Medical Note:
“How About Tomorrow?”
21 November 2018
ΒΆ “How about tomorrow?” said E, the veteran infusion-unit scheduler, when she returned my call yesterday. I was in the middle of lunch, with Ray Soleil; we had just set up the new bed. “We’ve had a cancellation.”
And here I was, wondering how far into December, how overdue and then seriously overdue, my next infusion would be. I ought to have made the call to E’s office two or three weeks ago. But I was pretty sure that I’d have to see the rheumatologist first; he wants to see me every quarter, and I had put off making that appointment, too. I had seen him just a week before. That had led to a talk on the phone with the gastro-enterologist which we won’t go into now, or maybe ever.
And of course there had been the bed to fret about. Excuses, excuses.
How about tomorrow? A case of vice rewarded.
Later in the afternoon, a nurse from the infusion unit called to ask if I would come in an hour earlier. Knowing that the nurses would be trying to clear the place out so that they could get home for the holiday, I agreed.
Another first: I was one of five male patients in the unit today. I am usually the only one.
Not the next infusion, nor the one after that, but the next one after that, in the spring sometime, I shall have been taking Remicade for fifteen years.