I'm Outta Here!

So I’m finally coming home from the hospital! Good news.

Bad news? Well, it is a trifecta:

1. I found out just this AM that my hottie hematologist has been at a conference, so I will not cap my delightful stay here with a hottie sighting. Boo.

2. Not having the information outlined in #1, I got myself up and showered every day while feeling like I’d slept under a car. With diarrhea. And bad food. And all for naught. I should have stayed gross and funky for three days.

3. I’ve gained weight while here. While not eating, crapping my pants and generally feeling like hell, I managed to gain weight. I’m assured it’s a result of the, say, ten bags of saline they gave me, and that it will dissipate. So—good news, perhaps. Except that I don’t want to picture how that “dissipation” will occur.

One of the doctors I did see a few times was a really lovely physician named some variant of “Dylan Rosenberg,” “Taylor Weinstein,” or “Bradley Lowenstein.” I love when I meet Dylan Rosenbergs because they are invariably the offspring of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, in both looks and nomenclature. I can always picture the dialogue that went on back in 1971: “I want to name him Dovid after my grandfather, or at least David.” “Sweetie, we are not having a Dovid/David Rosenberg; we’re just not. These are the 70’s; we don’t want to ethnicize him too much. Let’s compromise: how about Dylan?” Which his how Tzvi became Taylor and Baruch became Brad.

Anyway, Dr. Dylan Rosenberg sent me on my way with a smile, a request to come back on Friday for blood counts…and antibiotic pills, I kid you not, the size of chicken McNuggets.

One final note from my stay, for your personal edification and protection. Should a medical professional tell you they need to do a “lavage” or a “suction” of your “nasopharyngeal” region, run like hell, my friend. Holy mother of god. The only way I can describe this procedure is to characterize it as “a bone marrow aspiration of the nose.” The exquisite torture of a bone marrow aspiration is that the bone marrow is in a vacuum; when the needle pierces it and sucks out some marrow, it is introducing suction to an area of the body not designed for that action. Hence, the horrifying, weird, bizarre kind of pain that ensues. It doesn’t “hurt” so much as it feels like the combination of having bone sucked out while the instrument doing the sucking is also scratching itself down a chalkboard while chewing on tin foil while listening to something at super high frequency while vomiting. It’s not “pain” so much as an overwhelmingly negative sensory onslaught that combines all of the things you should by all accounts never endure at one time and manage to stay sane.

Hence, the “bone marrow aspiration of the nose.” When I say “nose,” mind you, I don’t mean the nose as we all understand it. I mean “the nose” as in the part of your nasal cavity that goes under your eyes, into your throat, and seemingly up into your brain. I mean the part that, when a rubber tube is shoved into it and its plugged-in-to-the-wall-socket electric suction component starts up, you truly believe your sinuses, retinas, and indeed your cerebrum and cerebellum are being sucked out through your nostril. It is the most exquisite kind of “discomfort” (as the nurse described it) that I have recently had the pleasure to experience. So, again with the good news, I didn’t have a sinus or “nasopharyngeal” infection. The bad news being that I will never again experience the bliss of thinking that my nose stops where my knuckle starts.

And with that characteristic nose picking reference, I will simply say: “It’s good to be back.”

Thanks for the love, y’all. I appreciate it.