MDS Becomes AML - I Can Smell It Coming

I started spending yesterday by moping around. Luckily there were enough mundane chores that had to be done—finish the taxes, write some checks for the ski writers' group, make of edits on a paper Laina's writing and try to discover why the health insurance folks think we're responsible for a Procrit shot the Dr. O jabbed into me on Dec. 29—to distract me and get me into a working frame of mind.

The more distracted right now the better. Because I'm not going to fib, this impending return to the hospital is a bummer. Even though I knew it was coming at some point.

Images keep running through my head. Images of

• trying to get comfortable in a hospital bed
• being awakened at 5 a.m. to find out if I still have blood pressure
• trying to figure out a comfortable position from which to watch the TV, which is a big screen but hangs from the ceiling at an odd angle
• nurses aides busting into the room to change bedding
• cleaning women who speak little English, breath heavily through their mouths and mop around you no matter where you happen to be in the room or what you may be doing
• and, of course, trying to manage the five-wheeled IV monster.

And, the smell haunts me. I can't really describe it, but there's a smell that screams "hospital!" It becomes imbedded in your olfactory memory during/after a longer term stay.

It's some kind of combination of the newly laundered sheets, disinfectant and Lord-knows-what.

Sometimes I smell it in my sleep.

I guess I'd best get used to all this because it looks like an awful lot of my near-future time is going to be spent in one medical institution or another. Sometimes I still can't believe this is happening.

As me old mum used to say, "Keep your chins up."

I'm trying, ma. Honest. I can tell, too—because whenever I look in the mirror, I can see my now beardless chin all too well. It's up.