Hospital Stays
Once diagnosed, I spent the next 30 days in the hospital. The first week was heavy chemo which destroyed my immune system so I needed to stay in a very clean environment. Long before COVID I was wearing face masks whenever leaving my room.
Cooper Hospital had a big oncology floor with a big loop of hallways. The nurses told me how many loops equaled a mile so I’d do 2-4 miles a day. There was also a really nice family area with a fireplace, TV, magazines and daily newspapers. The laptop and I would spend about an hour there each day. Sometimes someone with musical skills would sit down and play the electronic keyboard. My room had an excellent view of the Ben Franklin bridge, and I could see both the sunrise and sunset each day.
View from my room at Cooper, looking west towards Philadelphia, showing the Ben Franklin bridge from NJ into PA. If I couldn’t see the bridge then it was either cloudy, or raining hard.
Few of my rooms at HUP (Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania) had a decent view. A couple overlooked parts of the UPenn campus and I could wander to windows that had views of Drexel University where my son is attending. Floor plans were much smaller so the walks were very monotonous. UPenn did have a lot of pictures from local artists on the walls so I could spend time just looking at them. On one of my trips to other floors for procedures, the fellow pushing the bed did a detour and showed me some of his favorite art on other floors. He probably would have been in trouble had anyone known, but I really appreciated seeing something new.
View from my final stay at HUP from a room on Rhoads 7, looking south over part of the UPenn campus:
I spent all of June 2019, most of July, and a few weeks scattered through the rest of the year in Cooper, then HUP. No matter how I tried to mentally prepare, they were all very long stays. In 2020 I spent the month of June in a very closed room for my bone marrow transplant. It was pressurized to keep out anything but filtered air. This was the peak of COVID so I was not allowed any visitors. My wife could pick up dirty laundry and drop off clean laundry, books and food at the front desk but could not visit with me. Anyone coming into my room had to wear a mask, clean gloves, and a clean smock. I had to do the same when leaving my room for any reason. It was a very long, lonely, hospital stay.
Upon leaving after the bone marrow transplant, I was in a mask and wearing rubber gloves for the trip home.
Keeping Busy
Besides the things I already mentioned, my wife and kids brought a Firestick, DVD player, and a bunch of movies. I really do not watch much TV other than movies, so most of the cable channels at both Cooper and HUP were awful. After one round of chemo I was pretty wiped out and enjoyed Tour de France since I could just sit and watch the pretty countryside shots. Ie, no thinking (more about this in the page about chemo).
One of the nurses at Cooper seemed to have the same taste as me in movies so I’d play something we both liked near the end of his shift and he’d come in when done to watch TV and talk about the movie for a few minutes. It was nice having discussions about something other than my health.
Differences between Cooper and HUP
Cooper had rooms with great views. Most HUP rooms were like prison cells (Dulles 6). Rooms in the Rhoads building were a lot better, some of them overlooking part of the UPenn campus. Ivy League schools look good 🙂 I spent a month and a few one-week trips in Dulles 6, a few days in Rhoads 4 and a month in Rhoads 7. Those are building names and floors.
Bathrooms at Cooper were larger, making it easier to maneuver with the pole with IVs.
Cooper food was definitely better and I could order any time from 7 AM to 7 PM, while HUP had fixed meal times. However, HUP had a small kitchen with food. If a meal didn’t taste good, I’d get a bowl of cereal or heat up a personal pizza, grab some ice cream, etc. HUP was also stricter about my diet since I am a Type 1 diabetic. There were times I was extremely hungry but they would not let me eat anything else. I can home starving and had lost a lot of weight.
Cooper let me sleep a lot more, whereas HUP had people popping in all night and day. Weight at 4 AM, blood draw at 5, vitals at 6, breakfast between 7 and 8, doctors visiting all day from about 9 to 3, vitals every few hours, medications about every hour, dinner around 6, vitals and medications all evening, etc. If lucky, I’d get to sleep around 11, then it all started again in a few hours. I came home exhausted after every visit to HUP.
HUP definitely had more experts at their disposal. Copper told my wife to start looking into palliative care, whereas HUP said they had many treatment options since they did a lot of research. I was more than willing to be in clinical trial if it might extend my life and give some useful information to the doctors that might benefit others.
Cooper had yicky antimicrobial wipes to use after showers, where HUP had a liquid soap that did the same thing. I prefer the latter, and used it at home for about four months after the bone marrow transplant.