this is today

Traffic to D.C. was sparse and accommodating for Wednesday morning rush hour. People returning to their post-holiday lives on a staggered schedule, I supposed, kept the roads unusually clear on the second of January.

Jeff and I took our preferred “beltway-avoidance route,” cutting a counter-clockwise arc around the northwest quadrant of downtown before dropping south on Wisconsin Avenue to Georgetown University Hospital.

The light commuter density afforded us another nice surprise. Designed, apparently, to approximate Dante’s 9 layers of hell, the GUH visitor parking garage normally forces us to spiral deeply into the earth until we squish into a tiny spot next to the harpies and squanderers on level 7 or 8. Today, by lovely fluke, we parked right next to Cerberus--aka the ground level stairwell--and had but a brisk run across the plaza to the main hospital building.

Above the parking catacombs, it finally felt and looked like winter. As the short, frizzy-haired nurse relieved Jeff of a half-dozen or so purple-topped tubes-full of blood, I scanned the gray skyline where the stark brick hospital campus gave way to a clear view of most of the Washington Monument obelisk, and the flat horizon beyond. The heating unit under our 7th floor window radiated reassuringly through my blue jeans. Jeff read the paper.

It was supposed to be lumbar puncture day. We were still in the screening stage for a Wyeth Alzheimer vaccine study. Jeff had scored appropriately high for overall health, appropriately middling for cognitive status, and appropriately companioned in that he had me--the required partner to schedule, drive, and fill in the blanks.

I can’t remember how old I was when I finally became brave enough to open all the drawers I could reach from the dentist’s chair when I was a kid, and push the buttons on the water-squirter and air-blower when the dentist stepped out of the room, but by now I was shameless about flipping through the binder on Jeff (known for the study as J-L-C,) which the nurse-practitioner had left in the windowsill. So I’d peeked at the MRI report, but made little of it until Brigid, the N-P, came back and explained the delay. Seems that in the brief description of the MRI reading the radiologist had made mention of foci which represented old parieto-occipital hemorrhages. While a single such point (Brigid explained,) might be discounted, more than one could possibly be a disqualifier. Thus we decided, with Brigid’s support, to postpone the lumbar puncture until she could seek clarification from the radiologist. Who, after all, wants to be spinal-tapped for nothing?

We took the cash for the parking allowance (our less infernal parking space notwithstanding,) and declined the ungarnished tunafish sandwich bag lunches. They aren’t bad in a pinch, but this time we treated ourselves to Italian, in a cozy little bistro on M Street. Furthermore, and most uncharacteristically, we ordered pinot noir with lunch. And Jeff was there as we ate chicken caesar salad and penne primavera. You never know with AD, when you’ll get the blotchy cloud of Alzheimer’s confusion, and when the sparkle of the person you love will be unmasked. And when the clouds lift, yours eyes tear up more than if you lived in full sun all the time.

We left the The News Café. (I know, I know. Sounds more like the coffee shop at the Amtrak station than a clubby Mediterranean den, but there you go.) Three doors down, (with a vagrant sitting on the sidewalk in front,) was, to no one’s surprise, a Starbucks. Jeff ordered a tall brewed. I ordered a grande soy white chocolate peppermint latte. (In whatever order that goes. It was dessert. Ok?) We handed the sidewalk man six bucks on the way out. He smiled more nicely than anyone else had that day.

So, we’re waiting to hear where we stand on the MRI reading. I don’t suppose I can blame the drug company. If you were testing the efficacy of your vaccine on Alzheimer’s you’d be looking for uncomplicated cases. If indeed such cases exist.