"That rabbit's dynamite!"

Your substitute plogger for today is Marty.


Those of you who've seen the now-classic "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" will surely remember the scene where the Knights encounter a rabbit, guarding a cave. It was no ordinary rabbit. Well, his stronger, meaner brother was used to make the serum that was infused into Patricia over the course of this afternoon and evening.

For the first 3 hours, Patricia and I kept up a fairly steady banter combining humor and q&a about the transplant with the nurse assigned to her. Apparently a nurse is assigned to be with the patient constantly during the entire infusion of this immunosuppressant, ATG, a serum made from bunnies. At the 4th hour, the bunny knocked Patty down for the count. The next 4 hours saw high fever, headache, chills, the rigors (pronounced RY-gors), or uncontrollable shivering, and delirium. The nurse reassured us that this was "normal." As normal as it can be when you are chemically bombarding your body to destroy your bone marrow so you can replace it with some "goo" that's been squeezed out of a leftover umbilical cord or two.


Most of the management of the infusion is done with drugs, but to help bring the high fever down, the nurse placed some ice bags in Patty's armpits. Not the most comfortable, but she was so wiped out, she barely noticed. Also, considering all the electronic machinery attached to Patty right now, the ice bags seem like a home remedy. "Simple, but effective" was the answer the nurse gave me.


One moment of pure hilarity came this afternoon as they prepared Patty for this infusion. The nurses had double-teamed her to get 5 leads on her chest for the heart monitors, 2 pumps for the infusions into her heart, a cuff on her arm for the automatic blood pressure monitor, and even a clip on her earlobe to check her blood oxygen levels. At this moment, as we're watching the 2 nurses trying to keep the 8 electrical wires and 2 infusion tubes from becoming entangled with Patty's arms and legs, a young physical therapist backs into the room, dragging an exercise bicycle, and announces with a big grin on her face, "Okay, here's your bike!" About 5 seconds of dead silence, and then we all break into hysterical laughter. All except the poor young woman, who just stands there asking "Didn't you want an exercise bike?"


It is now about 10:30 pm. Patty has thrown up, had a round of the "shakes," her temp has peaked and is finally starting to come down, the ATG is done until Sunday, and Patty appears to have fallen into a deep, almost peaceful slumber. I look over at the exercise bicycle. Maybe tomorrow.