One of my most memorable experiences

It's only been three and a half months that I have been spending time with my little friend lymphoma, and yet we have had a few memorable experiences together.

One delightful day in February, we spent 21 hours in the Emergency Room at California Hospital in downtown LA.  I wouldn't want to repeat the experience, but it was a lifetime memory filled with good and not-so-good.  God love my friend Bob for being with me or I could not have survived it.  Amidst the sea of suffering in the third-world waiting room filled with crying, moaning, puking, and fighting, Bob attempted to accomplish a little of his legal practice on his Blackberry, dressed in a starched shirt and tie.  He also munched on a taco from the taco truck parked immediately outside the door.  It was a clashing of culture, and yet Bob was the first to point out that there were some very compassionate and understanding people amongst us who were concerned for me.  I couldn't have gone with a better person.

It was a long 8 hours in that waiting room before I was finally admitted to the ER and got a bed.  A bed in a dark, foul smelling corner, but a bed.  I felt for the 28 others who were serious enough to be in line for a bed, among the dozens of people waiting only for the trauma center.  I was told that many would give up and go home.

The next 13 hours in that bed would prove to be eye opening and enlightening.  What an experience to lay there and be only a small curtain away from the worst traumas of downtown LA.  An elderly woman cried and screamed in pain having fallen down stairs.  An hour later, she couldn't stop vomiting from the morphine.

Stabbing victims, car accidents, and a very detailed and serious vagina crisis in the bed right next to me, all made me feel so lucky to simply have cancer.

And yet, the unbelievable nurses and doctors that deal with this on a daily basis were incredibly down to earth and personable.  They often gathered around my bed and we told stories, shared experiences, laughed and cried.  Granted, by this point I had had an injection of pain medication.

Michelle, Anathea, and Debby sang for me, danced for me, and chatted about life and priorities.  I don't mean to make light of my situation.  There were moments when they had to put in emergency IVs for my blood pressure and eventually I was moved to ICU.  But it all paled in comparison to the human interaction I experienced.  At one point, as I was discussing with Anathea the acceptance of my challenges with lymphoma, she asked me to write a book and title it, "Bring It On, Bitch."  (I learned that ER nurses aren't demure.)

My reason for being in this situation was an extremely low white blood count, and an abscess that had grown slightly larger than Nebraska.  I call it my "infecta-rectum."  Infecta decided to take matters in its own hands around 5:00 am . . . i.e. my water broke, like a flooding of the Missouri River.  Having had a second injection of pain medication by that point, I just pleasantly smiled at the nurses and told them I was giving birth.

As I said, I ended up in ICU for a day, a regular hospital room for three more days, and had surgery on the abscess.  Eventually I was released because when a body is prone to infection, the hospital is the worst place to be.  For the next three weeks, I had a visiting nurse come to my home every day.

If I had to choose Disneyland over the ER, it wouldn't be much of a decision, however I am happy to have experienced both and know that the comparisons are striking . . . long lines, creepy characters, funny stories behind the scenes, and friends like Bob that make the day all worth it.