Day 51

Today was another pleasant and quiet day. I got chemo in the morning with benadryl so I enjoyed a nice little morning nap. However, the number of people who interrupted me was phenomenal: rounding team, nutrition, dietary x 2, housekeeping. Nursing and aids came in to check on me, but didn't wake me up to make sure I was sleeping comfortably which I appreciated. At the end, when I was almost ready to wake up a volunteer I am quite fond of came in to chat so I did rouse myself completely and we chatted awhile. I went for a walk outside around the hospital three times which my iphone says is three miles and then returned to reading, computing, etc. Sadly, one of my resident friends from last admission came by to say hi, while I was out walking so I missed him. I hope he will try tomorrow.

I can't remember if I have mentioned how nice it is to not be neutropenic and to be able to step out of my room to ask a question or get something and how really fabulous it is to be able to walk outside. It makes being here much much nicer. My last admission if I so much as stuck my head outside the door, I was supposed to mask up. Then when I came back in, I felt like I needed to sanitize anything that had been outside of the room. This meant that if I needed something, it was much easier to just push my button and let the world come to me. Now that I can go out easily, I can walk out and get what I want. I can have my door open which for some reason I really like to do when I nap. I can walk around outside. It's nice. One loses track of things like that in normal life.

The view from this window is really nice, too. I can see the playground from my window and am treated to young families relaxing from time to time while their kids run around. It's a very pleasant view. I am only one room over from my last one, but the view, similar in that it has pine trees, a walking path, sky and general pastoral kind of scene, is also strikingly different in that I can see more of the building, the playground, a picnic table and a little patch of parking lot. There are more hummingbirds for sure and I do not know if it time of year, angle of the window to the sun, the fact that it's more of a protected alcove or something I didn't even think of, but there are at least 10 hummingbird sightings a day in this room every day so far.

In other news, no rash, no chemo tonight or tomorrow am and probably more Daria tonight. I am still really enjoying "When we were the Kennedys" which I read a couple chapters of today. I am trying not to read too much at a time because I know I'll be sad when it ends. The central event (so far?) of the book is her father's death when she was 9. It feels to me like she gets exactly right what it is like to be the left behind child at such a young age. I have not seen anyone else show what that time is like for the child so well elsewhere. The book is set in Mexico, Maine in the fifties. It's funny to me that her childhood is kind of near here and only ten years before mine, but a totally different time. If you are in need of something to read, I highly recommend it (with the caveat that I haven't finished it yet).

I hope you have good options for your evening also and will see you tomorrow for a likely nother slow news day.