Day minus one. The transplant was twenty-four hours
away. We went to Auckland hospital at 8am and entered Ward 62, the haematology
ward. I was told I would have a private room in the bone marrow transplant
unit. I was thrilled to have been given one of only five private rooms. But
first, because my room wasn’t ready, I was given some pre-chemo IV fluids in a
general ward room. There were three women in beds as I arrived. I said a cheery
hello to them all. They were all chatting and laughing with each other like old
friends. They were surrounded with personal possessions: books and DVDs,
snacks, cheerful duvet covers and stuffed animals. Photos and cards were taped
on the wall behind their beds. There were pictures by young children, crayon
drawings of a life beyond this place. It was just like a university dorm room,
especially when one of the women went to the bathroom and threw up loudly. When she returned, she struck up a
conversation with her neighbor. I overheard the other woman saying she faced
months in hospital.
“My son
asked me if I would be in hospital all year. I swore to him I would be out by
September. (It was now July 12th).
The woman
who had been throwing up nodded but she was obviously absorbed with her own
situation. She said she had been in hospital for four months and initially
wasn’t let out of the ward at all. Her leukemia had returned. She was grey and
sighing. She was eleven years younger than me. The third patient, in the bed
alongside me, left to go to a “look good, feel good” seminar. It is a cancer
programme that helps women feel better about themselves when dealing with the
side effects of cancer including hair loss.
At first I
distanced myself from these women, thinking they were in far worse shape than
me and my case was nothing like theirs. When I heard the woman say her leukemia
had returned I began to think this might be the future me. The hopeless me,
when all the earlier treatments failed to keep working.
After four
hours in the general ward I was moved to the private room. It was like going
from a backpackers lodge to a Hyatt. There was a single bed in the middle of
the room with all sorts of knobs and switches on the wall behind it. A high,
narrow table next to the bed had drawers. One had a lock and key for personal
items. On the other side of this was a tall wardrobe. A big window looked out
over Park Road above the entrance to the hospital. The room had a TV, DVD
player and its own bathroom with shower. I unpacked, settled in and within a
short time the previous IV was withdrawn and I was hooked up to the melphalan.
There was no turning back now. The nurse brought a cup of ice to suck on to
keep my mouth cold. This was supposed to help prevent mouth sores. Instead of
chips they were cubes almost the size of my mouth, so sucking them was
difficult and made my teeth chatter. But I was determined to do everything I
was supposed to, so I ate cups and cups of cubed ice. The mephalan took just
forty-five minutes to deliver but afterwards I was given an IV bag containing
sodium chloride in water. This was to wash the chemo out of my system. The
nurse took constant blood pressure and temperature readings. I was going to be
hooked up to the IV all night.
I tried to
put some night things on then, with my shirt hanging off my arm, I realized I
couldn’t get it off because my arm was hooked to the IV. I rang the nurse and
asked for help. She unplugged me so I could change. I put on an eye mask and
ear plugs to hide the unusual sights and sounds of my first night in the hospital.
It reminded me of trying to sleep on an airplane. I left the bathroom light on
so I could negotiate the IV pole to the toilet during the night. I got only a
few hours’ sleep.
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