First visit

First -isit                                                        September, 2025

I remember the first time after the transplant I returned to the Lori Cancer Center at Northwestern Medical Hospital; or, I rather should say that I have a memory that I attribute to that first visit. I was wearing a hat not because I wanted to hide my bald head but because I was extremely cold all the time. Also, because I couldn't walk much yet, my husband was pushing me on a wheelchair. I had graduated from Floor 17, the cancer floor, to Floor 21st, the transplant floor. The lobby had made a calculated effort to disguise its infirmary purpose by offering comfortable sofas, coffee tables, and a specialty hot beverage maker. Also, there was a round table where people coming from other cities could have lunch or even work on their computers thanks to the free wifi.  However, if all this warm contemporary decor wasn’t soothing enough, we had a prime view of Lake Michigan through window walls.  
In this clinic, my co-transplantees looked a bit healthier than the ones four floors below; some already have hair, most of them were walking on their own and have normal weights. It wasn’t my case since my transplant had been only a month before and I was extremely weak. Indeed, at that point of recovery, just staying awake for a couple of hours was a challenge; I was weighing the same as when I was 12 years old and my muscles and mind refused to respond to my commands. Being there felt very promising. 

Before seeing the doctor, transplantees always have their blood drawn. That day, and for several months, I needed to help my blood to come out by expelling air from my mouth, a trick that only feeble people need to learn. After filling the eleven tubes, we waited more than ninety minutes to hear the nurse call my name. It’s always been the same, and after three years of weekly visits I'm used to the routine, but that was my first day, and if it hadn't been for the caring presence of my husband, I would have ended up as a small melted thing on the wheelchair seat. All the time we were there, he lovingly looked at me, touched my hand and, at the precise moment, whisperingly sang his secret silly song. 
Finally, we entered the offices’ area. All the vitals were taken, and I was wheeled to my doctor’s office that was freezing cold, even for my husband. I will never understand why the oncologist's offices are so cold knowing that their patients don't feel well, but this is another matter. This story is about my first visit to my transplant team in their offices, after being in the hospital in and out for five months, after losing so much weight that I couldn't or wouldn’t recognize myself in the mirror. 
So, I was there. Now, I was sitting on a chair, but I got so sleepy that I asked my husband to help me to lay down on the stretcher and cover me with a bed sheet. When the doctors finally came I woke up, one asked “How do you feel”, and I answered in the only possible way: “Like I've been run down by a truck.”  “I know”, she said,” but I need to look at you.” Helping hands incorporated me so she can look at my mouth, my eyes and my skin. They are always searching for rejections, allergies, infections and other aftermath cataclysms we don't even dare to think about. Then she said “you are doing very well”, a diagnosis that, to me, sounded very irrational but I didn't have the physical energy or the mental clarity to contest. Instead, I informed, “I'm going to sleep; talk to my husband.”  

The next thing I remembered is my husband saying that it was time to go home while I was begging to continue sleeping in that freezing room. Somehow, I ended up in the wheelchair, and then, in the car. 
We took the familiar way home, bordering the lake via Lake Shore Drive. The last of the afternoon sun was shining on the spray of the waves that crashed the cement border.  “I’m doing very well,” I murmured, resting my head on the rear window. And dependably, the lake answered me, by shaking the cold of the Chicago winter, rebelling against its uncivilized-progress composite beach, bringing me a much needed energy from its deep blue, ancient belly.    
                                                                                              Claudia Guerin