Good morning Chemo 13:
Things are good here. I feel remarkably good. I don’t know why, but I do. It’s just before 0500. I only got a little sleep last night, but that’s okay. I’ll take a nice long nap later.
I somehow missed the earthquake yesterday.
I just got finished riding the recumbent bike in the bone marrow unit and was walking down hallway with my IV stand in tow and several bottles of health elixir (I’ve changed it from poison) pumping the cure into my veins. I’m heading to the vending machine to supplement my world famous health diet with a Gatorade. I only have $1.75 and there is no change machine to break a five, so my choices are limited.
I decide to visit the nurses down in regular cancer ward to say hi. The bone marrow unit is division 6C while the cancer ward is 6B. For the past few months there have been renovations go on. I am told that is why I’ve been getting my sweet digs in the bone marrow suite; I think it is because I am so cute. One of the renovations is adding fire doors between the divisions. So as I head to 6B I am stopped dead in tracks – not by the new fire door, but by the sign on the new door.
One of two things is going on here.
- There is a nurse (or nurses) on the on other side of this door who are so important that their running off to get married will so devastate 6B that a general warning has been posted to alert the public and staff.
OR
- It is the most flagrant use of sign gobbledygook I have seen in a long, long time. It is akin to “Please extinguish all electric illumination before exiting this facility or any of its classrooms,” or more simply said turn off the lights before you leave.
After a bit of research I discovered an elopement means to “run away” although most often used in the traditional run-off marriage sense, there is also an emerging hospital field of policy complete with lingo for stopping patients from wandering off or running away.
After a bit of cogitation I’ve determined it is the sign refers to the first option. I mean after all, who’d post a sign most people won’t understand. That’d just drives me to distraction and make me want to wander off.
But, I digress. All the divisions have these enclosed stations where all the admin work gets done. They're the first thing you see when you move from division -- to -- division. They’re traffic islands plopped in the center of the normal flow of – well traffic. Each has a couple of computer stations, reference material, food service managers, social workers, and etc. You almost never see nurses congregate about.
So I get to 6B and the area around the admin area is packed. Nurses are frantically dialing cell phones.
I have my IPod on and the Rolling Stones blasting and all I can see is them mouthing something like, “Can you get through.”
When I roll back in (BTW bone marrow is sealed off from the rest of the hospital due to disease infection concerns) the nurses start asking me, “Where have you been? Did you feel that?”
“What are you talking about? I asked.
“We just had an earthquake.
“All the cell phones are out,” Another nurses said.
“Get or here,” I said. “No way.”
“You didn’t feel that?” one asked me.
“Not a thing.”
From another room a bone marrow patient who recently had a transplant stuck his out of his door and said, “The news says it was 5.8 and it originated in Virginia somewhere DC.”
“Maybe the politicians agreed on something,” I joked, but nobody got it.
The excitement died down a bit later and I went back to my room. It was all pretty fun.
That's it for today,
Peace,
Bill
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