There are words that one never uses. Then, one day, that word seems to dominate every conversation. This past weekend for me, it was occlusion. I’ve been packing a portable pump that dispenses medications for my shingles. It pumps this medication into my catheter. If the line is blocked, the pump calls it an occlusion. There are occlusions “up” and occlusions “down.” The pump is able to distinguish and run a banner headline above its controls. I’ve had several of each kind. On Sunday (of course) I got an occlusion down and I couldn’t fix it. When I did, the pump screamed “set 4″ as if it were a tennis match. No one, including the pump renter outers knew what “set 4″ meant and it wasn’t in the user manual. All we knew was that the pump had begun speaking in an unknown language and was obviously broken. We had to go back to the hospital for an exchange. When we arrived they were unable to figure it out. Then they checked the line to the catheter. When the nurse had changed the bag of meds, she had to clamp down the line. She had forgotten to unclamp it. The pump was not at fault. We had all jumped to the wrong occlusion.

This past weekend, one of my nurses turned out to be my good friend John Ferrara’s nurse at Kaiser. It’s a small, small world.

I’m only twelve days post-transplant and I HATE my diet. I want a corned beef on New York rye. I want moules frites. I want a Polish with sauerkraut. I want sashimi and lobster and a big frothy Chimay. You don’t know what you got till it’s gone. I am improving though. My counts are beginning to rise. My face doesn’t look like that of a survivor of the Black Plague. I don’t need a ghost writer. I got a nice note from my inner trophy wife. Someday in the near future, I hope to stay up past eight-thirty.