As a hospital patient, it takes about two and a half minutes to get out of bed, throw on my slippers and robe, grab the IV pole in one hand and my nephrostomy bag full of that night’s urine drain, open the double isolation doors, don a mask and a protective smock, and shuffle my way down the labyrinthine corridors of Hadassah-University Medical Center’s Sharett Institute, in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem, to the safe room tucked away in the nurses’ training area.
All the while, other more agile individuals zip by with looks of empathy and superiority.
Once there, there are usually no seats for this straggler. From time to time, a kindly shelter-goer, younger and more able than me, offers to scooch over or share his or her seat with this eyes-half-closed, tongue-wagging-out portrait of pre-dawn pathos.
At home, in the not so distant past, when sirens were just starting to become a daily part of our life, the IDF Home Front Command developed an alert that screeches on every cellphone in the country, warning that “something” is coming to “somewhere.” I’d get dressed and wait at the top of the stairs in our apartment building. If it wasn’t a false alarm (as was the case more often than not in Jerusalem) and a siren did sound for our area, only then would I trudge down the 42 steps to our shared shelter.
That seemed like a sound strategy when the missiles were launched by the Houthis in Yemen, whose aim is notoriously inaccurate and less frequent.
Not so in the hospital during the 12-day war with Iran, where the nurses bang on your door and stay with you until you get to your destination, fall or fail.
Hospitalization is already a bitch. Add in missiles, and you haven’t created an environment conducive to relief. (Those 5 a.m. blood draws will interrupt anyone’s sleep cycle.)
FORTUNATELY, BECAUSE of my immunodepleted system, I am back in a private isolation room in the Bone Marrow Transplantation Ward.
A dreaded diagnosis
I am admitted on a Thursday and set up my room the way I like it. Midday on a Friday, Dr. Arnon comes to visit.
His expression is resolute.
“It looks like they’re going to have to move you to a different room, on level -4, the basement. It’s not as nice,” Arnon admits. There are no windows, “but there’s an upside: The entire floor is a protected space. So if there’s a siren, you don’t have to move!”
“But why?” I protest. “I like it here. All my stuff is here. I know the staff and all the protocols.”
“You tested positive for CRE,” Arnon elaborates.
CRE is the dreaded antibiotic-resistant bacteria you really only get in hospitals. CRE is short for “carbapenem enterobacterales.” It can cause pneumonia, urinary tract infections, and meningitis, among other ailments. In 2017, some 13,000 patients in the US contracted CRE. It preys in particular on immunocompromised people.
The other people in this ward are immunocompromised, too. “So if you’re stuck in a small, protected space with dozens of other patients, you could spread it to them. On -4, by contrast, everyone has CRE, so it’s not a problem,” he explains.
I wonder how they handled COVID in the early days of the pandemic. I imagine the opposite: Under no circumstances are you allowed to leave your room.
Arnon and I argue back and forth. The head nurse jumps in.
“What if I refuse?” I demand, getting more and more agitated.
“You could do that, but we’re trying to get you better from this infection that sent you here in the first place.”
Eventually I acquiesce, and an orderly who speeds through the corridor, presumably dreaming of someday changing career to Egged bus driver, rolls my bed and suitcase to -4.
My face drops even more than I know possible, and I nearly throw a gargantuan tantrum. This is not a series of private rooms with doors and TVs and a place for someone to accompany you to sleep. Instead, it is one big space with about 25 people, most of them in dire condition, with flimsy curtains between beds to provide a modicum of privacy. They wheel me next to a man who screams every 10 minutes at the top of his lungs in Yiddish-tinged Hebrew, “I don’t want to be here! I need to get out! Save me!”
I know what you mean, buddy!
Other patients are groaning incessantly. The beeps and tweets and rhythmic cheeps of the IV machines sound like birds sending out mating calls across the cavernous room. The nurses’ voices seem cranked up to eleven, speaking as loudly as they can, yelling across the expanse. There’s no red button to summon a nurse as you have in a proper ward; you have to catch his or her eye through the curtain which the previous nurse invariably forgets to close. Lights out at midnight? Better bring sleep masks.
“How is this supposed to be a place of healing?” I wonder. The copious quantity of invisible germs floating around the ward, gloves and smocks notwithstanding, must be astounding.
It is, in short, to paraphrase children’s author Judith Viorst, shaping up to be a most terrible, horrible, no good, very bad way to spend a night.
I am determined to get out of there.
I call my hematologist and insist that there must be an out-of-the-box solution. After numerous consultations and, naturally, a sleepless night, it is decided that I can go home the next day. My wife, Jody, will administer the IV antibiotics herself there. A nurse explains exactly how to do it. It’s not what the doctors prefer, but it’s a workable compromise. My infection ultimately abates.
If it is my misfortune to have to be hospitalized when missiles from the Middle East come a-calling again, I only hope that by then, my CRE will have resolved and diminutive protected spaces will be but a memory. ■
The writer’s book Totaled: The Billion-Dollar Crash of the Startup that Took on Big Auto, Big Oil and the World has been published as an audiobook. It is available on Amazon and other online booksellers in print, e-book, and audiobook formats. brianblum.com