associations

     That smell. That smell on my hands. It's not an unpleasant odor but the emotions that go with the smell are another matter. It's the distinctive smell of the hand sanitizer at MD Anderson's hospital. The source today is the emergency room. The last time I was here was the day of my brother's funeral. The time before was my brother's death.  In both instances my dad ended up there with neutropenic fever. Today we ended up there again - same shit, different day. While the circumstances where nowhere near as dire nor as urgent for my dad, the feeling of failure was strong. Weren't we done with this? Why was he spiking a fever?
     My dad had been fighting on his own a presumably viral infection for the past 7 days, but today it took a turn for the worse. His fever jumped up to 38.1 C (100.5) which to anyone else would simply mean a day home from work. For him, it's an automatic stay at the hospital with the full work up. The IV antibiotics have begun. The cultures have been drawn. The chest x-ray was normal so no pneumonia (I guess my lung listening skills have become honed because I had told my parents no pneumonia that I could tell). Now the waiting game begins...