The sex talk(T-M-I about TIM)

Tim had his transplant in Sept. of 07. In addition to one of the weirdest sex questionaires I'd ever heard re: have you ever had sex with an animal or a person from the Ukraine or a person from the Ukraine who has had sex with an animal. YIKES, I don't want to know what amoeba it is these people from the Ukraine are carrying. Anyway, we had to take a several hour long caregiver course before he went in that was given by one of
the many candidates for the "nurses of HUMC pin-up calendar." Then, when we checked in, we
were given instructions again in a huge printed booklet. On the first page, it said at
the bottom in bold capital letters ABSOLUTELY NO SEXUAL RELATIONS. I knew about this,
as did Tim I believe, and honestly, I did not think it would be an issue with the nausea and all.
Well my hubby must be the only man who could take that bottle of napalm, be nauseous and weak, and still follow me around the condo looking for some action. I guess having time to kill and no kid around to worry about were the main reasons. I held out though(not my normal M.O.) while he told me many times, in words I won't report here, what he thought of
this Nooky ban. Actually, I'm not that strong. I purposely made sure we had no birth control method on hand and that's the whole reason I could hold out. Tim persisted and said, "do you actually think any of my swimmers survived that chemo?!" Now that's a line you don't hear everyday. Poor Tim, his "fellas" were flaming red one day from thrush and blue the next. ;o) On Tim's last day in transplant, I tried to think of how I could ask the transplant doc privately when we were allowed to end this ban. You see, every day from about 8 or 9 in the morning till about 5 at night, we were in a "transplant day room" at the cancer center. Tim would be in a lounge chair
and me in a chair by him and there was nothing separating us from the nurses' desk or the other transplant patients , who we had become friendly with in this time and still are, but a curtain that would be pulled around when the docs or nurses were doing something with him. So the time comes and Doc R. comes in for the final check to discharge Tim. He is a slightly built, soft spoken, kind man but has a quick wit. So I POINT to the sentence on the printout and ask him when this is lifted.
I'm thinking GENIUS right?! I pointed, he's just gonna give us the day. Mission accomplished! Well he immediately breaks into a broad grin and says "let me explain." OH CRAP. So he starts to explain why it is banned. I'm thinking, I know exactly why it is banned, I didn't ask that. Just give me the day doc! Now I'm trying to figure out how to interrupt this without being rude.
So as he is talking about how low Tim's platelets are, he says, "there is a certain amount of trauma involved in that activity." So seeing my chance I say, "Doc, we've been together 22 years,
there ain't no trauma going on at this point." Then, Mr. macho TIM says to him, "Doc it's been awhile, trust me, there's gonna be some trauma." Damn. Now by this time, we are laughing. I know that our new friends are hearing this. I could smack Tim for ruining my kibash on this AND "awhile" GIVE ME A BREAK. It's only been this 2 weeks we've been in here for Pete's sake. JEEZ! Now after Tim's statement, I'm thinking, "heck maybe they oughta check my damn platelets. I may be in trouble here." So finally the doc ends by saying,
"So, my answer to that question is this. If it's with your wife, then you have to wait until you have 50,000
platelets. If it's with someone other than your wife, I'm sorry but my answer is NEVER."
By this time, the three of us are laughing and I'm thinking our transplant buds must all be suppressing laughter. So much for
this private conversation. This doctor really is the greatest guy though(extra points from the wife for that last statement) and I guess we could all use a laugh anyway. It was a memorable way to end Tim's transplant no doubt. The P.S. to this is that, a few days later, we went back for
the follow-up check-up and to have his hickman removed. Unfortunately, due to a snafu with Tim's stem cells that we did not hear about till 4 months later, Tim's blood counts were not coming up as they should have. The vascular surgeon pulled his hickman anyway despite his cbc only showing 36,000 platelets on board. On the way home, he bled right through the huge packing and his clothes. I had to call the surgeon and go home and stop the bleeding myself and re-dress the wound. If it did not stop, she said we'd have to go back for a platelet infusion. I was ticked. They never should have pulled this thing out that day so I said, to heck with this nooky-ban. If they can pull a catheter out of 2 main arteries with 36K platelets, we
can certainly do the "wild thing" platelets be damned. Game on!