tysabri!

11:30 am: Arrive at infusion center, loaded down with computer, computer charger, three novels, notebook, ultimately unusable camera, and purse. What do I think I'm going to do in there, write the entire New York Times book review section? This is more baggage -- probably literal or metaphorical -- than the combined wares of everyone else there. On the other hand, almost everyone else has a companion with them, which in a helicopter-losing-gas scenario would trump my bags in a list of things to be tossed overboard. Feel better.

11:40 am: Sit in waiting room literally squeezed between two ladies who both look like they might throw up. Feel like I might throw up. Drink three 12-oz glasses of freezing water in a row to avoid imminent IV mishap.

11:50 am: Taken to "vitals" area. Blood pressure, oxygen intake measured. Height and weight measured. Apparently I have gained six pounds since morning. Assistant comments on what an "awfully big girl I am." I am all out of patience. "And you," I say to her sweetly, "are awfully devoid of tact." Ice-out for the rest of the vitals, including my temperature-taking, which yields a result of ninety-four degrees. Ice, ice baby. Inwardly pleased at the poetry of this, even though I know this is just because I drank that freezing water.

12:00 pm: Led past room after room of infusion chairs where people are getting all kinds of treatments. Some are sleeping, some are vomiting, some are reading. In my room two men are talking about Remicade. The others are just sitting there. One is asleep. From context I count three other Crohns in my room, but no one getting Tysabri except for me.

12:10 pm: My nurse comes in to quietly remind me, per her legal obligations, that I am going to get PML and die. "Sounds like a plan," I say. She takes out a tray of needles and begins to survey my left arm. She begins rubbing it furiously with alcohol. I believe myself to be keeping perfectly calm until she manually opens my fist and tells me to relax. I have made such a tight fist that I have drawn blood from my palm with my nails and it is starting to gather.

12:15 pm: The IV tube is in an impossibly deep vein in the middle of my arm. I frankly do not know how this nurse gets it in there. It takes ten minutes to suction a tube of blood out of it, however, because it is not "acquiescing." During this time my heart rate goes through the roof and I am asked if I have ever heard of a drug called Xanax. My palms get taped up. Once the nurse leaves for a minute I start to cry, with no noise. I am not sure what I am terrified of here, but I am terrified. I think I am mainly terrified of losing use of my other arm. No one sees me but the other Crohns, who look away.

12:30 pm: After some time of saline, the Tysabri begins. Several glass bottles of "emergency medications" and an inhaler are placed by my chair in case of, you know, whatever. The gregarious Crohn next to me, a North Indian gentleman in his early 60s, begins to talk to me. He is getting his first infusion of Remicade. He has had Crohn's for three years. I tell him I used to take Remicade, too, that I have had Crohn's for eighteen years. He tells me he thinks he is a different person now. He tells me the worst part of having Crohn's is that his friends and family are satisfied when he tells them he has a happy life.
"I don't have a happy life now," he says. "But it is a secret. Not because I want it to be, but because it has to be. But when I say I am happy, that's all they need to know. They don't really want the truth." I nod. He is exactly right.
"Tell me something," he says. "Do you have any advice after eighteen years?"
"Well," I say, watching his Remicade drip into his line, my Tysabri into mine, "you've lived a lot longer than I have."
"I'm beginning to think that isn't true," he says.

1:15 pm: My neighbor, with whom I have been having a conversation all this time, sends his son out for a chicken parm sub, and when it returns -- replete with a basket of fries -- all of the Crohns pretend not to look at one another in abject confusion. My neighbor offers me half, and when I decline, he proceeds to eat most of the offering. The whole infusion room smells like chicken parm and somebody retches. My neighbor is nonplussed.
"I used to be" -- he makes a gesture across his leg about three palms wide -- "big, strong, full of muscles. Now I am just a tiny thing, like a child. When I look in the mirror I hate what I see. I don't know myself."
"I am from hearty stock," I say, about five minutes before my eyes apparently roll back in my head.

1:25 pm: I am eating a force-fed saltine.

1:30 pm: Tysabri complete! Now, for an hour, I will be observed.
"Like a lion," I say, suddenly in better spirits, but none of the Crohns nor the nurse laughs.

1:45 pm: The saline hurts worse than the Tysabri. I am trying not to look at the IV site but good god that mother runs deep. The palms don't look so great either. Maybe I really do need Xanax. My next-door neighbor leaves, and when he departs, all the cancer patients in the room who had been pretending to sleep open their eyes and exclaim things like, "Thank God!" and "What a chatterbox!" I think they are smarter than we are. One of them asks another what deli she thinks that chicken parm came from.
"That deli is on my shit list," she says.

2:30 pm: IV comes out and a large, bright red bandage gets roped around my forearm, like I am some kind of South American revolutionary. "All set, bye!" they say, and then I realize that I have to get myself and all my untouched baggage home. Am suddenly wishing I brought a horse or other vehicle.

3:45 pm: Home. Feeling fine! Bake a pie. That's right, I baked a pie.

4:30 pm: Did I say I was feeling fine? Lie on kitchen floor with face on cool, dirty tile. Tile so nice, so nice.

5:00 pm: Vomiting, fever, and wiped out. Pretty sure this is Crohn's, not Tysabri.

5:30 pm: Trying to write. Can't remember name of protagonist. Oh God, I have PML already. I'm dying! I'm dying! O, Camille!

5:31 pm: Remember name of protagonist. Um, never mind.

6:00 pm: Assure parents that I am totally fine. Don't mention pie.

Final verdict: First Tysabri infusion a total and complete success!

I have a happy life.