Silly Saturday

Lights out at Stanford

Today has been funny.  We reached our cancer beating quota of 4 laughs per day by 9 AM this morning.  It all started at 4:30 AM when the nurse came in and announced that the power would be turned off soon for some scheduled construction and started moving everything from the regular outlets to the red outlets which run on generator power.  She did this with such noise and movement that we were wide awake afterward.  I was lying in bed, trying not to laugh as I observed her leaning over the bed, then trying to go under it, then finally going around it to reach the outlet. 
"Baby, get up!" Willie shouted, after the nurse finally left the room.
I shot out of bed, my heart racing.  This is the time of night that he usually got nauseous when receiving chemo and he's had a few nights since where I've been summoned out of bed to get him a cracker or toast.  I was at his bedside in no time, ready to see what he needed, but instead he was laying there smiling.
"Are you nauseous?" I asked?
"No," he said "I just wanted to see if you were awake!"
Haha!  Clearly our day was off to a silly start.  
The power went off about 8AM and it sent the hospital into mild chaos.  The generator doesn't provide a lot of power, (and how could it for a hospital this size!?) so the power that is available is routed to the most important things.  That left us with the computer, one set of lights and his IV pole in our room.  The rest of the floor wasn't as fortunate as us.  When I walked down the hall to use the bathroom it was like an eery scene from a post Apocalypse movie.  The hallway was dark with only a few overhead lights, a lantern flickered as it hung from the hand of a nurse who was doing her morning rounds.  The silence  was unsettling.  We have become accustomed to constant overhead pages and the never ending high pitched beep that happens whenever a patient calls the nurse.  Everything about the silence felt wrong.  My footsteps were the only sound that filled the empty halls and I realized as I neared the bathroom that I was going to be in complete darkness once I was inside. 
How bad did I really have to go?  I wondered.
To some it may not be a big deal to use the bathroom in utter darkness, but I carry a stupid fear of dark bathrooms ever since the "Bloody Mary" incident in elementary school.  It was somewhere around the 2nd or 3rd grade and all the kids were playing a game in the bathroom where they would turn off the lights and say "Bloody Mary" three times in a row.  A few kids would disappear into the bathroom then a moments later there would be screams and a quick exodus from the dark room.  One of my friends was brave enough to go in there and reported seeing spiders crawling down her face that weren't really there when she left the bathroom.
Real or not, I don't care.  Those types of stories always leave me feeling dark and I would rather stay away from that kind of energy.  Unfortunately, that is the kind of energy I now associate with dark bathrooms.
The door to the bathroom was propped open and I must have looked ridiculous, standing there in front of it, not sure if I was going in or not.  Just then, a police officer showed up.  He was totally out of place for the hospital setting, but fit perfectly into my post-Apocalypse theme.  He was holding a glow stick identical to the type that kids carry around at Halloween. 
"Hooray!" I said to him "I was just wondering how I was going to get around in there!"
He nodded his head, but didn't look up at me.  Instead he fiddled with his belt and came up with two pieces of duct tape that he secured the glow stick to the wall with.  I thanked him and he nodded his head, while still looking at the floor and left without ever really acknowledging me.
"Was he real?" I asked myself and looked down the hallway to see if he was walking away, but he had disappeared.  I looked back over at the glow stick taped to the wall and shrugged to myself.  This was a strange morning indeed.

Glow stick taped to the bathroom wall

The glow stick actually provided a fair amount of light to the tiny bathroom.  It reminded me of a story I once heard on faith.  The story was told of a group of teenagers who went exploring in a cave.  They took a wrong turn and ended up lost and alone in the dark.  They were scared and didn't how they were going to get out.  One of the boys then remembered that he had a small pen light on the key chain in his pocket.  That small light was enough to lead them out of the cave to safety.  The story illustrates the simple truth that there can be no darkness where there is light, just as there can be no fear where there is faith. 
I remember hearing this as a teenager and being completely confused.  There was still darkness in that cave, I remember thinking to myself, the small light didn't take away all of the darkness!  I wasn't prepared at that point in my life to fully understand what I know to be true now. When even the smallest light illuminates the darkness the darkness no longer exists. 
When we entered this journey just over two weeks ago, I'm not sure if we even had a glow stick of faith with us.  There was so much fear and uncertainty that we allowed that to fill our hearts for a brief moment.  But it was only a moment.  We have felt the prayers and faith of all of our wonderful friends, family and loved ones and have seen miracles unfold in front of our eyes.  Our glow sticks of faith have grown brighter and changed into full blown lights.
Indeed, there can be no darkness where there is light IF you focus on the light.  That is the piece I didn't understand as a teenager that I fully comprehend now.  There may be no "cure" for cancer, but there is hope for a cure and a strong belief that there is bright future ahead of us.  This is the light we are focusing on.  There is no darkness with that light!
This morning we had, yet another, new attending physician. He is middle aged with a crop of dark hair that is carefully parted and combed to the side.  He wears glasses that add to the stern look he carried on his face as he entered the room.  I felt like I had seen this man before and quickly realized that he looks like the stereotypical "mean doctor" on the hospital tv shows. 
"I'm Dr. Couture," he said, then shook our hands without even smiling.
The resident checked Willie over and asked if anything had changed.  He is feeling much better today we filled the doctors in on his hard day yesterday compared to today.
"Great," the attending physician said, with a bit of enthusiasm that relaxed his stern appearance "then today will be more of the same, just waiting things out."
We were confused for a moment since we were told that he would probably need platelets today by our last team of Dr.s.  We asked him about the labs which he had no idea about.  This is funny, considering his IS the attending physician for our case. 
The female resident smiled and pulled a stack of papers from her pocket.  She is of middle eastern decent with a startling white smile that catches you off guard.  She read from the labs which showed his platelet count has dropped to 8 and his red blood cells (or hgb) are at 6.6. 
"Well I guess he will need infusions!" the physician said and laughed at himself "We will need to do a unit of platelets and two units of blood."
Will has never had platelets before so he warned us that they pose a bigger risk of a reaction than a blood cell transfusion, but assured us that the nurses would give him benadryl beforehand to reduce reactions. 
The team was about to leave the room when the resident turned to Will,
"Can you settle a debate for us?" she asked him "We can't remember how much you can lift."
"My personal record is 545 lbs." Will said and she broke into a dazzling smile.


One unit of platelets

"I thought so!" she said, looking at another resident across the room "I told you so!"
They asked a few more questions about his weight lifting awards and hovered around him like he was royalty.  I wouldn't have been surprised if they asked for an autograph or a picture! 
When they left to room we burst out laughing.  I imagined that there was an exchange of bet money in the hallway as the resident reminded everyone she was right!
Will's platelets arrived around 11AM.  They are a nasty yellow color and looked anything but healthy as they dripped into his picc line.  He was given tylenol and benadryl and the infusion began.  Platelets are infused quickly and it took less than 30 minutes for the bag to empty.  It was over before he even knew it started with no reaction to report.
Easy breezy!
The nurse changed out the platelets for a unit of blood and we were back into comfortably territory again.  This is the 4th time he's received blood and it has become old news for us.  It was now lunch time and Will was craving Round Table pizza.  He is currently on strike from the kitchen because of their terrible service the past couple of nights.  A few nights ago his dinner arrived almost an hour and a half late and when it did get here, it was missing an entree!  We could have forgiven that incident if we didn't keep having problems like this night after night.  His solution is to eat elsewhere and today he wanted pizza.


$22 pizza smile

I called Round Table and asked if they could deliver to the hospital.  I thought it was a lofty request, but they had no problem with it.  I met the delivery driver outside the hospital, next to the fountain.  He was driving a white, unmarked truck and we had a suspicious exchange of money for pizza.  I laughed to myself as I carried the pizza back through the building as I imagined how that must have looked.
The pizza was $22 which we felt was a very steep price for a small pepperoni pizza.  I reviewed the receipt when we got back to the room and discovered they had included a delivery charge and we had paid them for delivery as well. We paid almost as much for the delivery as we did for the pizza!
I don't think I've ever seen Willie so happy to eat pizza.  I would have paid $122 for the amount of happiness that pizza brought him. He sat in bed and enjoyed every bite.
 As he ate, a man from the art department came in to ask us if we would be interested in doing some art.  Since Will was getting a blood transfusion at the time we asked him to come back another day.  He stayed for a while and talked sports with Willie, but I wasn't listening.
I was paying careful attention to a small patch of raised red skin I had noticed on Will's neck.  As he talked the patch grew and I was shocked to see it spread in front of my eyes.  It came up from his chest and covered his entire neck in a red hue.  The artist left and I quickly began checking Will's skin.  The rash was everywhere!  It had gone down the side of his arm and covered one side of his stomach.  We paged the nurse who stopped the infusion and called the doctor.
There was no huge concern because he was still breathing easily and wasn't having any pain or itchiness from the rash.  It just was weird!  The female resident came to inspect the rash and said she thought it had come from the blood and not the platelets.  We thought that was weird since he has gotten blood plenty of times before without incident.  She explained that every unit of blood is different and some can cause reactions.
"We'll just give him some IV benadryl and he can finish that unit of blood." She said.
HOLD ON A SECOND!  She wanted him to FINISH that possibly TAINTED unit of blood?  We questioned her about this and she assured us the blood was fine and it was just Will reacting and the benadryl would fix it.  Neither of us bought in to that so when she left we asked his nurse if he had to finish that unit.


The biohazard bag of ridiculous porportions

"Oh heaven's no," she said "I already called the blood bank and they asked us to send it back so they can test it."
We breathed a sigh of relief. 
Everything got chaotic after that.  We had 3 different nurses coming in and out asking about the reaction.  One took blood that had to be sent to the blood bank, another typed things into the computer.  They poked and proded at Willie and took his blood pressure and temperature several times.  Finally, our nurse returned with a GIANT red bag that had "bio hazard" written all over it.  She unfolded the bag and we all laughed as it ended up being the size of a body bag.
"Were they wanting you to put Willie in that?" I joked.
"Sir, we're going to need you to get in this bag so we can take you to the lab for testing," she joked back as she held the opening out toward him.  She then took the tiny unit of blood and placed it in the bottom of the ridiculously large bag.
About 15 minutes had passed since the blood transfusion had been stopped and the rash was already starting to disappear.  It must have been caused by the blood after all!  They brought in some IV Benadrly just to be safe and the rest of the rash disappeared within seconds of him receiving the shot.  It was amazing!
The Benadryl not only took away the rash, but put him into a sleepy daze and he has been dozing for the past few hours.  The power is still off and the Giants are playing right now.  Earlier in the day we joked with the nurses about Will not being able to watch his game because of the power being off and said we were just going to go over and watch the game in person if we couldn't watch it on TV.  Maybe the rash was our punishment for joking about not having power because now he's sleeping through the game!
I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend.  We have been getting pictures texted to us all day from our family and friends who are participating in the Relay For Life walk to support the fight against cancer.  We are so proud of Will's dad who is a cancer survivor and did the survivor's walk today.  There is so much hope for a cure and it is carried in the faces and personal stories of each indiviual who beats this disease.  There may be no "cure" for cancer, but cancer certainly cures relationships and brings people together to fight it. 
In the end, maybe we are all the cure.  Together we can beat cancer!