More than six hour session at the BMT clinic today

The BMT clinic was not crowded today and I only waited a few minutes before being taken to the weight room for the beginning of my vitals, which were then completed in the Infusion Room where I was seated in chair number 6 with no view of the clock, but I had taken my pocket watch and could check the time whenever I wanted to do so.  Meg was my nurse and she placed a line in my medial port and drew 3 vials of blood; one of which was for determining the B12 and folate because these had not been done on the third vial that Laurie had drawn on the the July 23rd visit.  Meg told me that the MCV, which has been consistently high, causes enlargement of the red blood cells an effect that is undesirable and that can be controlled by vitamin B12 and folate.  She had no idea why these determinations had not been made earlier.  Meg reminded me that I was due to have an infusion of Aredia today and she would call down to the pharmacy to have it prepared.  She returned in a few minutes to tell me that I am not going to have the Aredia today because it is too close to the last infusion, which she said was on May 19 instead of May 12 as my schedule shows.  We debated this timing for a few minutes until I finally remembered that there had been a lot of confusion in the clinic on the 12th and I had agreed to have the infusion the following Monday when I would be returning to the clinic.  It seems the time difference was only 2 days and after more consultation with the pharmacy it was decide that I could receive the Aredia infusion today, but by then it was after 11:30 and the infusion was not started for some time after that.  It was a 4-hour infusion and was not completed until after 4:00 when my Velcade was finally given to me.

I had asked Meg about the optimum timing between taking the "cocktail" of pills that I take to the bedroom each night so that I can have grapefruit for breakfast in the mornings.  She didn't have any information on this and must have mentioned it to the pharmacist while talking about the Aredia and he came to talk to me just after I had started on my lunch.  He told me that none of my current medications are affected by grapefruit juice and supposed that the instructions that I have been following for 3 years or more may have applied to medications that I no longer take.  I was greatly relieved to hear this because getting up at 6:00 to take the pills makes it difficult to go back to sleep unless I take sleeping medication; either half of an Ambien pill (about 2.5 milligrams) or a 25 milligram generic Benadryl pill.  Two of the pills in the "cocktail" were supposed to be taken with a full (8 ounces) glass of water although I was taking all of them with about 11 ounces of water, but even this amount of water contributed to the difficulty in sleeping after taking them.  I am especially pleased that I can leave the taking of these pills until I am ready for my breakfast.