Surrounded by disease and pestilence

I don't really remember paying too much attention to people sniffling and coughing, and would express concern when a hearing that a co-worker's significant other / child was ill, but then leave it at that. Now, all that's taken on a new meaning, and/or I've become a lot more attentive to such matters.

Today started with a meeting where in the course of the meeting, while the GPOC was out of the room for a page, the chitchat turned to one person sitting across the table announcing that his two children had just been diagnosed with H1N1. "that's nothing" said another, "did you hear that Pam's daughter is in the hospital with pneumonia?" (I had been in Pam's office on Friday). I now have to fight the tendency to just bolt the room, trying not to touch anyone on the way out. Instead, it is frequent visits to the men's room for hand washing, and using any hand sanitizer bottles that I see as a matter of habit.

Whew, back to my office, where my office mate assures me that his family is healthy, so far.

Then, this afternoon, I had to swing by the Urgent Care Center to have them draw blood for my labs in prep for my appointment Tuesday with Dr. Assefi, the last before the transplant. I go over there, and into the waiting room. That place is usually a triage disaster area of sniffling kids. The place is deserted at 3:30 pm. Great. I check in, and they have me go to a different waiting room, because there is some construction going on.

I just get seated, pick up a Scientific American (the waiting rooms in Loudon County have upscale magazines, I must say). A mother and her 14-or-so year old daughter come in, and the daughter makes a beeline for the Kleenex box, and hacks up a gob of goo. That's all I need, I'm out of there, back to the reception desk asking to be taken to the blood draw room. They comply.

Back home, I get a return call from Kimberly, to an earlier VM that I left her. Each month, between the 1st and 10th, for the past 3 years, I have to go in and get a vial of blood drawn, given back to me and then I mail it to Johns Hopkins where they keep it in the freezer for a month so that if they have a donor they can do the cross match. I wanted to know if I have to do it this period (because this is getting kind of old -- I never seem to sync my Dr. appointments where they always need labs, and this monthly draw, so I end of averaging 2 draws a month -- my vein in one arm is starting to look like a junkie). She said no, the draws that we had done on the 14th of October should be good (wait, that would been three this month) to keep me until the transplant.

She also said that she got the results back from our cross-match two weeks ago and we're still a good, compatible match. I didn't think there would be a change, but sometimes people can get exposed to some virus that triggers the immune system that can get one of us out of sync. So one less thing to worry about.

And more good news today, Michelle said she sold another painting. I knew that she was going up to Hillsboro for an art show this weekend, she took paintings up yesterday and they are to be hung tomorrow, one of hers sold even before they got it up. We're very proud of our newest professional artist in the family.

gc