned to a station that played Friends and The Big Bang Theory. Which can be depressing if you binge-watch them.
When Dr. Hauser came in to check up on her and fill me in on The Plan, she smartly hit the mute button.
Dr. Hauser said things look good, wound wise. They've gotten the results of her cultures back and Infectious Diseases has targeted the existing bacteria (every open wound has some) with new antibiotics, which she is taking orally.
Because the plan is to discharge her late Thursday or Friday after Dr. Holland takes another look at the wound on Thursday.
She asked if we had any concerns about that and I did. I mentioned that under-staffed Golden Heights uses RNs from the registry on the weekends and nights, which means they are clueless about the patients and scramble to read the medication orders and deliver them. A lot gets missed. So I'd prefer Joyce return when staff RNs are there to get the ball rolling.
She noted that and then we talked about Joyce's appetite (none) and consumption of liquids (very little). They have been taking blood to test and today's results showed her creatinine at 1.12, just a hair above the 1.11 top line. But her BUN has gone up to 31 from 25 just two days ago (top line is 27) but her eGFR (or kidney filtration rate) has inched up to 50 from 47 (should be over 60).
She's still anemic to go with the dehydration. They do give her a Bola IV (a shot of saline for 15 minutes) every day. But she simply has to eat more.
After Dr. Hauser left, I showed Joyce her lab results on her phone. And we also saw a very nice message from Jennifer the Wound Care RN. "Should I reply to her?" she asked. I was glad she wanted to. "What should I say?" she wondered, but she figured it out and, instead of me writing to Jennifer again (I'd told her about the successful surgery), Joyce sent her a thank you.
I also showed her our friend Zita's beautiful Christmas card, which she read with pleasure. Zita has a wisegirl granddaughter who responded to every "Merry Christmas" with a "Happy Thanksgiving!"
And then I mentioned it was nephew Joe Pasini's 42nd birthday and we should send him a photo. So she made a heart sign with her hands (see above) and smiled.
I left her with her sitcoms to shop at Trader Joe's up the hill. No more than I could carry on the 43 Masonic. And nothing frozen because it wouldn't be frozen by the time I got off.