It’s Another Tequila Thursday
Yeah, I know the blog is a little late. I had to go back over to Shands Dermatology and the only time they could take me was Thursday morning….except for when I was in Washington, of course. And I had to browbeat them even to get this appointment. Seems the melanoma area I had “excised” morphed into a squamous cell cancer. The doctor called it “secondary reactive,” which means they didn’t miss it in the original biopsy—it just started growing from the scarred area like a phoenix rising from the ashes.
I called them when it was just a little anthill but they pish-toshed me into thinking it was nothing. Know-nothing secretaries—the first line of medical defense. After the anthill had grown into a volcano, I called them again.
“This thing doesn’t look so good to me,” I told them.
“Do you have a fever? Is there any bleeding? Any other health problems?”
“Well no, but….”
“I think we can fit you in around January 23rd.”
“You just don’t get it. This thing is growing like ‘The Blob.’ Remember him? Not somebody to mess around with. Maybe you should get me your superior.” Oooh, they hate that word. But they got her and thus the Thursday appointment. The very nice Dr. Fischer apologized several times for her office staff and shaved the offending squamous (from the Latin ‘squama’—covered with reptile or fish scales’) mountain. Squamous. Why do all these medical problems have such grisly names? How about something nice?
“So sorry, Mr. Killeen, but you have Aurora Borealis disease.”
“Hey, no problem. How bad could that be?”
Anyway, they took another biopsy and I’ve got to go back on the nineteenth and get the offending area re-excised. At least it’s not a Thursday. Oh, and on the good news front, the surgery on my nose is coming along swell. What used to be a canyonesque divot has been transformed (with the aid of the helpful Medera Scar Gel, if you’re ever in the market) into a mere ski run. A well-used track, I’ll admit, but a ski run nonetheless.
The Trip To Bountiful (We hope.)
Last Sunday, Siobhan and I flew to our nation’s capital to visit with an FDA panel to begin the Odyssey of getting her Oroquin-10 drug FDA-approved. This meant a non-stop flight from Orlando to National (also called Reagan, alas) Airport, just outside D.C. Before we left Orlando, Siobhan realized that her credit card was missing. Knowing she would obsess about it the entire trip, I went back to the truck to track it down. No credit card. But I had mine, so no problem.
It is necessary here to insert a previous credit card problem—namely an incidence of identity theft several months earlier which caused us to cancel the prior cards and be issued new ones. Remember this important fact.
The boarding was uneventful and the flight went on schedule. We arrived in Washington around 1:45 and went directly to the rental-car counter of Budget, about two miles from our gate. There we met the wonderfully inept Sofija. She was from Serbia.
“License and credit card, please,” requested Sofija, who obviously had been practicing.
“Here they are,” I complied. Sofija looked puzzled.
“License say Weel-yam, credit card say Beel,” she fretted.
“Well, you know, Sofija, in U.S. we have nickname—excuse me, neekname—you know, a shorter version of your actual name used for informal occasions. Everybody’s got one. Yours would be Sophie.”
“License say Weel-yam, credit card say Beel. No good.” At which point an African-American brother-worker intervened, trying to explain the nickname concept. Sofija was unmoved. Siobhan, who had since located her credit card, came up to the counter and showed Sophija her card. As far as we know, there is no nickname for ‘Siobhan’ so we were in good shape. This made Sophija very happy. For about ten seconds.
“Credit card decline. No good,” she said, obviously beginning to think she had a crew of grifters on her hands.
“It has to be good,” I told her. “I just checked the balance today.”
“No good, Mr. Beel,” she said, eying me suspiciously. “Credit card company decline.”
Do these things happen to everybody? Remember when we went to get our car in Alaska and the booking agent had scheduled our pickup for six months earlier? Do you think we perform these stunts to make the stories funnier? Well, we don’t.
“Look, Siobhan—let’s just emigrate over to Hertz and start again, this woman’s a nightmare. I bet they even have somebody who speaks real English”. And they did, too. A smooth black man remindful of Nat King Cole, who aimed to please. Unfortunately, Siobhan’s credit card was still declined. This bade ill for the balance of the trip, for which a Visa card was an absolute necessity, we not carrying hundreds of dollars on our persons. While I started adding up the various future costs, Siobhan called the credit card company in an attempt to get a proper explanation. And this is where you are supposed to remember our earlier admonition.
“Oops,” said Siobhan.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“I was using my old credit card, the one that was cancelled.”
You have to understand that Siobhan develops a certain nurturing relationship with her Visa card over time and she is not willing to merely shred and discard. Think of a baby bunny, you wouldn’t simply dump one of those, would you? Well, then.
Nat was more accommodating about the William/Bill conundrum so we went back to my credit card with great success. Although, Nat wasn’t entirely sure he had any cars left.
“We just have compacts,” he said.
I am no fan of compact cars. “We’ll take it,” I told him. We got a little Nissan. It worked great. Of course, the original Budget car had been pre-paid for with Visa points, as was our flight, and cost oh, say, $200 less, but we were beyond worrying about money at that stage of the game. A minor traffic jam on the George Washington Parkway later, we were in our comfy digs at the Georgetown Inn.
