Salt Lake City Blizzard

The Utah State Capitol Building, just a few blocks from the hospital.

The first blizzard to hit Salt Lake City in 20 years roared in last night.  It dropped about 5 inches of snow.  More remarkable was the howling wind and frigid temperatures.  Many of our blog followers have already experienced the same storm, so you know what I’m talking about.  Canceled flights, closed freeways, power outages, emergency travel only.  I was glad to be here with Roger last night and not have to worry about driving the steep hill up to the hospital.

It was a wild night even here.  The rooms in the bone marrow transplant unit are on a negative pressure system, which circulates air out of the patient’s room and does not allow recycled air in.  Apparently, due to arctic temperatures last night, a pressure device on the roof malfunctioned.  An alarm sounded in Roger’s room off and on for several hours.  Finally they determined the system was allowing contaminated hospital air with who knows what kind of germs to come in and they made us move to another room in the middle of the night.  It was not the best night’s sleep we’ve ever had.

Our thanks to Dave, for making sure Robert got to the hospital this morning despite the snowy roads!  One more day of collecting Robert’s stem cells should do the trick.