Transport

The most unsettling part of the experience so far has not been the sometimes painful poking and pricking. What makes me shudder is the phrase, "I've put in a call to Transport."

The first 24 hours included a bunch of scans and a procedure (installing a multipurpose port just below my right clavicle). This meant having to travel all over the hospital complex, and such travel is managed by the Transport team.

First up was a heart test. Chemotherapy can weaken the heart muscle, so they want a baseline to compare to later. I'm getting ready to walk over to the testing with the Transport guy, but I see he has a wheelchair and expects me to get in it. Fine. Off we go.

It's a long walk/ride. I'm on the sixth floor of one hospital, and we're headed to the basement of another. It feels awkward to be taking such a long trip with somebody and not talk, so I try to make small talk. "How far do you think you walk in a day?" Unfortunately, I'm not very good at that, so it's just more awkward when the chit-chat dies.

Also awkward: riding elevators. Normally, if there are just a few people in an elevator, we arrange ourselves so that we're all side by side, facing the door and maybe turned a little bit toward each other. When people get on, we typically acknowledge them with at least a nod. Hospital elevators are long and narrow (to accommodate hospital beds), and they have doors front and back. We roll in and start going down to the basement. We stop and another person gets rolled in, behind me. There are now four people in the elevator -- two patients and two pushers -- and we're lined up in single file facing a door. It feels weird, not being able to see the other passengers and not being in control of what I can see.

We eventually arrive at the site of the first test. My transporter rolls me next to a wall in a unit with curtained bays on both sides, locks my wheels, and takes off. Soon, a technician shows up and wheels me into the room. We do our test on equipment being run by a Macintosh Power PC 8100 (which Wikipedia tells me was introduced in 1994). I remark on the age of the computer, and the tech sighs. They're praying the computer doesn't die, because they no longer have the disks (for the testing software, I assume).

The test is quick, the tech wheels me back out to the corridor, locks my wheels, brings me a cup of water, and says, "I've put in a call to Transport."

Then he's gone. It's kind of late, and the unit appears deserted. Did everybody go home? There's the medical background noise of pumping, whirring, beeping, but no voices. The curtains move slightly, as if there were a breeze. But we're in a basement, so maybe it's ghosts -- the ghosts of patients left behind at the end of the day. About 30 minutes in, a staffer walks by. I ask how long one should expect to wait for a ride. She's not sure, but she thinks maybe because it's so late, there are fewer Transporters available, so it could take 30 minutes. Or more. I have no watch, but I'm pretty sure nearly an hour passes in all... just me and my chair and the medical white noise.

It turns out that being pushed in a wheelchair has cast a debilitating spell on me. I have gone from athlete to invalid in a single ride. I have finished my cup of water, and there is still no sign of Transport, or anyone else. I keep looking around for a staff member who can refill my cup. Suddenly I remember ... I can walk! It's a miracle! I walk down to the end of unit, where I saw a water cooler.

As I approach, a large man lumbers into the unit from a different corridor, also headed for the water. He gets there first. He sits down next to the dispenser, catching his breath. I wait. He recovers enough to get some water, and then I get mine. He's slumped in the chair next to the cooler, I'm looking at the familiar collection of outdated (yet somehow timeless!) women's and golfing magazines. The tech pokes his head out of his office and says, "Still here, Mr. Seeley?" The huffing and puffing man looks up and asks, "Are you Mr. Seeley? I thought you were still in testing." It turns out that he is my transporter for going back to my room. I think "I thought you were still in testing" is code for "I was resting in the back room to recover from walking all the way over here."

I'm concerned. As soon as we start wheeling, he starts wheezing. At one point, in a tunnel between hospitals, the floor has a very slight dip. We go into it with a little speed from the downhill portion, but we're losing steam quickly as we climb out. "I think I can. I think I can." We barely make it out. I'm thinking maybe we should switch places. "So, how far do you think you walk in a day?" "Too damn far, that's for sure."

Back to my room two hours after I left -- 10 minutes of testing, 110 minutes of travel or waiting to travel. My nurse doesn't think there are any more tests for the night, so I order dinner. Baked fish, red beans and rice, side salad, apple, orange, pudding. Then we learn I'm going for more tests, and I leave in a chair just as my meal arrives, at 7:00.

This time we're going for CT scans and X-rays, looking for infections in the sinuses and lungs. Yet another transporter, more elevator rides. Dropped off at the CT place, go right into the test, back into the chair. "I've put in a call to Transport."

And then the tech is gone, and I'm hanging out by myself again, this time in the CT room. Ten minutes later the tech comes back, unlocks my wheels, and says, "I'll just take you to X-ray myself."

At the X-ray place, I get dropped by a reception desk, but (naturally) my back is to the receptionists. Kind of a long wait, during which the Rush Limbaugh fan behind the desk tries to explain to his colleague, a young black woman, why she should not vote for the "Dumbocrats. Get it? I call them the Dumbocrats. Because they're so dumb." She is not persuaded, because she already doesn't vote for the Democrats, or anybody else. Because "they just do what they want to do, no matter who you vote for." (I can't say she's totally wrong about that.) The conversation keeps going on behind me, the passionately misinformed trying to persuade the ignorantly uninterested that it's really the Dumbocrats who are the party of the rich people. Like most fans of talk radio talking points, he has a lot of numbers, like the number of Goldman Sachs alumni advising Obama on economic matters. (OK, I can't say he's totally wrong about that.)

An X-ray tech comes to rescue me. In, out, back to the reception desk. "I've put in a call to Transport."

I have another epiphany. I'm on wheels! I unlock the wheels and entertain myself by carving figure 8s in front of the reception desk until Transport finally shows up. I get back to my room at 9. The dinner is, surprisingly, still warm and, not surprisingly, not very good. But no more Transport for the night. Yay!