In With the Riff-Raff

My infusion today was short, only Herceptin, only 1 ½ hours, so I was put in a chair and left there for the whole time. I was expecting this, so I didn't feel put-upon or otherwise cheated, like I do when they put me in a chair for a 4-plus hour infusion (so far, this has only happened twice, and I've been moved to a bed within the first 30 minutes). I was even there long enough for lunch, although, strangely, it was only a half-sandwich today. Where was the other half? Have people not been eating their full lunches, and they want to not be wasteful? Could we not, therefore, choose? Anyway, the bad thing about the chairs is that, like the beds, they each have a TV. Unlike the beds, however, the walls between the chairs are not made of wall, but are instead made of curtain. There are actually 5 beds in the chair area, which I very much dis-prefer to the ones in the bed area, but they at least each have one wall, and only share one curtain with another infusion slot.

Anyway, the curtain does absolutely nothing to mask sound. What this means is that I frequently believe my infusion pump is beeping when it's actually the one next door, and I have even called a nurse to turn it off in the past, only to discover the sound had nothing to do with me. Worse, though, is the blathering of daytime TV. The sound emits from the nurse call device, which can be placed very close to your ear. Headphones would be nice, but people would have to bring their own because of sterility, and who could remember that all the time? Probably not me, and I'm doing pretty well with the memory for the most part. Today my chair was between two other chairs. Both chairs were filled; both people were watching TV. I could hear every word said, and it really drove me bats until finally a small crisis developed with the person to my left (low white and red cell counts; hold chemo; get a blood transfusion; go home; come back tomorrow), and I had something interesting to eavesdrop on until I was done.