Bob's voice: More Mewlings from St. Louis, Day +7

 It has now been seven days since my transplantation and there is no evidence of engraftment yet. The staff reassures me that this is not a surprise. Indeed I have not even lost any hair or vomited so my course has been calm except for periodic plummeting of my blood pressure. They have told me I want or need the buzz cut by day 10. My appetite has been only fair and meat is less appealing to me. Recently I have been ordering chef’s salads with Caesar dressing. This is a mountain of lettuce – total fiber – so my tummy growls and snarls for several hours afterward. If we ever had to commit genocide against rabbits, we could do it efficiently by putting melphalan (my “hemlock”) on all the lettuce in our gardens. The melphalan is working as my white blood count (the “department of defense”) dropped to zero today and my platelets are almost gone. My white cells may have seen our military getting no pay tomorrow and just walking out on the job like our military should. The least we should demand is the withholding of congressional paychecks!

Beth called today that she was coming down with a cold and wanted to know what she should do. I told her about a conversation earlier this morning with another patient who has been here for two months. His chemotherapy had him in remission until two months ago. Then he caught a rhinovirus in the community, the virus responsible for so many ordinary head colds. He spent the next two weeks on a ventilator and he is still here. Beth listened to the story and has been by herself in the hotel all day today except for a brief visit to Schnuck’s. She feels guilty for my being alone today, but her decision was most proper with all the really sick patients who are here. I am the lowest acuity patient on the floor and all the nurses want to care for me for that reason.

I am amazed at the level of these nurses. For the last three days I had Michelle, who is a polyglot, philosophy major from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, professional Persian dancer, and gourmet cook. Yesterday she brought all of her patients homemade chicken and matzo ball soup, which takes her 18 hours to prepare. She promised me in the morning that it would be a good day and it was thanks to her soup and caring above and beyond the call of duty. This morning she traded out my old bed which was killing my back. I bet the last person to use it weighed 800 pounds. The new bed is a dream come true! It has a more than 6” deep mattress that is fairly firm. I have been sleeping more than 80% of the time since it arrived and Beth could not.

Beth envisages stem cells as the Keebler elves that go into that tree and crank out cookies. My Keebler elves are on board, but have not yet reported for duty. I am anxious to watch the red, white and platelet counts reappear, courtesy of the elves. They will discharge me from the hospital when the white count exceeds 1500 (currently zero) and they predict that will be next Monday. If the counts remain stable by Friday the 11^th, they will probably release me from the hotel and send me to Savoy to live in my next bubble.