Inappropriate Happiness

Can happiness ever be "inappropriate"? I'm hoping to find out.

The pieces of the puzzle are coming together, and it appears that I may not have pneumonia (although I still have "pulmonary infiltrates"). Instead, it looks like I have the reversible lung damage that's a side effect of bleomycin, one of the pre-transplant chemo drugs I took two months ago.

Doctors are gradually taking me off the antibiotics and replacing them with the cheek-puffing steroid Prednisone. I had my first dose last night, and I already feel significantly better this morning. If all goes well, I'll be able to go home this weekend and take the drug in pill form.

I haven't had a fever for 36 hours, and my cough is calming. That's the good news. The bad news is that taking a shower last evening still left me huffing and puffing as if I'd just run the OC Marathon. And I'm in the process of receiving a red blood transfusion to pump up my low RBC and hemoglobin counts.

It's nice to know that the culprit is likely bleomycin and not a person, place or thing that sent me back to Hotel Hope. Those infectious disease specialists grilled me like I was a perp on Dragnet and then incorrectly assumed that a memorial service I attended a week and a half ago was the source. But, ya' know, I wouldn't have missed that service for anything, so it doesn't matter.

Many of us are carrying inappropriate guilt. I've had phone calls from friends worried about a suspicious outing ("I should never have taken you to Costco") or party ("Do you think you should have been around that many people?") or homemade meal ("I carefully washed all the vegetables with water and vinegar"). I've personally wrung my hands about sloppiness with hand-washing and fretted about close contact with small children.

Not that I should stop being vigilant, but it's a lot more fun to throw darts at bleomycin than an over-active schedule and under-active hand washing.

I've been researching all of the possible side effects of prednisone. Besides the image-enhancing chipmunk cheeks, swollen belly and increase in appetite, one site warned about "inappropriate happiness." That, of course, brings to mind the photos of a smiling and laughing Britney as she's taken from her home and small children in an ambulance.

Now that I've taken a second to erase that haunting Britney image from my brain, I personally wouldn't mind a little inappropriate happiness, especially if that means happiness in the face of everything going wrong.