Back to the Hospital once again with Dancing Nurses, Breadcrumbs, and an Elephant Condom – Part 2

So Michelle gets a room that is far, far away from the elevator and I know I’m in trouble. We settle in and because I don’t want to leave her I decide to stay with her overnight. This is my first experience doing this. Michelle and I have wanted to get away on a little vacation, but this doesn’t count as the hotel of our choice. They are giving her a shot every 24 hours to raise her white blood count. Nurses, nurses aids, social worker, volunteer, dietitian come and go. I figured it wouldn’t be so bad to stay overnight at the hospital. But then I found out they wouldn’t let me use the bathroom in the room because of infection. That means I have to go out past the nurses station and use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Now you have to understand I pee a hundred times a night!

 I have to run home and get some things so it’s time for me to get lost. Getting out is not so bad but coming back is my problem. I end up walking from the elevator, then walking on the wrong side of the hospital. I go to the North Tower instead of the South Tower. I go to the even rooms instead of the odd rooms. I will stand in front of the sign pointing to the rooms and stare at it for the longest time knowing what to do but never doing the right thing. This happened for two days. I really considered dropping bread crumbs so I knew where to go, but I thought that might be against hospital rules.

 In case you don’t know you, never sleep when you stay at the hospital because they wake Michelle up all night long which wakes me up, which makes me have to pee and embarrassed every time I walk by the nurses! Hi, hi again, it’s me again, hi. Every time I wake up I think it’s morning, but it never is. When it’s finally morning the doctor comes in and tells us that Michelle’s white blood count was 300 and it’s supposed to be 10,000. This is damn scary stuff! It’s because of that fucking chemo. So she has to stay in the hospital until they get the count up to where it’s supposed to be and they’re thinking Sunday and this is Friday. I can’t tell you how bad I feel for Michelle and how helpless I feel.

 I end up staying most of every day walking back-and-forth from the hospital because we live close enough to do that. I couldn’t stay overnight again because I couldn’t stand the humiliation one more night. Michelle totally understood and besides, I had to get some sleep.

 In the category of useless information they’ve come along way with barf bags and their design. Plastic not paper, and very flexible. Now to me they looked just like an elephant condom. I could just picture them scattered across the African plains after an elephant orgy.

 This blog is becoming too long, sorry.

 So the good news is her blood count kept going up and up and up and by Sunday morning she got to leave the hospital, hallelujah! Thank god because I thought we might have to watch the debate in the hospital. But actually when I thought about it, that might have been the best place to watch it. Hooked up to a blood pressure machine!