As you may remember from my previous column ^[1], I was admitted to the hospital for my stem cell transplant at the beginning of March (on March 5 to be exact).

I had no initial devastating reaction to the melphalan ^[2] (Alkeran) that I received on the day of admission or the infusion of my stem cells over the following two days.

While my first 10 to 11 days were certainly not pleasant, they weren’t “off the charts” bad either. For the first week, I was allowed to walk in the corridors with my IV fluids, where I could look longingly out the windows on to Central Park and the flowering trees that had burst into bloom prematurely this spring.

Unfortunately, 11 or 12 days into the process, when my white blood cell counts had (as anticipated) dropped to near zero and I was confined to my room, I developed “issues.” Just when I felt I had gotten over the hump, the complications arrived. I started having chills and then fever.

The next five days were indeed “off the charts” bad. It seemed that the chemotherapy found every weak part in my body and attacked. Fever, edema, low blood oxygen levels, bone pain, irregular and rapid heartbeat – what a litany!

I have visions of masked nurses and doctors gowned up in yellow robes hovering over my bed at 2 am in the morning. To me, it seemed more like scenes from a movie than something in reality. I wondered whether one of the women in a large, flowing yellow robe was an angel.  (I learned later that she was the nighttime nurse practitioner in her eighth or ninth month of pregnancy).

They pulled me through.

I have little memory of what actually happened. I know I saw innumerable specialists – a cardiologist, a urologist, a pulmonologist, as well as an internist and hematologists.... (A few of them I will need to see again, among them a surgeon to schedule the repair of a couple of mysterious new hernias.)

At times during this difficult five-day period, it crossed my mind that I might not survive. However, like well over 95 percent of stem cell transplant patients, survive I did.

And, as I write this posting eight weeks after my discharge, the intensity of the experience has substantially abated. And I am optimistic that I will recover both physically and psychologically.

Nevertheless, I want to share some of my observations from the process with you:

First, the doctors got the ailments under control.  I was discharged on day 19 after admission, only one day more than the average.

While for some reason my body objected more strongly than average to the lethal doses of chemicals, the physical symptoms proved to be treatable.

Second, and of inestimable importance to any hospital patient – particularly patients as ill as I was – the nurses were extraordinarily informed, caring, and responsive.  They also explained the procedures they subjected me to and when needed kept me company in the wee hours of the night.

How transplant nurses do not burn out with the constant demands placed on them remains a mystery to me.  Several of them have worked for over 20 years in the transplant service. Forty years of lawyering had not prepared me for the caring people who treated me. Angels of mercy, pure and simple.

Third, I am rapidly forgetting the intensity of physical despair I felt during the worst days of the stay. As has been noted by others, how many women would go through childbirth a second time if they fully remembered the pain of the first?  The mind has this wonderful protective mechanism of selective amnesia.

Finally, my family and friends were tremendously supportive. My wife (who as a doctor knew far too much for her own good about the complications I was having) somehow coped with the stress.

There were also a few surprises along the way.

Once my body’s five-day tantrum with the chemotherapy abated, my body fairly quickly purged itself of the fluids and chemicals it did not like. I lost 20 pounds of water in the process.

I was shocked to go into the bathroom toward the end of my three-week stay to shave (I thought I would try to clean myself up for the attending so that she might consider sending me home in a few days) to discover that I had not a hair on my face. Not much hair on my head or the rest of my body either. (Peach fuzz returned to my upper lip three weeks after discharge, and at seven weeks, I think I feel a bit of hair growing on my bald pate).

I left the hospital with an oxygen tank that I didn’t need and pretty normal blood cell counts, which I found to be quite miraculous.

I also remember vividly how good it felt on the ride home to be out of that 15-foot square hospital room and to see the forsythia cascading over the walls of the transverse through Central Park and the cherry trees in bloom.

The stem cell transplant is a wonderful process to have behind you. Hopefully, I won't have to have another transplant and whatever chemo I’m placed on will keep the myeloma cells in check.

Since my discharge two months ago, I’ve been enjoying the glorious spring, and, though napping every day at least once, I have extended my daily walks to three miles. I have even ventured back into the swimming pool and done some leisurely laps.

I have plenty of residual aches and pains but look forward to the remainder of the spring

Good luck to those you who are about to embark on this particular journey. There really is light at the end of the tunnel.