MOULTRIE, Ga. — I’ve never written a column from a hospital bed before. I never thought I would. And I’ve never aspired to do that.

It’s a little bit distracting. Actually it’s a lot distracting. Here I am trying to look at the lighter side of life, and I’ve got tubes running in and out of me from both left and right. On one side there’s a machine that looks like R2D2 and on the other side is CP30. They are making noises that even mimic conversations from Star Wars.

These machines are really smart. The one on my right is pulling blood out of a port in my chest. It’s separating my stem cells from my mature cells. I asked the nurse how it could distinguish them. She went into great detail about the process. Translated: It’s magic. All I really need to know is that it works, and I’m glad there were some medical engineers who made straight A’s. I’m not sure what the machine on the left was doing, but if I moved very much it sounded angry.

Some nurses have a sense of humor. Some don’t. I learned that when I likened this process to a very expensive oil change. As I said, I’m distracted. While the nurses are talking to each other in a foreign language using a lot of acronyms, I’m down to more basic things like trying to figure out how I’m going to go to the bathroom. Because I’ve got tubes linked to gizmos on both sides of the bed, I can’t just roll over and get up. I’m sort of caught in a snare. And once this stem cell collection process is begun, you can’t stop it until it’s complete for that session, which is five hours.

So when that call from nature did come, I had to ask the nurse to bring CP30 around to the other side of the bed with R2D2 to give me some slack in the snare. It took three five-hour sessions to extract enough stem cells so that I can have my transplant, which will come sometime next week. Ironically, it will only take 30 minutes to put them back in. I relate this to the gas-price scenario. Up fast, down slowly.

A week into this six-week process, I’m learning a lot of medical terminology. Some of it is scary. I go on my patient portal, which is updated all through the day and night, and read what my tests have just shown. There’s a saying I’ve picked up on that goes like this: “If you don’t want to know what’s wrong with you, don’t go to Mayo.” I think I could turn that into a country song if I tried really hard. I don’t know how I would work tailgates, longnecks and dirt roads into it, but it would seem I may have a lot of time on my hands to confront those minor details.

In the past year I’ve learned a lot about stem cells. And I’ve learned how to spell terms like “amyloidosis”, “autologus,” “apherisis” and many others relative to this very rare condition. I’ve even met another person who has amyloidosis. We’ve been comparing notes.

I’ve also learned what a great group of friends I have who check on me regularly. And no, I don’t owe them money. They’re just good people. I’ve also learned how incredibly patient my wife is and what a great caregiver she is even with her own medical issues.

I can’t help but think of not long ago when some fanatics and self-serving politicians were obstacles to the cause of stem cell research. Here at Mayo it wouldn’t take me five minutes to get together a vigilante group to go after that lot. You might say we have a more vested interest in the matter.

Enough for now. Talk to you later. (Email: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)