Got any spare white blood cells man?

WBC hit the magic 1.0, parole is imminent! The docs are toying with me, said probably not Wednesday, but things are looking good, pretty sure by Friday. I think the docs thought I was getting lazy with what I was requesting from my bone marrow, and also Accounting called them and said Don’t let Fiore go, this guy is golden, we charge for all extra menu items and he is on fire! So I ordered a lot less today, increased the pace on the walks and hit the 10,000 steps (actually 3000 to go as I write this at 7pm), asking for WBCs.

And, I got a card in the mail today that read “To John, Happy Birthday + Best Wishes, Larry Bird ”. Unbelievable. Dana sent this card to Larry Bird and asked him to sign it and send it to me, and he did, that is so cool. The nurses say I can’t let anyone touch it, I need to protect it, so I have it in my underwear right now. Most of you don’t know that I offered Larry my back as a transplant just before he retired, but he turned me down as it would have been about a foot short on him. I love that guy, I am naming the badassest white blood cell I can find after him. Dana you rock! I was impressed the second I met you, and I am going to be impressed by you the next time I see you too. Real impressed!

Kickass WBCs
Back in the college days I learned that memory exists on a cellular level - Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, so to speak. Meaning the history of the evolution of the species is reflected in the evolution of the individual. So knowing that I would never shave before an exam, in case what I had studied was in those cells that would be shaven. I think my WBCs that are left are probably some of the meanest toughest scrappiest WBCs around, and can kick most WBCs asses any day, because they remember all those other scraps.

Almost all the other low WBC patients (neutropenic) are sick with some level of infection, and they have hardly if ever left this isolation ward. There are eight patients, I think, and I have only seen one other, and she is about 24 with a husband and 1-year old, and looks healthy. Lots to fight for, me too. Anyway, my WBCs compel to go roam the hospital full of sick people, just to go and pick fights with some germs, they need the workout and aggression release! It finally dawned on me while I was passing the Emergency Room full of hacking spewing people, I have to be picking up a germ here and there, although I scrub like I am going into OR when I get back to sanctuary.

My last two WBCs (after Patton died of old age), Joshua Chamberlain and Ghost 4-6, have recruited Genghis Khan, Evander Holyfield, Larry Bird (never loses), Butch Cabral, the ‘03-05 New England Patriots, the ‘04 Red Sox, John Nelson, Mrs. Mullaney, Joanne and my Mom and big brother Frank. And all the badassest dudes you ever heard of but I can’t think of. These WBCs will kill any germ that even thinks of touching me, and are in fact out looking for them in the bars and gyms of my body as we speak. Dana took ten days to beat the cold, I kicked it in 3 (OK, I am ignoring the antibiotic IVs I am still getting). I have a small but growing army of really nasty, street fighting, gouge your eyes and squeeze your windpipe killer WBCs. Don’t mess with them.

I was considering my cosmic diatribe of yesterday too, and in retrospect, if I am even close to right, you could each donate me a couple or more of your badassest WBCs too. I would even take raw recruits, hell, we’ll train them to kill. Here is how we do it. If we are all cosmically connected at some God/energy level, you basically send me the WBCs through your connection. Everyone’s connection is a little different, I am not sure how that works but I am not sure how my cable modem works and it does.
Dial up, turn on, kneel down, look up, put your hands together, look down, sing, shout, whisper, shimmy, shake, think it, however you do it, send me some WBCs. Whatever you can spare, don’t get yourself sick. I know a lot of you have been doing this, and it has helped, but I am looking for a surge here. I would say let’s time it if it weren’t for time bending and twisting all around the universe. Just do it when you can in the next five minutes. Tomorrow (maybe Thursday if it takes awhile?) the docs are going to say Well Fiore your WBCs took a nice jump, grab the wife, you’re going home to sniff your kids’ heads and get hair everywhere.

Why Me?
I was talking to a friend on the phone today and it came to me that there is a reasonable answer to the Why Me? Why did I get this? It occurred to me that I got it so that I could make this BLOG. I have always been an observer and a writer or thought I was. Why else would I suffer the joke of being completely healthy and in the hospital with a disease? So that I could walk around noting the weird, comical and tragic scenes, and the odd emotions they stir in me. It happened to me because I will walk up to anyone and engage them in some conversation in what is going on. While wearing a pink mask that I have to shout through.

I ran into another pink mask guy in front of the main entrance, right in front of the cafeteria, on the afternoon walk. I gave him the big thumbs up and he waved me to come over. The guy was maybe about 55, graying hair and scraggly beard under a hooded Minnesota Vikings sweatshirt, and his HEPA was not connected around the back of his neck. He says Hey buddy, how are you, hey can you show me how to connect this thing? So I wave him over to a less congested area, in front of the fake leather jacket, and there we are, dressed like homeless guys (this t-shirt is getting pretty ratty from hand-washing), heads and masks together, shouting at each other in this unintelligible language.

I show him how mine connects, hook through loop. He is fumbling away with it and actually pulls the mask down to his chin, and I say Man keep that thing on here. This is about the worst spot to do that. I tell him to put his thumbs on the critical pieces and he can feel it and he gets it. Tells me he is waiting for a liver transplant, his is full of junk and not working and just sloshing around and hurts all the time, and he sloshes it around to show me. He says he has to get sicker or the livers will keep going to other people first. What a concept.

Notes:
I continue to feel totally healthy. The cold of last week is entirely gone. I weigh 171, in spite of yesterday. I am hanging in here, staying entertained, reading less than I hoped even. Some things that used to interest me and that I thought would keep me busy have not held that much interest, like crossword puzzles or playing PC games, or TV.

On the afternoon walk I sat down at the Information desk with the Information lady, a nice 70 year old, survivor of something. I wanted to know how far away the nearest place I could buy eyeglasses was. I needed some high magnification glasses to do the bead kit Melanie sent me, and it turns out they were right in the gift shop. The lady in the gift shop didn’t want to just take a credit card number from me, but I pointed out that I could phone it in and send a gift to my room, no ID and no questions asked, and here she can see my patient bracelet. I have done this a bunch of times, and it is funny how people usually tilt their head when they consider whether you are scamming them.

Anyway, the Info lady had this collection of Jumble puzzles cut out from the paper. I am the king of the jumble, it is an OCD thing I have always had, rearranging words in my head, and I can usually do the daily Jumble in my head in less than a minute. So I asked her about them, and she says she does them but on a separate paper and then she sends piles of them to a friend. She shows me this drawer full of them, including the 6 letter 6 word Sunday Super. We sat there and had us a little Jumble competition, and it was close, she was pretty good.