about 15 more hours of the 5FU infusion, but no further side effects other than the occasional tingling in the fingers. It is triggered by cold...cold weather, cold food, cold anything in/on the hands (water, e.g., in the mouth or on the hands or anywhere else). Kateri warned him to 'stay out of the refrigerator.' I thought she meant 'don't eat cold food,' but what she also meant was 'don't even touch cold food and anything in the refrigerator is too cold.' This goes on for five days.
Also, Ed is tireder than he has been, but one can't be too surprised by that given 6 hours of more or less toxic infusions, plus the slower but additional 5FU drip. I'm tired just thinking about it.
A couple of things I wanted to say about the infusion center (I'm hoping to get through this post without writing 'the effusion center.' One can scarcely imagine how someone fairly sensitive to language could find herself confusing those two words in this context.)
First, it's really nicely set up. There are wall quilts in each alcove made by a local quilt group; there's a small but comfortable chair right next to each large chair where I easily sat for several hours with no discomfort. The lighting is good. I was doing hand sewing and could see easily to thread the needle. There is food in a kitchen that one can just go to and take: various drinks, small snacks. The nurses that we have dealt with have all been most generous, kind, and careful in providing care and information. I commented to Tara that I wasn't clear on how to flush the line when the portable pump was removed. She assured me that that was OK. "There's the right way to do it, and there's some other ways, or not doing it at all, and those will be OK too. There's the right way and the way the world actually works." Actually, Ed does know how to do it, but I was greatly appreciative of her acknowledging that we are being asked to take on an enormous set of instructions far more quickly than we can entirely grasp them, and that nevertheless we can manage.
The women in the office think that there is wi-fi, so next time we'll take the computer and see if that is true. One woman advised me that one set of chairs are more likely to be able to hook up to the net. I'm not sure if they are comfortable chairs, though.
Second, the other patients. They handle about fifty patients a day, and most of them are not there for 6 hours. Some were there for as little as half an hour; mostly a couple of hours, though. I expected them mostly, virtually all, to be older patients in their 60's, 70's and 80's, cancer being essentially a disease of old age. But about half of them were, by my guess, under 40. Seeing them there was particularly sad. But they were practically all, younger and older, stalwart, looking quite good, cheerful. One guy was a pill of sorts with complaints of various sorts, but the rest were taking it in their stride: at least at that moment. Most people had someone with them; one 30-ish woman was conducting a kind of party over the 6 hours we were there with 3 or 4 people with her at all times, the cast changing every hour or so, and everyone was lively and entertaining for their friend. I hadn't thought about it particularly beforehand, but I guess one might expect it to be a tad grim. But it wasn't. And that, too, made it all seem more manageable.
