Well, for those that were wondering what happened to the treatment schedule, I had a bit of a scheduling conflict last time around because other life issues became more important than keeping one on-time treatment. So this Tuesday I finally went in for the eighteenth immunotherapy treatment, which also happens to have been the “final” treatment. Yay! At least it should be the final treatment as long as they don’t find anything wrong in the future and tell me I need to do it all over again.
As has become the norm, the trip to the hospital was long and uneventful. When I arrived, the nurses were happy to see me back and congratulated me on making it to the final treatment in the set. They even made me a card and they all signed it with well wishes for the future and then gave it to me before I left for the day. They told me I should come by and see them all the next time I come in for a quarterly check up scan, even if I’m not officially scheduled to be in that part of the building. It’s nice to be done with the tri-weekly trips, but I will miss the friendly interaction with the staff.
A Big Boom
As I was leaving the treatment area and heading to the scheduling area to schedule the next quarterly scan, I heard the staff talking in hushed tones all around me and then the scheduler mentioned a building had exploded near by the hospital just a little bit ago. I asked if that explosion was what had caused the abnormal “boom” and caused the building to shake a little earlier while I had been in the infusion room. She confirmed that was indeed what had happened. We noticed the news in the waiting room was covering the incident and several of us went to see what they were saying.
There was a whole lot of speculation going on amongst the staff and the news wasn’t providing much information at the time either, just footage of the building and the fact that there were people injured. While we were watching the live news, the hospital wide PA system announced that the elevators had been locked down and everyone would need to use the stairs until further notice. Presumably, this was just a safety precaution, but it did frighten some people. Shortly after, another announcement came through to bring any free wheelchairs to the ER. We all figured that this being the closest hospital, the currently unknown amount of injured people would all be sent there.
Heading Home
A “shelter in place” order was put out by the authorities asking everyone within a few miles of the blast to stay put and inside, while the closest people were instructed to exit the area. It appeared that part of the reason for this was they were worried about air pollution of an unknown type leaking into the nearby air. The staff told me that I should make my way to the parking lot and leave ASAP if I didn’t want to run the risk of getting “stuck” there for a while longer if they locked the area down further. So, since I did need to be home within the next 3 hours, I decided to go ahead and go.
When I got home I checked in on the issue and not much more had been discovered about the event other than confirming that there were injured people and the air quality in the area was not an issue as was initially feared. The next day I read that sadly, two of the injured people had succumbed to their injuries and as I am writing this, it seems they are still not sure what caused the explosion.