Warning! Day 7: the world is your personal petri dish

I do not know why it works this way, but nevertheless, the reality is this: seven to 10 days after receiving chemo, the patient's vulnerability escalates as his/her (my?) white blood count plummets. Of course, the purpose of getting the Neulasta injection after each chemo session is to keep the WBC from said plummet. Naturally, I hoped it would earn its no-doubt hefty price tag and do its job efficiently. As extra insurance, I followed the rules.

During that seven to 10 day period, which for me was the following week's Wednesday through Saturday, I was advised to only eat fruit with a a peel, a la bananas, oranges. I avoided salads, people with visible cold symptoms, eating anything without washing my hands first or using a disinfectant. I opened outside door handles with my gloves on; inside door handles with a paper towel. I even used a paper towel to turn off the bathroom faucets after washing my hands. I have turned into a female Howard Hughes -- with much shorter fingernails.

I tried to shop in off hours, avoiding big, germy crowds. I am embarrassed to tell you that, while walking down an aisle in Target, I saw a young boy sneeze three times in the aisle I was about to cross so I pulled my jacket over my mouth and held my breath as I passed through the contaminated air.

I had been given a thermometer at the oncologist's office and was told to take my temperature on occasion throughout those three days. Anything over 100° needed to be reported to the doctor immediately. Actually I only took my temp twice. It was normal both times. I've always known when I have a fever. It's not just chills for me. It's a headache and painful eyes. Fortunately, I was not experiencing either in my "hey, look, she's vulnerable" time zone. The germs were asleep at the switch and I skated right on through unmolested.

Other than the nosebleed(s). I've never had a nosebleed in my life. Isn't that odd! Wouldn't you think at least one? Nope.

And then I had two. One on day 8 and one on day 9. Not so surprising actually. Chemo dries out the nasal passages. It was 5:15 a.m. and I was getting ready for work. I blew my nose and suddenly had a small gusher. Kleenex wasn't stopping it, so I grabbed a cotton ball and stuffed it up my nose. I figured if I couldn't get it stopped in 15 minutes, I'd wake up Jeff and we'd head to the emergency room. This must be one of those possible bleeding side effects they warned me about.

And then I remembered one of the first things that needed to be done at work that morning was making sure we eblasted an advertiser's important announcement so that it went out while the attendees he wanted to reach were still at the big trade show. Problem was, his announcement had been sent only to my email address late the evening before. If I was sitting in the emergency room, no one at work would have access to that information for the eblast.

So I fired up my laptop and with my eyes aimed at the ceiling so that gravity could not have at my nosebleed, I prepared to forward that email, with instructions, to one of my designers, along with a note that I might be in late due to unexpected nosebleed. I did a quick check before hitting the send button to make sure I'd had my fingers on the right keys -- and then sent it off through cyberspace. Hah -- who's got chemo brain!

Mission accomplished. And best of all, no splashdown. The nosebleed was no more. Crisis averted. Day 9's nosebleed again was initiated by a nose blowing, but it was even shorter lived and that was the end of it.

Come Sunday, the petri dish was closed and the world was pure again. But I still open the doors to it with a paper towel.