I have been given a mulligan on the golf course of life!
The
days before my transplant, almost every staff member asked me how I
felt about the transplant. That was a good open-ended question for
history taking, but it became tiresome. About 2:00AM on the day of
transplant, David, my very serious night nurse, came in for his usual
nursing duties and asked me the same question again. So I decided to
shake him up. I told him that I had been lying in bed ruminating over
being given someone else’s stem cells and thereafter becoming a really
good person. He did not know I was pulling his chain and went into
chapter and verse about how that mistake can never occur.
I prayed in the morning that God would be with me – the 23rd rather than the 22nd
Psalm. While I was finishing my morning shower and drying off my hair
and face with a towel (so that I could not see anything), I heard the
automatic paper towel dispenser in the bathroom cranking out paper. I
thought the nurse might have come in, so I wrapped the shower curtain
around me. There was no one there whom I could see and the towel
dispenser had been working flawlessly. Coincidence? I think not. I said a
little thank you for the very reassuring message.
Kathryn, my
day nurse, gave me the transplant about noon. For the occasion, she
wore a Williams College varsity crew team t-shirt, which she obtained
while rowing against Williams. Beth got photographs of this memorable
occasion. It was not particularly pleasant. My stem cells were preserved
in DMSO and frozen in liquid nitrogen. Kathryn had to thaw them in a hot
water bath at my bedside and then promptly give them to me as they
deteriorate quickly. The DMSO was the hard part, causing an awfully hot
sensation in the upper part of my body and nausea, but this all cleared
ten minutes after the final infusion. I had been forewarned that I would
be very tired the rest of the day, and I slept almost continuously
between 2:00PM and 9:00AM this morning.
Last night, Sam was my
nurse technician. We visited for a while about midnight. He is a very
nice family man but his other brother was not. His brother was known in
the tri-county area by law enforcement and civilians as “Gangsta.” He
died a disgraceful death at age 53. Sam loved him dearly, but there was
no changing Gangsta. What an inspirational story! [Note to stem cells:
don’t turn me into Gangsta.]
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