All The Gang

Today's a more social day at the Clinic. It helps that I decide that no how no way am I going to take the fevertherapy today! A little break is in order after the wild ride yesterday.

When I arrive at the clinic, both Christine and Dr. Thaller agree -- yesterday was a little extreme! Then I discover the key ingredient that was missing: I hadn't been taking Celebrex (a pain reliever) before the fevertherapy like all the other patients. I'm not sure how I missed this, as I don't remember anyone ever telling me. I suppose it could have been one of those moments when I was being overly-agreeable and pretending to understand something in German when I really didn't. Oh well -- at least now I know the trick to surviving the fevertherapy!

So without the shivering and the fever, it's easier to catch up today with all the other people in the clinic. Sometimes I might give the impression that there's no one else around, but we're all actually quite close together -- the clinic is quite small and can only hold 8 or 9 people per day. So Liz and I are able to have nice chats with the couple from Long Island, the guy from Canada and his daughter, and the nurses, Michael, Tanya and Christine. Even Dr. Thaller comes upstairs for a few minutes.

Not much else happens today. Christine finally clears my port (which has been blocked for extracting blood, but fine for injecting things) -- she hooks me up to a machine which injects 100,000 units of urokinase over an hour's period, which seems to do the trick.