I’m baaack! Just when you thought it was safe to go on my blog and get the objective facts from Bonnie, here I am to give you the unexpurgated (well not quite — I do expurgate a bit) version of The Hospitalization starring an award winning cast including a beleaguered, overworked 24/7 caregiver, a team of MDs, nurses, and a very sick and grumpy patient.

So, Saturday, June 5, I’m totally wiped. I sleep from two in the afternoon to nine the next morning and wake up wiped. Bonnie calls the ITA (the Infusion Treatment Area) and they tell us to come right in. Soon I have a fever. They try some Tylenol but the fever and chills keep bouncing back. After several hours, Dr. Weng admits me to the hospital. I’m thinking, well maybe a day or two at the most. That shows I’m not thinking.

By Monday, I’m loaded up on a bunch of antibiotics. I’m pissing in a plastic urinal so they can measure every last drop coming out of me. I want to sleep but there’s no way. The parade never ends. Six a.m. blood draws. Seven a.m. vitals. Eight a.m. a tray with something they have the effrontery to claim is breakfast. Tiny cans of over-sweetened fruit-flavored juices. Stuff that sucks all the moisture out of your mouth. Nine or ten, it’s rounds. The docs hover over me and promise they’ll get a handle on this. They spend forever going over the meds with the nurses and Bonnie. (She gave them all the right info  on Sunday night but the computer wouldn’t accept it. The computer is frequently wrong.) I’d like to use the urinal, since they’re also pumping me with fluids but it’s a bad time. Before you know it, it’s time for mid-day meds and another set of vitals. Next thing I know, they’re bringing in a tray with “lunch.” I don’t want to eat. I’m chilled. There’ll be more vitals soon. Afternoon meds.  Housekeeping. A visit from the dietician who wants to know whether I’m eating and pooping. (In fact everyone wants to know about poop.) As the clock rolls around to five or so, it’s time for blood draws. Then another tray of generic “food.”  Evening rounds follow. Interspersed over the first several days are chest X-rays and CT scans. All the while, I’m bouncing a fever between normal and 100.8F. I’m chilled and sweating.

But enough of the kvetching. I was privileged to have some very nice and interesting nurses. Lisa is an upbeat Irish woman married to an Iranian. They have a three-year old. Her mum still lives in Galway, I think. She reminds me of the protagonist in Brooklyn, by Colm Toibin. She tells me, when Bonnie is out of the room, “You’ve got a good woman there.” Aracely is a middle-aged Salvadoran woman who started her medical career as a nurse’s aide many years ago. In the interim, she’s become an RN with a certification in oncology, which is no small task. She’s living proof that the anti-immigrant yahoos are really harming this country. And then there’s Brian, a Portuguese son of Fall River MA. We spend a lot of time lamenting the psychology of buying into the Sox, Bruins and, to a lesser extent, the Celts and they take us to the limits, year after year, only to collapse. What can you do when you’ve grown up in Eastern MA?

On Wednesday, Dr. Logan, who originally participated in diagnosing my PLL says there’s a possibility that my central venous catheter may be causing my infection. He pulls it. I need a peripheral IV. I need two IVs. One goes in fine. The second, not so fine. They call in the charge nurse who treats my arm like a glob of pizza dough. She crams the needle in. My arm is not happy. It protests and requires hot packs for the rest of its stay in the hospital. But fortunately I get a PICC line two days later and the IVs are history.

Then on Thursday, Dr. Wes Brown, a maestro of infectious diseases in transplant patients enters, stage left. She’s the one who saved my life during my shingles attack in the midst of my first transplant. She changes some meds.. Now I’m on antifungals and antibiotics. One of these, I’m told causes hallucinations. I’m game — except that in the back of my mind, I know these are Big Phama hallucinogenics.

Shortly after, I take a walk in the corridor and to my amazement, the edges of all the doors are flashing on and off with strings of Christmas lights. They’re pretty. But it is nowhere near Christmas and besides, you couldn’t open or shut the doors without crushing the pretty lights. Okay, Big Pharma. That the best you can do?

By the following Monday, my episodes of fever are diminished. I’m no longer sweating at night, or chilled. The docs on the team hint that I’ll be out later in the week. We start thinking Thursday or Friday. The next morning they tell me I’ve matriculated. Four hours later I receive my discharge papers. I vow to not go back to stir.