I received an allogeneic stem cell transplant in January 2018. During my transplant, my bone marrow was chemically destroyed and replaced with donor stem cells. While I waited for my new immune system to grow back, I could be killed by a sneeze–And I almost was. During quarantine, an opportunistic virus spread through the transplant ward. By my second week in the hospital I had contracted pneumonia. To leave my bed I had to be unhooked from several IVs, a heart monitor, and a breathing machine and then hooked up to a can of portable oxygen or I’d begin to suffocate.
Soon, I realized that the food staff for the ward were coming into my room without gloves or protective gear. After the first few attempts to get the servers to put on gloves failed, I went nuclear. I picked up my phone, and I dared to do what no patient had apparently done before: I took a photo.
The woman handing me my food with bare hands and no protective suit, froze. I said, “Look, I really need you to put on some gloves when you bring me food. I’m immunocompromised.” The woman glared at me and replied, “Are you going to get me fired?” I blinked at her from my throne of tubes and wires and tried to process what I was hearing. She didn’t get it. Somewhere in the chain of causality, there was a gap. She couldn’t or didn’t want to make the connection that her actions could and probably did make me sick. I tried to stay calm. Through my oxygen mask I pleaded, "I’m not trying to hurt you. I don’t want to take away your job. I just want you to wear gloves in my quarantine room."
After that, the food service staff started to "forget" my food orders. By the time I left the hospital I had lost around twenty pounds, and I was receiving most of my food from friends and a nearby cancer charity. I don’t believe those people thought they were doing a bad thing; they thought that I was a bad person and that they were doing the right thing by punishing me. When I had told that nurse to stop doing something that could kill me, she felt like she was being attacked.
