I picked up Edward’s new prescriptions. I dropped off a bunch of stuff at Goodwill. (Are the drop-off lines still surprisingly long in your area? We waited about 20 minutes, with something like eight cars ahead of us. Before All This, there would be mayyyyybe one car ahead of me when I dropped stuff off.) I went to the liquor store. I went to the grocery store and got enough extra for us to coast for awhile if necessary. I have acquired enough of the essential Thanksgiving ingredients (stuffing mix, cranberry sauce, pumpkin, a frozen turkey breast, potatoes) that I could put together a decent Thanksgiving without going to the store again, if I had to. Tomorrow is the U.S. presidential election, and yesterday a parade of cars covered in Tr*mp flags and signs drove honking and yelling through our town, and apparently a lot of other towns/cities experienced the same thing. It didn’t come across as campaigning; it came across as threatening.
Our furnace is old and acting wonky, so we had to have someone in the house again. (So far during the pandemic we have had to have the water heater replaced and a faucet/pipe replaced.) Paul had to ask the worker to wear a mask (previous visitors have put on masks when they saw Paul at the door wearing one, but this guy didn’t take that cue), which is so frustrating at this point, when it feels as if EVERYONE should be wearing masks just automatically.
I’ve had to go TWICE into Target in the last week, both times for prescriptions. I wish they would include prescriptions in their Drive-Up service, but so far they don’t, or at least our Target doesn’t. The first time, I felt VERY ANTSY about it: I hadn’t been inside a Target since before lockdown. I had to talk myself through it a little: it’s no different than the grocery store, I will be in and out in less than ten minutes, etc. While I was there, I checked for my usual cleaning sprays and for Clorox wipes, but there were none, so that was a little disappointing: I’d been thinking that if I had to go inside ANYway, at least I could get the things they don’t offer for Drive-Up or shipping. But no.
A week later, I had to go in again, for another prescription—this is a little frustrating because these are both long-term medications for Edward, and now they will always be refilling a few days off from each other. I will have to remember to go pick them up after getting the refill call about the SECOND medication. Anyway, so then I was going into Target AGAIN, but at least that time they did have small containers of Clorox wipes, limit 1 per customer. The pharmacy clerk remarked on my find and asked if there were any left, saying she was going to zip over and get a canister on her break.
I don’t know if it’s interesting to discuss the prescriptions. Edward has been on Remicade for his Crohn’s disease, getting infusions every 7 weeks. (Did you already know that “an infusion” means getting the medication by IV? I did not know that until Edward started on Remicade. It takes a few hours.) His most recent MRI and colonoscopy/endoscopy, combined with the bloodwork he gets done at each infusion, and also his failure to gain weight, all together indicated that the Remicade was not doing enough to suppress inflammation. He’s already on the highest dose of Remicade per infusion, but there was still room to increase the frequency of the infusions, so they did that: he’ll go every 5 weeks now. They also added a support medication: methotrexate, which is a pill (or rather, four pills) he’ll take once a week. And then when the hospital pharmacist called to discuss the methotrexate, she said he should also be taking prescription-strength folic acid, because the methotrexate “chews it up,” so that was the prescription I had to go back for.
So. Tomorrow is the election. Tomorrow we will not know the answer we’re waiting for, but we will know more than we know today.
