The orientation nurse assured me and my caregiver sister that most everyone gets at least one fever during the you-got-no-immune-system part of the transplant process. My sister and I immediately developed a plan to, if I got no fevers, be smug.

So I felt some chagrin when on *Day Zero*, right smack out of the gate, the very evening of the day I got transfused with the donor cells, I got a fever.

Into the hospital I went, which meant that I was surrounded by caring and skilled medical professionals offering me lifesaving treatment and round-the-clock monitoring; that I had the ability to phone up and order surprisingly decent food delivered from the hospital kitchen to my room; and that I was chained by thin plastic tubes to an IV machine that WOULD NOT STOP BEEPING.

More precisely, it would go along for some time merely making whiffling noises as it metered out my saline solution or medicine, and then it would inevitably break into a beep loud enough to wake the dead, or at least the hospitalized. There were several annoying characteristics of this:
a) It was the same beep regardless of what was wrong–possible obstruction in my line, maybe getting to the end of my bag of chemotherapy, or whatever else the machine had a problem with.
b) It was clear that the loudness of the beep was not in proportion to the urgency of the problem, as it never summoned nurses to run in with a look of concern. Instead, it would just beep away as I found my nurse call button and pressed it so that the main nurse desk could hear my beeping, and at some point a nurse would walk in and press some buttons to make the beeping stop. To be fair, this meant the machine was already doing a great job of keeping air out of my line, so kudos to the machine makers there.
c) Every time I needed to go to the bathroom–and, as my time in the hospital included Days 3 and 4, when you get serious chemotherapy, I needed to go a lot–I had to not only tie on my shoes (my self-imposed strategy for not tripping and falling on my head), but also unplug the IV machine and chivvy it along with me, making sure not to stretch the IV cord that connected it to the catheter in my chest. It was not a fun contest to see if I could make it through all these steps in time. They literally never detach you from the IV machine while you are inpatient.

Long about Wednesday my fever broke and they released me back into the little apartment my sister and I are staying in next to the hospital, so I’m only attached to a machine for a few hours a day in the outpatient unit, when I’m actually receiving medicine. This provides me with a better vantage point from which to contemplate the amazing medical care I am getting.

Thanks, caring and skilled medical professionals!

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