By Henry Flesh

KINGDOM OF THE SICK 12 The rooms in the stem cell transplant unit of the Weill Cornell Medical Center are luxurious when compared with the typical hospital room. All are single occupancy, with a VCR, DVD player and personal computer. My room overlooked the East River, a view that easily bested the one I get from my East Village railroad flat.

From the very beginning I was aware of why I was given a single room: The treatment I was about to receive—chemotherapy and the transplant itself—would make me much more susceptible to disease. Two thick doors separated me from the corridor, and the air inside was continually purified. Doctors, nurses and guests wore rubber gloves when they entered because, I learned, hands carry more germs than any other part of the body. I could not hug or kiss anyone, or even indulge in a handshake. Despite having many visitors, I felt isolated, all but a prisoner.

Before I received the transplant, I endured a solid week of chemo, during which time three different types of drugs were administered. In addition to eradicating cancer cells, chemo also destroys a large percentage of one's white blood cells, which help ward off infections. Because of this, when my course of chemotherapy was over and I was ready for the transplant, I had virtually no white blood cells left.

During my previous treatments I had lost my hair, but the loss had been gradual and never complete; it had grown back two months before I entered Weill Cornell. This new round was much more aggressive, and my hair fell out almost immediately. I found much of it scattered across my pillow the day after chemo began. The second morning, when I looked in the mirror, I found to my utter dismay that I was completely bald.

I grew weak and had a tendency to retain fluid. To correct the latter, I was given drugs to make me pee more often. It was difficult to move about the room because I was hooked up to an I.V. stand, so I kept a plastic urine container near my bed. Often I needed to piss so badly that I had to resort to using it while visitors were around. I found doing so humiliating.

The transplant itself was almost an anticlimax after everything I'd been through. I'd had stem cells collected from me before I entered the hospital, and now they were fed back into my veins in much the same way that one receives a blood transfusion. The doctors monitored my blood constantly, and I waited with them for my count to return to a safe level.

It would be only then that I could at last go home.