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Other than a panic attack during the infusion of the new bone marrow, it was a pretty anticlimactic moment. My mum had stayed with me through it all, as did a nurse. To be honest, past the actual bag of marrow being hung, I don't remember too much! Must have been the Ativan I was given! Now the wait for my counts to creep back up from zero began. I was in "reverse isolation". What this meant, was, I was stuck in a room with nowhere else to go, other than my little bathroom. People could come and visit me, but first had to go through a little ritual which involved washing their hands at a sink station outside my room, entering my room into a little antechamber, flicking a switch, and standing under a fan for thirty seconds. The fan blew all the germs my guests conceivably brought with them, away from them, away from me, and my room. Anyone with a cold or the like, was NOT allowed to visit me. Likewise, visitors had to be over the age of nine years old. Which precluded a visit from my nephew, Nick, who was not quite two at the time. However, my brother managed to sneak Nick onto the ward to wave at me through the observation window of my room! The first few weeks I wasn't in any shape for much of anything. I was constantly nauseated. I would throw up, and two minutes later feel just as sick. It was awful!! I was given everything, and nothing worked until I got what Princess Margaret calls Nabilon. Suddenly I was nausea free! I couldn't figure out why I felt so stoned! I thought it was the morphine I was taking for mouth sores. My nurse said, "don't you know what Nabilon is?" Obviously I didn't. Nabilon is a synthetic marijuana. Short of smoking a joint, you couldn't have a better cure for nausea! Dr. Lipton, my Princess Margaret oncologist, tried to convince me that my anonymous donor was in fact a baboon. His rationale was that I would be shortly growing much body hair, and this was evidence! (Steroids, and cyclosporine, the immune suppressant drugs subscribed cause extraneous body hair growth.) Well, I got him back. One day my mum brought me in a banana, and a flea collar which I gleefully presented to him in "thanks" for his gift. Fortunately, he has a good sense of humour! I couldn't eat much the first few weeks I was in isolation. The constant nausea, among other things, took any desire for food far, far away. Patients are given a supplement called TPN, which I believe stands for Total Protein Nutrition, and this takes care of the patient's nutrient needs in lieu of not eating. However, around day 12 of the transplant, I was willing to try food, although I still didn't have much appetite, and my mum made me scalloped potatoes, and chicken soup. Yummy. The highlight was day 16 I actually managed to down one of those dreadful cafeteria hamburgers, and keep it down. Two days later, I ate french fries. Well, I later passed them, and was a little astonished at the consistency, so I called the nurse in. She called the doctor in. He stormed out of the bathroom saying, "it's an undigested french fry!" The next day he told me that he had a patient down the hall who was several weeks ahead of me and wasn't eating yet. Here I was eating french fries! I didn't have the heart to tell him about the hamburger two days before! When I felt a little better, I actually played my flute a little. My goal was to terrorize the staff with scales! One night I received a phone call from a patient down the hall. His name was Vijay, and he was having a related transplant. He told me he just had to call me because he thought he was hearing the flute music meant he was hallucinating. He ascribed it to the morphine he was on, but finally asked the nurse who reassured he was not hallucinating! So I then had a friend to talk to to while the time away late at night! I was in that room eighteen long days before my white blood cells were considered sufficiently high enough for me to leave and walk around the ward! I went home the beginning of June. I was glad to go home, but nervous about leaving the hospital. My biggest regret was missing the lilacs!! The timing of my transplant was inspirational for me because I entered at the end of winter just as Mother Nature was gearing up for spring. While in my hospital room, I was able to watch new growth appear on the trees and it felt like a parallel of my transplant. |