Checked in with insurance card, directed back to the infusion suite with overcast clouds through the windows behind rows of comfy recliners with older patients, one with an oxygen tank, some with headphones, napping pillow, magazine, muted newscasters close captioned on a flat screen hung from the ceiling. Find an empty seat. Annoying machine beebeeep… beebeeep… Smiling nurse in turquoise scrubs, “You’re here for Remicade, right?” nod and smile in response, kind to anyone who is going to poke you with an IV and give you drugs.  

“And you have someone coming to pick you up in a couple hours?”

“Yes, mom’s coming.”

Purpleblue veins on pale arm underside, tourniquet and clenched fist to make them swell, easy target for the long needle, alcohol swiped, smooth insert and taped down, then attached to the tubing that connects to the pouch of saline overhead, cool into my bloodstream. She put a smaller bag labeled Diphenhydramine on a separate hook next to the saline. 

“What’s that?”

 “Oh, that’s just Benadryl, and we’re going to give you Tylenol too, they help keep your body from having a reaction to the Remicade, we call them premeds.”

Doctor Mayer didn’t say anything about premeds, downplayed the possible side effects, probably to make me less apprehensive, affect confidence to reduce patients’ anxiety, Benadryl’s nice though, sleepy. She gave me a small plastic cup with two Tylenol, swallowed. Wonder what reaction, blood circulation overwhelming pressure faint in the head or something in the stomach? She hooked me to the bag of Infliximab slowly dripping into a dosage chamber at the specified rate until the bag is empty, “It’s gonna take two hours or so, okay? So just get comfortable. Fall asleep if you want. I’m going to take your vitals a couple times and keep an eye on you to make sure there’s no reaction, okay?” 

“Thanks.” Text mom the timeframe. 

Quiet hhhmmmmm of my IV machine mixed with medical tech white noise bzzzzzzzz… beebeeep… zzzzzzz…  Itchy? A little. Only been approved for a decade, poison is medicine is poison is medicine depending on the dose… need a distraction, open laptop, power plugged, headphones jacked, drag a_new_hope.avi file over to VLC media player. All systems go. Ready for take-off, start with spacebar. 

Words scrolling down through outer space set to music: 

It is a period of civil war…

Droid projection of princess in distress… – – –

Recline back further for more comfort, let go your conscious self…

– – –

Disoriented due to directional relativity in microgravity and mismatched audio visual input, accompanying musculatrophy and osteopenia, steroidal puffy cheek fluid face, deconditioned cardiovascularity and exposure to radiation DNA alteration, pseudomonas aeruginosa microbiofilms unaffected by antibiotics, rehydrate the froze food if any appetite, unlooped circadian cycles and sociopsychosis from isolation… 

but O! Behold, the awe-inspiring overview…

– – –