Around 4 a.m. this morning I woke up with nausea, a little dizziness, and a pounding headache. I took a quick check of my temperature, and it was 102 degrees (Fahrenheit… but you probably knew that… naturally ocurring boiling innards is pretty rare). My instructions from the oncologist were to call if I had a fever above 101, and luckily for me this qualified.

It’s now 15 hours later and I have a lovely private room at the local hospital, complete with a wireless hotspot… which made this entry possible.

Everyone entering my room comes in with a mask and gloves, which makes me a little nervous… like I’m some kind of bubble-boy.

This has been a time when I’ve been grateful beyond words for my supportive family. It’s really been the silver lining of this whole episode (if you can put such a lining on unbearable nausea and a head that feels like it’s been used as the ball in a soccer match). Unbearable might be a stretch. It’s not unbearable now… after three doses of Zofran.

You know what’s worst about all of this? It’s not the nausea (although it’s a close second), the fevers or the headaches; it’s that I have to spend the next several days tethered to an IV pole in a hospital. I don’t recall having spent the night in the hospital as a patient (I did it twice when my kids were born, that wasn’t quite the same). But every time I’ve visited someone in the hospital they’ve always looked so pathetic; like staying in the hospital was almost as bad as the illness. Staying in a hospital does something to one’s modesty – that disheveled look only adding to the effect… that look of miserableness.

Now I’m that disheveled hospital patient: ass hanging out of the infamous gown, hair in that perpetual “slept on” state.