A few words about our hotel. First, it is the only top-rate hotel located in the heart of Georgetown, right on the main drag, Wisconsin Avenue, near N Street. It’s about fifteen minutes from National Airport—barring excessive traffic—right on the bus lines and just minutes from the Metro (Washington’s version of a subway). It has a nice grill just off the lobby and a classy bar. The rooms are modest-sized but nice. And, at this time of year, the rates are reasonable. Most important of all, however, it is only a couple blocks from a very nice boulangerie-patisserie (tart shop), which is the most important thing to Siobhan. We had dinner around the hotel corner at the pleasant Café Milano and paid our respects to the tart shop. A good day, despite the pitfalls of lost credit cards and Serbian desk clerks.
Rockville On My Mind
Next day, it was on to the Food & Drug Administration encounter in Rockville, Maryland, a short drive northwest out of D.C. We left around 6:30 for a 10:00 o’clock meeting. Good thing, too. While Rockville was easy enough to find, the FDA building was something else. Siobhan lost her map instructions for awhile (“I know I gave them to you, Bill,”—always the claim), but recovered them at the bottom of her bag eventually. The instructions were okay for getting us in the neighborhood, but not to the site. We called our collaborator, Mark Metro, who will be manufacturing Oroquin-10 for Siobhan in Kansas City. He said his hotel was just blocks from the facility and to meet him and his two colleagues there. His buddies, who had been there before, had a little trouble remembering where the place was, but we eventually found it. We were even early. They gave us our little name badges and we were eventually escorted to the meeting room.
A meeting like this is sorta like a ballgame. The 8 FDA panelists come out and introduce themselves and shake hands. You give them your names (which they can already read on your badges). It’s like the toss of the coin without officials. The five of us sat on our side of the very long table and the FDA people on theirs. They let us know everything that would be required of us (a LOT) and we got to ask them questions about procedure, time lines, possible grants, etc. The first half of the game dealt primarily with manufacturing requirements and other boring aspects which Flying Pie readers do not care about.
The second half, more fun but not much more, dealt with a give and take between the panel and Siobhan, who was on her best behavior. The panelists were very thorough and the requirements were legion. I swear, I have no idea how those thalidomide guys got their drug past this bunch—maybe the human drug people are more forgiving. Anyway, we thought the proceedings were fair even if the requirements were stiff. Siobhan felt things went as expected, so we are on our way, negotiating through the maze. In this sort of ballgame, the objective is for both sides to win. Let’s hope it works out that way.
Mention My Name In Bethesda
On the way back to Georgetown, Siobhan wanted to pay a visit to an old EPM collaborator, Mike Grigg, whom she had never met. Only problem was Mike worked at NIH—the National Institutes of Health. Did you ever think it might be a little hard to get into Fort Knox? Hah! Try getting into NIH sometime.
Assuming you can find the entrance—doable after several failings—you will drive into a debarking area which is, shall we say, HEAVILY patrolled by security.
“IDs, please. Open all your car doors and the trunk. Remove all packages. Step over here to the X-Ray machines. Sign this paper which swears that you have never been on double-secret probation.”
Geez.
We finally passed muster and Siobhan was sent off to “Building 4.” Sounds easy enough. After muddling around awhile, we tracked it down. The entrance went through a tricky construction zone, but we managed. If you ever thought it was a big prestigious deal to work for NIH, you haven’t seen Mike Grigg’s office, a tiny little niche in the bowels of an old brick building, filled, every nook and cranny, with giant bottles and boxes of chemicals. Mike Grigg is the only person I have ever see who can discuss EPM and S. neurona with Siobhan and have any idea what she’s talking about. The discussion could have gone on forever if we didn’t have to make it back for our evening tour of the city.
To get to Union Station, a colossal train-station, shopping center, tour-debarking depot in the middle of D.C., we foolishly took a cheap $2 (for both of us) bus inaccurately called “The Circulator.” If your blood circulated as fast as The Circulator, you would be dead. If you travelled in social circles as fast as The Circulator, you would never have a date. If you….well, you get the idea. Anyway, ten days later, when The Circulator finally arrived at Union Station, we ran away as fast as we could, afraid they would tell us it was one stop further. If you moved any slower than The Circulator, you would be going backwards.
We ate at a fast-food joint—albeit a healthy fast-food joint—and did a little shopping prior to the tour disembarkation. While so doing, we were excited to see what looked to us like nothing so much as a giant Statue of Liberty celebration—all the merchants standing around with one arm raised in the air. Seems none of them could get a signal for their credit-card swiping machines and they thought altitude might help. Who knows? They’re the ones with the experience. We got Siobhan a pre-birthday present from a crazed little Chinese lady—a beautiful black shawl at a wonderful “discount price, just for you.” It’s so nice to be famous.
The Moonlight Tour
Or, on occasions, the Moonless Tour. Very nice. The temperature was only around 50 degrees and it was a tad breezy, but we got up on top of the tour bus for better picture-taking.
“If you get cold, you can go down,” the guide said, a perfectly reasonable assessment. We stayed up there, though, just behind the front window, which shunted off most of the cold and wind. The tour, featuring slow passes around the more prominent buildings and monuments, took about an hour and fifteen minutes and was worth every bit of the forty bucks total that we paid. It might have been a little chilly for the alternative two-and-a-half hour extravaganza, and they were almost bound to run out of interesting buildings.
When it came time to leave, we opted for a nice, quick taxi to take us back to Georgetown. The damages were a mere $12. On the way back, we passed about 32 versions of The Circulator. The people inside looked tired and bedraggled. We smiled and waved.
