Coming Up for Air

Last night began a slow tapering off of most of my medication. For the next month and a half I will be removed from almost all of them, with the notable exception of lithium. To participate in the study, one must stay on a mood stabilizer, either Lithium or Depakote. The first infusion of ketamine will take place around the first of next year. This means, of course, that I have a lengthy wait ahead of me before the trial begins. When it does, I'll receive an infusion a day for two weeks, then two weeks of nothing. Two weeks on, two weeks off, two weeks on, two weeks off---for roughly two months. As part of the study, at least some of the time I'll receive a placebo. It will be double-blind: neither I, nor the nurse administering the IV infusion, will know whether I'm receiving ketamine or placebo. I'll blog about the results, provided I am feeling stable and responsive enough to type.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned before, I am on the waiting list with one of my Senators and my local Representative to Congress regarding Inauguration tickets. As was reported in the local media, yesterday every Senator and Representative simply stopped taking requests for the ceremony altogether. Only 240,000 tickets will be granted to lucky constituents, and most congresspeople will get no more than 500 tickets to disperse. With demand at an all-time high, getting into the proceedings is by no means a slam dunk. Demand exceeds supply around 5 to 1. If I do get a ticket, I'll consider myself very fortunate indeed. The price of tickets have been bid up to ridiculously high levels---although technically free, on an online site I found, people have put in bids for any available passes to the event---and as such one ticket has been priced as much as $500 to $40,000 a piece.

They're expecting over a million people to be here for Obama's formal swearing in and Inaugural address, which is much more than the crowds that annually throng this area for the Fourth of July proceedings and fireworks on the mall. Hotel and motels in the area have just about been booked solid, too. It almost goes with saying that this is a historic event and everyone wants to say that they were there in person to see it. I do, too, but if I get tickets then I'll be tempted to make several hundred dollars profit by selling them to someone else. Still, being there would be the culmination of a dream I had beginning nearly two years ago and one that I honestly never thought I'd ever see in reality. I had this pleasant reverie wherein I saw Obama dressed warmly in a long black coat, reverently proclaiming, in his familiar baritone---I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear...