Old Man River

Day 2 in New Orleans. I’m sitting in bed at 6.30 am local time looking out of my Riverside Hilton third floor room onto the Mississippi. It’s misty and grey and quiet. Life hasn’t yet come to the banks of the river this morning. The river streamer, no more than thirty yards away, is moored up, its lights subdued, recovering from the night before. Here, in New Orleans, it is always the morning after the night before.
I’m here as guest of one of the pharmaceutical companies. They have a new drug and keen to influence opinion formers in the field. Yep, that’s me. We are at the annual conference of the American College of Cardiology one of the three largest cardiology conferences each year. The other two are the American Heart Association meeting and the European Society of Cardiology. The balance of influence has tipped towards the Europeans even in the short time I have been coming to these meetings.
As well as being held in exotic places, well I’ve never been to New Orleans, it is also fun. It’s a chance to hear the breaking new research, which is usually embargoed until these meetings, and then simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine (my favourite journal) or the Lancet. You also meet the top guys, they usually are guys, in the field. You get to know them personally and what they are up to. Two of my favourites were due out yesterday, but their flights were cancelled, Kathryn and Terry, the present and past chairs of the PCCS. We have a laugh, as well as get a chance to talk about and push forward Primary Care Cardiology.
One of the people who is here, and was on my flight, is Leonard. Leonard works in Rotherham and does much the same as what I do in Manchester. He’s a lovely bloke of mixed Georgian and Turkish background. After getting over the work discussion we get onto what it’s like to have young adults as children and the difficulties of holding everything together.
A hooter goes off over the river somewhere, it is waking up. 6.48, it’s still hazy and I can’t yet see any movement, but I can hear it, a low chugging somewhere out there.
There are two beds in my room. ‘ I’m sorry you have two queen size beds in your room’, Britany the check in receptionist had said. Britany, surprisingly, is a young helpful black woman, and I can’t help thinking that her bright enthusiastic demeanour should have her doing something much more high powered. Maybe she’s a student and earning her passage through college. I hope so.
I have to say I was expecting to see more fat people than I have. You know they say there are three ways to look thin? Yes, eat less, dress in black, or move to America! I don’t know it that’s true, but here everyone looks as if they could be in Manchester. I guess I expected to see more black people as well, but not so far. Apart from the accents and the fewer Asian faces, you could easily be in Manchester (England).
I was also surprised by their relative lack of humour. Why, when I asked a young lady in the street if she would like her photograph taken with me, she looked at me as though I was weird. Unbelievable.
7.00 and the sun is beginning to break through. I’m up ‘early’ because I went to bed early, about 10.30 last night. Remember there is a six hour time gap so in England it was 4.30 the next day, and now it one o’clock in the afternoon and I’m wide awake. Leonard and I went to the conference centre to register last night but we were too late, so we’ll do that this morning. Then look at the programme and plan the next couple of days. At the same time I’m going to think about my presentation in Palma de Majorca in a few weeks’ time. I’m doing a critique of a paper on one of these new drugs and will be comparing it with the other two competitors on the market. They are the new anticoagulant drugs. To be honest they all look much the same as each other. All look as if they work. All look safe in the short term, with a still open question about long term safety. The only difference will be cost. The company I’m with are clearly aware of the issues. They also know that, all else being equal, I, like everyone else will go for the cheapest, once it’s licenced.
Now, I better get rolling, like the Old Man River himself.