On Hospitals & Holidays

when your beloved is sick & it seems the world is merry

Hello, friends.

As previously mentioned in my last newsletter, C was admitted to Stanford Hospital in November due to him no longer being able to manage his pain at home; that hospitalization wound up becoming four weeks (thus far) of oncologists being flummoxed by him. And when I say flummoxed, I mean that they are genuinely confused, because his condition has bordered on having never been seen before or having been very rare among bone marrow transplant patients. They’ve consulted Sloan-Kettering and Harvard. "We talk a lot about you,” the doctor on rounds yesterday said, “and we are confused. We don’t know what’s going on.”

Whatever is going on—and it doesn’t seem to be a cancer recurrence, at least—has caused his white blood count to drop to as low as .2, when the lowest normal WBC count should be 4. His neutrophil count, which is a type of white blood cell that fights disease and infection, is… at zero. Thus, they do not want him to leave the hospital until those numbers improve because he has no defenses—and I mean NO DEFENSES!—against viruses and infection. He has stayed in through Thanksgiving, and he will stay in through Christmas and New Year's. After that, he may still need another transplant from either the same generous donor from last year or someone else.

I brought a little tree and decorated it to bring cheer to the room; C and the nurses, at least, seem to enjoy it, though it is small and cannot handle many ornaments. The loveseat—it is not large enough to earn the title of “couch”—seen in the background is where I spend a lot of my time when I’m not cuddled up with him in his hospital bed. (We are watching “Dune: Prophecy” together, but we seem to be the only people interested in watching this show.)

Meanwhile, my own illnesses are in the back seat. I say this not to engender sympathy or to compare my own experience with what C is going through, but to share that they simply aren’t active the way they normally are. Normally, the amount of activity I did, say, yesterday would have me flat, hurting, and feverish for two days that I’d have to spend in bed. But I know this drill, which has happened before when I’ve traveled for a book tour or some other kind of work: my body’s adrenaline kicks in and wipes everything else out because this is an emergency, and we need to be okay. It doesn’t always happen, but I can tell that it’s happening now. I just worry about the inevitable crash.

People have been asking if there’s any way they can help, and I reply, Yes, yes, you can help; please do help. I commute by rideshare to and from San Francisco to Palo Alto every day, which really adds up. Lyft gift cards are amazing. C is so tired of the hospital food, and I am too exhausted to cook by the time I get home, so Doordash gift cards are also amazing. Particularly if you’re outside of the U.S., PayPal works too. Please send any of these things to info@esmewang.com. And if you cannot do that? I understand and I am still grateful for your prayers or thoughts or love.

More soon—

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