Course 2 (of 12)

I'm back at Dana-Farber for the second course of treatment.  This place is great but not terribly timely; lab was nearly an hour behind and that delays all the other appointments by about that much.  We hadn't planned for daycare pickup as we thought we'd be out of here early enough today - we'll have to see when the pharmacy can get my custom-made drugs up here.

I do have the corner infusion room view today at least:

I am hopefully a little bit better prepared for this round.  Being back at work is an excellent distraction; I wasn't nearly as anxious about today as I was for the first treatment.  My port behaved fine for the blood draw.  I got a prescription for Lorazepam (Ativan) for nausea and anxiety, though really it is to help me sleep the first night.  While waiting for my infusion appointment I had an excellent discussion with a nutritionist here, who also gave me the name of an exercise physiologist that I'll hopefully meet the next time around.  I'm hoping with my newfound nutrition tips and some advice from the physiologist I can get some of my muscle tissue back, or at least not lose any more.

And so I wait for my infusion to begin.  I've been thinking about this word a lot the last couple of days: infusion.  It's a word I typically associate with oils and vinegars and vodkas, not humans.  Wikipedia does as well apparently:

Infusion is the process of extracting chemical compounds or flavors from plant material in a solvent such as water, oil or alcohol, by allowing the material to remain suspended in the solvent over time (a process often called steeping). An infusion is also the name for the resultant liquid. The process of infusion is distinct from decoction, which involves boiling the plant material, or percolation, in which the water passes through the material (as in a coffeemaker).

I'm allowing toxic chemicals to remain suspended in my body for two days.  I'm steeped in chemo.  What a thing this is.