Taking a small step back from the edge

I can’t say I’m my usual, chipper, go-get-em self, but I think I have taken a step back from the edge. This is probably because a plan is emerging and I feel a little better. Although I still have some fevers, they are decreasing.

Also I seem to look half alive, which seems to please the doctors and which, therefore, pleases me. “You look good,” they say, as though partly surprised but also encouraged. One day a technician came in looking for the patient, and she wasn’t sure if it was Diane or me until she noticed I was the one with the tubes attached to the IV pole.

Dr. Alyea said they might have a new donor lined up by the third week of January, which seems pretty fast to me; maybe I can cross off the scenario where I waste away while waiting for a donor. He said they’d like to get me home in a few days, but only if I have at least a day without a fever. Meanwhile I’ve been getting blood and platelets almost every day. Yesterday I got two bags of platelets, which bumped me to 22, obviously much better than some of my lows but still low enough to get a blood blister on the roof of my mouth from eating a meatball. I feel pretty nostalgic about the old high platelet days just a few weeks ago.

Yesterday PJ popped in from the blogosphere; well, actually, she popped in from Rhode Island, where she lives, having been in Boston for the afternoon. We made a connection through our blogs, then started to talk on the phone, and now we’ve met in real life. It was great to see her.

Today three of my friends from tennis came. We joke that you can’t be on our team if your name doesn’t begin with a D. Obviously there are exceptions, but my three friends who came today are a case in point: There was Debbie Rowe, Deb Doner and Donna Young. It was great to see the “Ds,” who sat with me in my room, cheered me up and walked around and around the sixth floor hallway with me.

You fill in the landscape with some familiar details, and it seems a little less frightening. Diane immediately found Steve, the quirky newspaper guy with the long ponytail and waxed handlebar moustache. As she approached him in the Brigham and Women’s lobby to start up my daily New York Times delivery, he said, “Gordon, right?” This makes me wonder whether he has a great memory or whether he doesn’t have many clients. In any case, the Times shows up at my room every day, a reminder of home.

The nurses already know that I prefer their coffee to the dishwater from the cafeteria, so they get me a cup that I have with a piece of pumpkin bread while waiting for my breakfast to come.

This pod seems smaller and more crowded than others I’ve been on. Even though I’m neutropenic, I’m far enough past my transplant that it’s safe to go off the pod. The other night I was walking around the “square” connecting the pods when a nurse walked by and told me that 20 laps equals a mile.

So I did the 20.

Life goes on.