It’s 2:30 a.m. The night sky is dark and vast, but the myriad high-rises of the medical center glow with hazy white outlines from this 18th floor window. I can see the helipad on the roof beneath me and the blinking blue-tipped antennas that guide pilots to the lifelines below.

My husband, Daniel, is finally sleeping in his bed, directly across from my watch­ful gaze, but I am too weary to sleep, so I watch, from this room with a view. As I look out, I remember other views we’ve shared: the Eiffel Tower on our honey­moon (how the sunset en­veloped the city below with amber-tinged rays that signaled the day’s end); the snow that blanketed Central Park three years ago, making Manhattan look like a winter won­derland, and so many others. I pulled my mind back to the present and looked again at Daniel. Yes, still there. Sleeping quietly.

The 18th floor is for stem cell transplants. In a way, we’re fortunate to be here tonight, since we’re getting a taste of what we can expect four months from now. Our room is larger and more com­fort­able than I thought it would be. It has several table top surfaces, so I think it will be fine for me to work from as they collect his stem cells and try to destroy his myeloma.

How quickly things change. Four weeks ago, we had Daniel’s routine myeloma appoint­ment. I was hoping that a recent steroid shot for a sinus infection would give his numbers a friendly bump to keep us out of any worri­some waters, especially since we were planning a vacation and I wanted us to enjoy our time off together. I was shocked when we were told that it was time for Daniel to start treatment. “Wait, what?” I thought. “No, this month is his bye-week from the steroids!”

There was a concern about a pattern of Daniel’s decreasing white blood cell count (WBC), which was 3.6 at that time. Daniel’s hemoglobin was around 10, which his myeloma specialist had always said would be a red flag as well. They were ordering another bone marrow biopsy and PET scans, since it has been a couple of years since they had done them.

As the physician assistant continued to rattle off all the things that we needed to do that week, I felt the familiar tunnel effect that I felt when he was first diagnosed. Just like the previous times before, I urged Daniel to do the biopsy with anesthesia, since his bones are so dense and hard for them to penetrate. Just like the previous times before, he refused because he didn’t want the drugs in his system, leaving me with a hard lump in my throat and water filling my eyes that I tried to blink away.

There was a time of some uneasy discussion over the next few days as we waited for the test results to come back. We hoped that if the team recommended treatment, the need for it would be clear to all of us. We needed to feel at ease with Daniel starting these myeloma drugs that come with a loud, ticking time clock.

Thankfully, the answers couldn’t have been clearer. In addition to the low WBCs and the anemia, Daniel had a bone lesion on his left clavicle. We couldn’t avoid it any more. It was time to start treatment.

We learned that Daniel will be on two cycles (approximately four months) of Kyprolis (carfilzomib), Revlimid (lenalidomide), and dexamethasone induction therapy, followed by a stem cell transplant and maintenance therapy thereafter.

However, we didn’t even make it to his next appointment. Twenty-nine hours before I started writing this column, Daniel was beet red in the face. I felt his head and he was burning up. He said that he felt sore and achy all over. I wondered if it was the flu, but he had just come through the flu in December. I took his temperature and it read 102.7 degrees F (39.3 C).

I called his specialist and brought him into the emergency room at the myeloma center, where they per­formed tests and gave him Tylenol (aceta­mino­phen / paracetamol) to bring down his fever. The tests showed that his white blood cell count had dropped down to 1.6, dangerously low, given that normal is between 4 and 11, and he hadn’t even started treatment yet (which is a common reason for low white cell counts). With the diagnosis of neutropenia, he began getting Neupogen (filgrastim) shots in his stomach to increase his white cell count. We found out that he tested positive for a bacterial infection, and they plied him with antibiotics to fight it. The working theory is that Daniel’s white cell levels were so low that he wasn’t able to fight off the infection. Given his high fever, there is also a very strong possibility that he contracted a virus, even though the viral tests came back negative. They can’t test for every known virus, however, so it is difficult to tell what he might have had.

Daniel’s specialist postponed his myeloma treatment till we know that his infection is gone and his white cell count has returned to non-neutropenic levels, but he is now scheduled to begin treatment this week.

Looking out this window, I wonder what this year holds for us. I’m acutely aware that I want to be better at this than I am. For six years I’ve known this was coming, but strangely, I don’t feel prepared for it now that it is here. Maybe the caregiver never can be.

I hope that I will be “light” for Daniel, even in the midst of stress. I hope that I can remove the worry from my face, and I will exude a calm assurance, so that all he sees is warmth and peace, like the rays upon the river Seine that we traveled so many years ago. Most of all, I pray that he won’t hurt, and that his treatment is successful, and that we have time to enjoy many more rooms with a view.