Spaghetti Party Rm #450 - Tammy & her family, André & I

Today was definitely a strange day.

Talk about making the most of our situation. My current roomie Tammy is a great gal and her and her husband are extremely nice. Even outside the commonality of our situation, not to mention same hair style (or lack thereof), attire (pyjama was de rigueur for the both of us) and room sharing, I believe we would get along in real life. They are all from Vancouver Island and tonight they each had their mothers visiting. For this occasion, they decided to have a home-made spaghetti dinner in our room, which my brother and I were generously invited  to share. It was great to have a semblance of normalcy for a short time, eat real food, laugh and joke around. We are definitely the coolest room on the Unit.

MC & Tim

Earlier today, Tammy’s mother (who has decided to adopt me) brought me an ‘outside-world’ treat which I enjoyed tremendously. Again, it’s often the small things we can’t do or have that we appreciate the most. A simple cup of good, hot, tasty coffee can easily make my day, even Tim Horton (yes, I’m being snobby, live with it. Does it really surprise you?) In fact, anything not hospital related makes my day.

André & MC, brother & sister, donor & recipient

Today felt like my brother and I were just hanging out even though he received his first two doses of neupogen and tomorrow is a ‘big chemo’ day for me. Perhaps because of these events we are able to appreciate the small things, like a simple dinner party with new friends in the weirdest environment imaginable. Tonight, for a brief moment, Tammy and I were normal and the tubes, machines and meds disappeared in the background. The whirl, chugging, beeps and pumping of the IV machines were drowned by laughter. Tammy and I shared some of our war stories and were able to laugh about it.

Snowstorm

Oh and to make things even stranger, we had a snowstorm all afternoon. A real honest-to-goodness-east-coast-approved-snowstorm. In case you are wondering why I am wearing a scarf in my photos from today, it’s due to the freezing temp in our room! I know my brother would disagree with this one (maybe he has hot flashes instead of me?), but Tammy and I were both chilled today and we trump everyone else right now! If we say it’s cold in our room, then it’s cold, no matter what you ‘normal’ people say. This is our world and what we say goes. LOL

On a more serious and realistic but still weird note, I asked my nurse to fill out the dates on my perpetual white-board calendar. Strangely enough, only the dates until Transplant were written out. The sight of the blank space post transplant was stressing me out. There’s no common sense about it, but emotionally, it was important to me to see the dates after the transplant day written out. For me, seeing the blank squares on the calendar represented the possibility of nothingness. To see the dates on the calendar filled out promises a future, a continuity (at least until mid-March since that’s the only space the calendar holds for now). See, small things can either make our day or bring us down. This is definitely a roller-coaster journey of emotions. We laugh, we cry, we joke, we fear, all within a few minutes.

Let’s see what tomorrow holds
Marie-Chantal