This morning, I was spurred from unconsciousness to frazzled panic. I had spent the morning ignoring my phone, which I had intended to rouse me by 10:30. An intent I groggily deemed misguided as my phone sang to me this morning, Necesito yo aqui! You are the sunshine of my liiife... (Which is terribly irritating, might I add) So noon finds me comatose until a frantic knocking at my secret door, a voice demanding to know over and over again why it is locked.
Oh shiii.
So I've been unsure about this room I've been sleeping in since day 1. It was provided to me by my dad's nurse, but something about the way she presented it made me uncomfortable. She advised me not to leave my purse in there. So that first night I ended up falling asleep in the chair next to my father's bed because I wasn't sure how legit the room thing was. Cept a nurse came in and freaked out while I was asleep, saying I couldn't do that. My father told me he said because of sexual harassment issues. We were both like wtf? Freud much?
Fairly ruffled, the next night I headed for my little room. "Counseling Room," its sign informed me. "In use." Huh. In use? I guess that's.. me? I peered back at the front desk, ensuring no one around, and slipped in. Tiny, but sufficient. Some sheets, a pillow, fold out chair-bed. The bed was the tiniest hing I've ever seen, about 2 feet wide and 6 feet long. Plenty of space for me, of course, granted I didn't move very much during the night.
So every night I'd sneak in, kick off my shoes, set up the bed and surf the web until sleep saw fit to steal me away. Every morning I'd throw all of my stuff back together, take the bed apart, and slip out. Hit the restroom right quick to clean up as best as I could and head to my father's room.
So this morning. Knocking. Panic. Trying to find my glasses. Where are my mofugging glasses? Forget it. To the door. Then I hear my grandmother's voice out there too. Oh, thank the heavens. A sheepish unlock and sightless, "Hi.." later, the situation began to clear up. As far as my vision wasn't concerned. It was the same nurse who had given me the room. She was back on duty for the first time in a few days. Apparently while I had been snarkily ignoring my phone, two of those disturbances had been phone calls from my father. Ergh. So they all panicked. The nurse had thought I had been locked out and wandered off elsewhere. Captured by urban pikeys, maybe?
A false alarm and a confirmation. No, I am not supposed to be there. But I haven't actually been exposed. Yet. Only a couple nights to go, so maybe I'll bum here sucessfully...
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While I was having strange dreams that stole music from the new The Hills Have Eyes, my father had a room upgrade. Yay! This new room is twice the size of the old, actually has a bathroom, and faces Madison Ave.
Over all, he is doing fairly well. That is, nothing is going wrong. He doesn't feel great, but nobody panics when it's part of the plan, right? He's just starting to lose his hair again. His throat is pretty messed up, full of lesions and generating much too much saliva, which he occassionally chokes on. He recently gave in and upped his dosage for the pain medication. He hates being out of it. He says the stuff makes him "loopy." But I'd imagine that having every second being it's own degree of hell is much worse than every second being confusing and dream-like. As a result, he's been spending most of his time sleeping. He doesn't have much energy, can't even lift his own laptop. But once his wbc rises he should feel much better. It's going to be shiz for a week or a bit longer, but after that he should start regaining his strength.
The big thing that we are worrying about is Graft vs Host disease, where basically his body rejects the transplant. He is pretty much guaranteed to get it, but a minor case is actually beneficial (the doctors have never enabled me to understand the why of that.) It's important to continue to watch for it after the first 100 days of the transplant, but can occur as long as a year after. From what I understand, though, if no major complications arise in the next couple of weeks, then things are looking good.
He did have a fever at 4am, but it broke, so I guess nothing is wrong?
It's been 6 mos and a few days now. If things continue this way, within a couple month he'll be back home.
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