I’ve been spending some hours each day in the IPOP unit at Johns Hopkins (or its twin the HIPOP unit). This “inpatient outpatient” model is awesome, as it means I can get all my daily tests and infusions (anti-rejection drugs; platelets and red blood cells as needed) while still spending the rest of the day in the comfort of my own little apartment across the street from the hospital.

The unit is divided up into little curtained enclosures so that immunocompromised folks can, once the curtain is closed, take off their masks and breathe freely without anyone else sneezing on them. Of course, curtains don’t provide a lot of sonic privacy, and as it happens all the enclosures have tvs, so from time to time you’ll wind up listening to your neighbor’s tv playing, for example, two episodes of “I Love Lucy” in a row (Golden Age? I don’t think so, but that’s why my sister brings my headphones for my ipad in the bag she shleps with me each day).

Today was the day I switched over from a 4-hour infusion to being able to take that particular drug in pill form (yay!), so I didn’t bother to put on my headphones as my sister and I waited for my daily blood counts to come back and for us to be dismissed. That’s why we were both at leisure to involuntarily overhear someone else’s loud, long speakerphone conversation, and keep cracking up at how wildly inappropriate it was to be overheard by people who might be stressed about their own bone marrow transplants. The person on the other end of the conversation appeared to be talking about someone else who’d had a bone marrow transplant also:

“so and so had a transplant… how did she do? Oh, she died… she had a visitor come over with a cold, and caught it … You better be careful, now! … blood all over her legs … ”

Unless I’m confusing the speakerphone lady with someone else, her cell phone ring was that classic blues riff: da DA da da dah. So when it rang again, I improvised the following in a low voice to my sister:

Da DAH da da dah
Oh cell phone lady
Da DAH da da dah
Getting another speakerphone call
Da DAH da da dah
Sharing all kinds of details
Da DAH da da dah
I don’t want to hear at all.

Well, as I said, it was just as well you weren’t there. But it was funny at the time.

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