well..

...nothing particular today. sofie is recuperating from methotrexate introduced intravenously, now likewise being flushed from of her system. the methotrexate takes about 4 hours to administer. flushing takes 3-4 days.

here's what's basically involved in chemo:

essentially the body is subjected to controlled poisoning to kill off those nasty microbes that resulted in cancer in the first place. the poison (chemo) must then be flushed from the system, otherwise the patient would die from, well, poisoning. in the process, vital microbes are simultaneously killed. the chemo brings the patient closely as possible to a "safe" brink of death just in time to be flushed of the poison. the patient then waits for the body to regenerate just enough vital microbes for the process to begin again. this is repeated over and over and over and over, all based on statistical protocols developed over the last 40 or so years. "statistical" means that these treatments are best guesses based on observation of indirect results, not direct observation of the chemo actually doing what is supposed. remarkable how much faith we exercise in statistical data, but thank god for all those doing the research over the years and currently! sofie's own data is being submitted to a national data base for ongoing research and analysis.

for those who don't know, over the course of the last 100 years or so the chemicals (chemo) now used for these treatments were discovered quite by accident from bellicose (look it up) applications.

--geoff