“are we on fire?”

SPOCK

The Keed with the dreaded D100 with the flash.

Beam me up Scotty; there’s no intelligent life down here.

Linda is having a hard time, more or less, ever since CHOP chemo Round Two, which was almost two weeks ago.
Actually, we were all right until two nights ago, when nausea and weakness set in, making it so Linda couldn’t eat much of anything.
The inability to keep anything down, or eat anything, adds to the weakness.
An offset is to take a Compizine pill to counter nausea, but they also knock her out.
Her temperature was up to 100.8°, and we were also looking at the weekend, when all but emergency health services shut down.
So she called Wilmot and detailed her symptoms. They wanted to do blood-cultures for infections. —Chemo reduces immunity.
Thompson Hospital in Canandaigua is 20-25 minutes away, whereas Wilmot is 45 minutes away and a parking challenge.
So a blood-draw script was faxed to Thompson.
We set out for Thompson about 5:15 p.m. yesterday (Friday, November 2, 2007) in the Bucktooth Bathtub.
Since it was late, we went directly to Emergency.
“Up the hallway and to ‘Admittance.’”
Their directions were a bit wonky (MAPQUEST ALERT!), so we tried “Diagnostic Imaging.”
“Up the hallway and to your left.”
We continued (“sauntering,” no doubt).
“Can I help you?” someone in Admittance asks.
“I need bloodwork done; Wilmot is faxing a script.”
“Our lab closes at 6 p.m. (it was 6 p.m.); you’ll have to go to Emergency.”
“They just sent me up here,” Linda said.
The usual mountain of paper was processed; signatures required 89 bazilyun times. (“In case of death, I will not sue.”)
“Please take a seat and wait until called.”
No sooner had we taken a seat when the whole hospital was plunged into darkness, ending my reading of a Car & Driver article on the original Baja 1000 in 1967.
Emergency strobes started flashing.
Fortunately the sun hadn’t set yet, so it wasn’t pitch-dark inside.
Nervous employees began congregating at the information-desk. Someone out back kept yelling “are we on fire?”
Finally the hospital administrator-lady strode out in her pink pant-suit and assured all-and-sundry that everything was hunky-dorry, “but the elevators don’t work — not until our generators fire up.”
In-and-Out..... the blood-draw was performed in minutes, despite the lack of electricity.
“Are we allowed out?” Linda asked administrator-lady. (A PA announcement had said no one could leave.)
“Of course,” she said, so we sauntered across the vast parking-lot to the Bucktooth Bathtub.
No street-lights, no parking-lot-lights; nothing at all — all of Canandaigua was dark.
Canandaigua is Rochester Gas & Electric, but we’re Niagara-Mohawk; so who knows?
All the way up 5&20 was dark; no street-lights, no flashing caution-lights, no traffic-lights — even through nearby Bloomfield.
But as we descended the hill past the mighty Bloomfield water-tower we noticed lights on the other side of the valley: Niagara-Mohawk was still up-and-running.
West Bloomfield was still on, meaning our poor dog had not been plunged into darkness.
Turns out a car-accident had taken out a power-pole, which dumped an entire substation. A whole service-area had been wiped out.

“Linda” is my wife of nearly 40 years. She has lymphatic cancer. (It’s treatable.)

“CHOP” equals Cyclophosphamide, Doxorubicin (I don’t know where they get an “H” for this), Oncovin (trade-name for Vincristine), and Prednisone, a steroid.”

“The Bucktooth-Bathtub” is our 2005 Toyota Sienna van; called that because it’s white and like sitting in a bathtub, and appears to have a bucktooth on the grill.

RE: (MAPQUEST ALERT!) Once I was driving toward De Land, Fla., where my mother-in-law resides, and was following MapQuest instructions, which directed me to turn onto a one-way street in De Land against traffic. At that point the MapQuest instructions got tossed into the back seat of our rental-car.

RE: “sauntering.....” My blowhard, macho brother-in-Boston equates my running with “sauntering.”

“Rochester Gas & Electric” and “Niagara-Mohawk” (NiMo) are both electric utilities. RG&E is based in Rochester. NiMo is now “National Grid.”

“5&20” is the main east-west road through our area; State Route 5 and U.S. Route 20, both on the same road. 5&20 is just south of where we live. To get home from Canandaigua we travel 5&20.

We live in the Town of “West Bloomfield.”

Our dog is“Killian;” a rescue Irish-Setter. We left him alone in the house while we went to Thompson.