General Update #53

9:31 a.m. - Sylina arrived to refresh Joyce's water and check in on her.

9:47 a.m. - Dana arrived to let Joyce know that Aspen Park confirmed they will be by ~11:30 a.m. to transfer Joyce to their facility.

10:12 a.m. - Sylina arrived to check Joyce's vitals. Temperature was 98.4 degrees. Blood pressure was 122/72. Oxygen level at 95% with 2 litre oxygen flow rate. 

Message(s) from Joyce:

Joyce used to worry a lot about Tim riding his motor bikes, but not excessively. He rode around the farm a lot when he was getting started so Joyce "...got used to it, I guess you would say." He crashed his bike up on the mountain top and broke his collar bone one time. I think he got down by himself somehow, Joyce can't recall exactly how he got down. Tim was taken to Gritman first. They said there was nothing wrong with him. We had Dr. Omer Drury from Troy as the family doctor so we went over to him for his opinon. He looked at the X-ray and said, "Well he's broke his collar bone!" So our family distrust of care from Gritman has been decades long in accumulating. The moral of the story is that you need to need to speak up when you're hurting, and get things double checked. "Like when you [Dusty] broke your hand that one year and they said that you were fine!" The whole family has bad experiences with Gritman. It was Gritman doctors that told us that Phil didn't have appendicitis. Joyce insisted that there was something wrong, and the Gritman doctors just blew her off. Joyce knew Phil had appendicitis, she could tell, and she was just a little farm wife! She could feel a hot lump on him and he was in pain, had a fever, and was one hurting puppy! So she took him over to see Dr. Drury. Drury saved the day again. The surgeon at Gritman who treated Phil told Joyce later that if they had waited much longer, Phil's appendix would have burst. I think Gritman does much better nowadays than they did back then, but you still have to pay attention. 

Dr. Drury saw the family for just about everything. He was a good country doctor. One of the boys got their fingers crushed one time, got slammed in something, but Joyce cannot recall which of the boys it was. Isn't that terrible? As Joyce recalls, the boys didn't want to tell her the truth of how the injury occurred. They were playing in the shop at the time and Joyce thinks they were afraid they would get in trouble if they explained what they were up to when the fingers were crushed. The boys wouldn't get into trouble a lot but sometimes they would and then they would just back each other up. As a parent you knew when to keep pursuing and when to just give up. Depended on the severity of the mischief or damage they had done at each instance.

Juanita had only been part of the family for a short while when she had her first severe accident. There was this homemade wooden stool (bench like, ~20" or so wide) that had a piece that stuck out from it. She was just learning to walk when the family got her. She'd been kept in a crib in the Korean orphanage and didn't know how to walk and she was 3-years-old. So, she was walking on her own around and she caught that part that stuck out on that little bench and broke her femur diagonally. A terrible break! Dr. Drury came out to the house a number of times to see her. You probably would not get a doctor today to come out to your house like that. They put her in traction with her leg up in the air. It was a horrible time as she hurt so bad. None of us could sleep because of her crying. It was miserable for her being in that traction. Juanita must have been in that traction 6 weeks or more. There is no comforting a human being so young and in such pain. And she probably thought she was being punished, like she was being returned to being bed bound after just getting a taste of freedom from her first 3 years of life. Maybe that messed with her young brain, that trauma. Juanita understood some Korean, but the family didn't speak it, so that probably hampered soothing her as well when all they had was English words. Juanita picked up English pretty fast, though. Still hard to explain to a 3-year-old why she was in traction. 

The State of Idaho sterilized Juanita in the 80s. They felt like she was just going to be a continual problem, a way to prevent more children from being produced and the state wanted that. The state "claimed" that Juanita had cancer in her ovaries. They [state agency worker] called Joyce at one point when they wanted Joyce to take Dusty. Called Joyce personally. The state thought that there was child neglect and abuse occurring. The state told Joyce that Shannen would react fearfully to overalls with metal buttons and Juanita used to wear those often. Dusty had an aversion to shirts with buttons for a long time as an infant. Joyce could not wear them while raising him as he would react poorly if held against them. Juanita wore those, too. Joyce thought that something bad must have been reported to the state by someone if they were willing to get themselves involved and directly intervene. Juanita did weird things. Dusty was so afraid of water as a young child, bath times and showers would cause a panic, so Joyce had a suspicion that Juanita might have tried to drown him at some point. Dusty commented that he still has a psychological fear of putting his head under water, though it is much reduced now than when he was younger. His Scoutmaster and him still joke, as recently as at a 1st class board of review last week, that Dusty has to have the record of being a second class scout for the longest period of time and still making Eagle rank because he refused to do the swimming requirements out of fear of putting his head underwater. When Joyce went down to see Juanita one time she found Dusty alone in the basement apartment in Lewiston, with the landlady coming down to check in on him from time to time and Juanita was no where to be found for hours. 

Sharon Nelson was the office manager of the Moscow H&R Block when Joyce started working there. Joyce liked working at H&R Block. Joyce made some good friends there. They offered a tax class one year. Joyce was doing the farm taxes and took their course so she could learn more and be more efficient with taxes. Then it mushroomed into a job. Joyce's economics teacher at Coeur d'Alene high school was really responsible for going into tax work. His statement that stuck in her mind was that you could make a job out of doing taxes for people. Somehow that stuck with Joyce. Not a lot else from Joyce's high school days seems to have stuck with her through her life. 

As Joyce lived out in the country she never really got involved in school spirit activities, or dances, or anything like that. Just wasn't connected to all that. Might've been different if she wasn't so removed.

Current location:

Gritman Medical Center, Room 202.

Current pain level:

4 out of 10.

Visiting information:

Confirmed with nurse's station lead at 7:38 a.m. on 6/9/20:

Currently only 1 visitor per day for Joyce, no exceptions. Once current visitor departs Joyce's room, no further visits for the rest of the day. No swapping out visitors (example, Dusty cannot remain on hospital grounds while Craig goes to sit with Joyce for an hour and then Dusty returns to room).