Tuesday, July 2, 2013

A Horizontal Interlude

The place where they give chemotherapy is called an infusion room. It contains a bunch of "infusion chairs" (like institutional recliners) and a few regular hospital beds. There are the usual hospital curtains between them.

I had been sent to a chair on my first two visits, but this Tuesday I was assigned a bed. Wonderful Wife was ecstatic, because she was tired and wanted to steal half my bed.

We got settled in with the IV and now knew we would be there for at least two hours. Wonderful Wife climbed in behind me and spooned me. This was during Boston heat wave, so we hadn't been able to sleep close to each other at night. But this was in a pleasantly air conditioned hospital. Very soothing.

I fell sleep.

We probably both woud have slept the entire time, but a new neighbor arrived on the other side of the curtain. A middle aged man and his wife. He was very gregarious and funny and they were both obviously intelligent. We eavesdropped as they interacted with the various staff that were explaining to him how his first chemo infusion was going to go.

We thought they sounded like a "cute couple".

We even heard them discuss that their wedding anniversary had occurred a few days prior and he had forgotten. They were able to laugh about it.

Anyway, instead of sleeping we lay there all afternoon listening to their stories and their conversations with various people: a hand masseuse, a very informative nurse practitioner, etc. It was very entertaining.

The whole time I felt like we should open the curtain and introduce ourselves but the time never felt quite right. When my infusion was finished we walked to the open side of their section and said hello. We had a nice little chat until Wonderful Wife and I had to leave to go to my radiation appointment.

He appears to be on a similar schedule to me so I expect we'll run into each other again in the infusion room.

A little googling told me that the wife is fairly well known. So I'll avoid descriptions of them that might violate their privacy.

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