Today I finished my second infusion cycle.  It was an early (10am) appointment.  Dr. S was ready before they’d finished the finger prick blood draw.  His exam was just as good as last week.  I remembered to ask him about alcohol, and he said not the day before an infusion, but otherwise there was no problem; my liver function has been normal throughout.  It’s not that I drink much, or even that I miss it if I could have had a glass of wine but pass it up (as I’ve done a couple of times since I started treatment), but it certainly is good to have permission to indulge, if only because it’s that much closer to normal.

Across from the large infusion rooms is a room with a large glass door that they call the isolation room.  There are two infusion setups in there, and that’s where they put me this time.  When we went in, Dr. S was there, talking to the patient in the other chair.  She’s been in the unit for a year and now shows up every five weeks for what she describes as a maintenance dose; she has leukemia.  I couldn’t help envying the notion of maintenance.

When she was finished, the chair was occupied by a lymphoma patient.  He’s also been there longer than I; this is his seventh infusion and he goes every fifth week.  His drug has some unpleasant side effects, though:  He’ll feel sick for about a week and say he has a terrible taste in his mouth all the time.

This being the end of a cycle, they needed to do more blood work. For the first time, they used the port for that.  (Previously, they were trying to get a specimen to check for the experimental protocol, and that had to come from a vein.)  The blood wasn’t drawing well through the port,  and they had to use a couple of doses of heparin and move me around some to get it going.  That took about half an hour, so it prolonged the process, but once that was done everything went pretty well.  The reflexologist came by and massaged my hands with a very rick cream, and that helped pass the time.  We were home shortly after 1pm, and I had some food to augment the snack I’d had with me at the hospital.

I felt okay for long enough to check my mail and do a couple of easy chores, and then I decided to take it easy.  I napped and half-watched TV for a while.  I’m feeling tired and not very hungry, but not really sick.

I’m off next week.  I really must send a card to the staff on the unit.  They’re lovely people.