“GOTTA GO!”

AUGUST 17, 2022 – (Cont.) I once had a friend, a close friend, a work colleague, whom I met my first day on the job as the lucky recruit to manage the “work-out” (deals gone bad) division of bank’s corporate trust department. The guy who hired me, it turned out, would later be escorted ignobly from the institution for gob-smacking infractions of behavioral norms. Early in my naiveté as a corporate warrior, the guy who later turned into a good friend saved me from the buzz saw. For that he earned my respect.

I knew from our initial encounter that this guy was smarter, more decent, and savvier than our colleagues. He was also well traveled, happily married, had two young kids, and owned a great sense of humor. His impressive analytical thinking matched his leadership skills and ability to see the big picture. I viewed him as a solid citizen. In every conversation we found much in common.

At the time, he was a devout Lutheran (ELCA), as was I, though I’d kid him that I was the more devout because my fellow parishioners had seen fit to elect me congregation president. This religious commonality turned ironic when he became an ardent Evangelical and I dropped out of organized religion altogether. We haven’t talked in years.

Last night I thought about this friend, because as serious as he could be, and as decent as he was, and I’m confident, is to this day despite what I suspect about his politics, he’s the source of the funniest scatological joke I’ve ever heard. It goes like this:

“What’s the smartest muscle in the body?”

“Dunno.”

“The sphincter.”

“Why?”

“It can readily distinguish a gas from a solid from a liquid.”

Yesterday evening into the early hours of the morning, the smartest muscle in my body proved to be not so smart, or more accurately, perhaps, temporary confused. I’m betting that this mix-up was a side effect of yesterday’s late afternoon injection administered for easier collection today—the same injection I’d received 24 hours earlier with the warning it would “probably cause immediate, uncontrollable diarrhea,” which side effect had not come to pass, so to speak. Despite representations to the contrary, the second round did produce some rumblings—maybe prankish humor on the part of the side effect gods—or was it thunder from storm clouds moving away? The reader will be spared further, trivial details.

Greeting me at the clinic first thing this morning was Lorna, one of my double-team nurses of the day. She presented me with the overnight lab report of yesterday’s stem cell collection: 5.8 million with a goal of 8 million. This bodes well for apheresis completion today.

If I’ve now put a few miles behind me, I’m coming up on the eight-mile mark of the marathon—the point at which in my running marathons a troubling thought would emerge: “You’re feeling the physiological/psychological knowledge,” some out-of-body control tower would whisper, “that you’ve been burning fuel at a spirited, ‘balls-on-your-feet’ stride, a hair below your trained-to-precision pace. But remember—you’re not even a third of the grueling way to the finish line . . . Until the tower checks in again, over and out.”  Hellbent on maintaining my locked-in time, I’d move to the side in advance of the upcoming water/Gatorade station. When I reached it, I’d snatch a water cup like a fighter pilot making a touch-and-go, swig the water, drop the cup, and swoop back up into the blue yonder. The G-5-force maneuver got harder at each station.

Lorna is (yet another) angel. Born in the Philippines, she and her husband and their two children arrived here 25 years ago. She, and from what she described of her remarkable family, are emblematic of the genius of this place, America. And so is gregarious Sherry, who grew up in North Dakota, of hearty German and Norwegian stock. I got her life story too, and it’s quite a life, overflowing with the richness of humanity.

Sherry and Lorna’s training, experience, and technical proficiency are in full display as they communicate with the machinery, with each other, with other team members, and me. This remarkable team found their calling.

Dr. McKenna made another stop this morning. I can tell by his rapport with the nurses that he’s well regarded by them, and they by him. Yesterday he laughed at my sphincter joke. Today, he laughed harder at my amendments. (He said he’d definitely share the joke with his kids; possibly with his wife.) He told me he loves his work and loves the people with whom he works.

I pried into his background, starting with his major in college (double: biology and philosophy, at Notre Dame). He’s a walking endorsement for the liberal arts, and mentioned his serious interest in Irish music; performing flute with an ensemble that played pre-Covid gigs at local pubs and was the “house band” at a nearby nursing home. His young son is already an accomplished accordionist in the “Irish groove.”

For a good while we talked about life and the paradoxical nature of humankind’s restricted construct of the cosmic force we define—inside and outside of “religion”—as God or god or one its many synonyms.

Oops! Gotta go . . .

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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson