Hamilcar!

I'm sure most of you thought this was possibly my lamest topic ever, but lookit!  Hamilcar followed us to the South!  A year to the week after his first appearance in our window!

He's not really the size of my neighbor's window, that's just retinal ambiguity.

Crohn's versus Grad School: Episode I

A fascinating new trend is emerging in my diet.  To bestow some background, the morning hour at which I eat breakfast is determined by when my nausea wears off... typically 2-3 hours after I wake up*.  As a research assistant, I got to work at 7am, pecked at a breakfast item between 8-10am and was totally stable until a 1-2pm lunch.

As a grad student, I wake up at 6am, "study" etc. until class at 9am, and still not being settled enough to eat, just forgo the breakfast entirely (gasp!).  What happens next is cruel punishment.  My stomach thundering in acidy mobilization by noon, I sit down to consume (very slowly) a sandwich.

Halfway through -- BAM! -- nausea is back, bitch.  "How dare you starve me and then gluttonously bloat me with half a sandwich?!", blathers the Crohn's baby.  And with my tail between my legs I slough off to make a cup of tea.

Clearly, the solution is to bring a granola bar to class so that the Crohn's baby doesn't start the afternoon hating before the morning hating has even subsided.  And sugar being my least favorite thing in the morning (this is an artifact of colonoscopy prep), I have to find a granola bar that isn't composed of nuts and seeds but is also not drenched in sugar.  Where does one find such an elusive creation?

*Although the nausea is also bested by coffee, the Crohn's baby does not accept coffee without ample absorptive carbo load, and also if I'm handling animals or microscopic pieces of fragile tissue there is just no inviting the Caffeine Shakes.

the conundrum: rotation saga part III

Week 2 into the fall term, it becomes apparent to the first years in my department (n=6) and to those in the interdepartmental program (n=14) that there are several new labs entering Neurobiology and Behavior.  Instantaneously upon disseminating this news, we are all clamoring to get some face time and possibly a rotation with some of these new labs (R² = madness).

Yours truly had had it all figured out: fall in a renowned histology lab, winter in a renowned molecular genetics lab, spring in a budding molec/e-phys/histol lab.  But then, there was an opportunity to rotate with Dr StemCells.  Three exciting labs for the remainder of the year, and two terms.  Not cool.

It was not easy to make a decision, and honestly my stomach is still churning somewhat (or perhaps that's the caffeine).  After two weeks of soliciting the philosophies and suggestions of graduate students and PIs alike, I chose to forfeit the renowned molecular genetics lab in favor of the budding Dr StemCell's lab.  Ultimately, it came down to this:

1) Dr Molecular Genetics runs a very large lab and is very inaccessible.  We're talking up to 18 month gaps between private meetings, unless you are her co-PI.  She is a remarkable woman, and I would do a post doc with her in the blink of an eye, but students just do not graduate from her lab in less than 7 years and I require the guarantee of semi-regular one-on-one time (things tend to move more quickly that way, in this department's labs).

2)  The three labs under consideration all collaborate with one another on some level.  It's not like I would be abandoning an opportunity to participate in a hot project.

3)  Although it certainly puts a feather in one's academic cap to be spawned from a renowned lab, it doesn't hurt to be part of the creation of one either.  Newer labs (again, in my department) tend to publish more frequently and use more shiny high-tech toys.  I would speculate that this is because a) budding PIs need to lay golden eggs to stay funded, and b) budding PIs tend to still be in that rosey-eyed optimistic stage of their careers.

Naive Raga has chosen to try out two fledgling labs after a term in the current renowned one.  What will be, will be. 

things that keep me up at night

1) do i have the huevos to officiate the wedding of two of my most favorite people this summer?

2) what if a "real" handicapped student needs our apartment next year and my housing complex kicks us out?

3) how in the world am i going to explain to a PI who i like and respect that i don't want to rotate through her lab next term after all?

Neurobeer: an orientation week finale

As it turns out, I do in fact have a small amount of terminal ileum inflammation, but not enough to stop me from eating salads on a near-daily basis.  Or biking after boozing on Friday afternoon...

After an agonizing week of general grad and departmental orientation, I am pumped to actually start in with courses and a regular class/research schedule.  The little that I've gleaned of my incoming classmates has been stellar; we are all from different backgrounds and excited to share our expertise and learn from that of our peers.

It also turns out that 3 of the 5 of us (and one other incoming in another department) want to rotate with a particular assistant professor who was just given a lab just this summer and who I just learned about last week (more on his situation after our meeting next week), so my rotation schedule has been jostled into upset and I am just shy of frantically lunching and coffeeing with PIs and grad students in order to re-prioritize.  My 3 comforts are as follows:

1) schedule upset is a defining characteristic of academia, and this compulsive organizationalist naively invites the challenge as if she might actually conquer it;
2) I am confident enough in my enthusiasm for finding a rockin' project and publishing/collaborating through it that I don't feel reliant on a PI having an established and renowned publishing record;
3) I have a NSF grant, ergo, I'm a free-be, ergo, I'm not in the same kind of competition with other graduate students for space in a lab of my choice.

After four days of mind-numbing introductions, patronizing trainings (and I was prepared for this process, but having your entire breadth of background disregarded and being made to start back at zero is frustrating no matter how prepared you are), stressful reconfigurations of research rotation fates, and a Remicade infusion, there was Neurobeer.

Yes,  I am part of a neurobiology program that treats its family to beer and free cuisine each month.  And by cuisine, I don't mean wraps and cookies -- I mean Mexican, Indian, Asian cuisine.  And by family, I don't just mean the grad students -- I mean us, recruits, post docs and PIs.  All chillin' in our courtyard with a beer (or wine, or soda, as you prefer).  I lubs it.

Remicade and identity theft

H.K. has finally experienced colonoscopy prep Raga.  Something about not being nauseous or half conscious (as I have been in my previous three) makes a liquid diet and 4 liters of electrolyte concentrate so much more irritating.  I survived only for the promise of a teriyaki chicken burger.  Which was devine.  And for his part, H.K. was utterly delighted when he was handed picture copies of my lower guts.  All of his suffering from the last 36 hours vanished.

As dreadful as the prep was, the results may have been worse. 

At my follow-up appt the next day, it was concluded that my Crohn's -- at least the lower bowel Crohn's -- looked fantastic.  Scars smaller than ever, inflammation gone, no ulcers, no abscesses.  So where is all the pain coming from?  IBS, says Dr. New GI.

Nuh uh.  IBS?  In my 13 years of Crohn's, no one has ever mentioned that some of my pain may be coming from IBS.  I feel almost slighted.  Remicade is doing beautiful work in my lower tummeh, and in doing so stealing my identity as a Crohn.  I don't know how I feel about this.

You're thinking, "you should be cheering, wtf is the problem?", am I right?  And I am.  Yay.  It's like this, though.  When you have a creature inside you for 13 years and you're told that that creature may now either be hibernating or dead, there is a feeling that you've lost a part of yourself.  Not quite like when a Trill's symbiont dies, but similar.  Especially when the loss of your creature doesn't actually change anything about your life(style).

First of all, for those who have been following the journey, it was decided that despite all the side effects of Remicade that I've been accumulating over the last 2 years, we're going to keep me on it.  Because, well, my inflammation is gone and my scars are no big deal atm.  So we're redirecting the energy of the mission into full mobilization against the psoriasis, the dermatitis, the hives, the fatigue, the rotting teeth and the chronic infections.

That said, Dr. New GI has not ruled out any activity in my upper tract.  So we're checking my sedimentation rate and I may be doing the camera pill in the near(ish) future.  Rock on.

Is this it?  Am I still a Crohn if I'm just battling the Remicade?  I had a small identity crisis last night before realizing... if I still feel like shit, and my immune system is still functioning like shit, nothing has really changed, has it?

first lab mtg: part II in the lab rotation saga

I sat in on my first lab mtg in rotation lab #1 this afternoon.  The first thing I observed was a very amiable dynamic... laid back, even.  There was a scalable project undertaken over the summer which was presented by two of its major players.  I was pretty quiet, mostly observing how people interacted and how information was presented.

Being only vaguely familiar with the study, I suppressed my myriad questions which would have mostly been helpful to my own clarity and not contributory to the conversation.  Mostly, though, I was not interested in coming off as that jackass who comes in and blindly tries to push their experience without understanding the particular design/choices of the lab.  I do understand that a lab mtg is not a seminar, and that plenty of detail, being familiar among the post docs and grad students, is not reproduced.

That said, one very curious observation was how disjointed some things seemed.  For instance, the summer study involved some cell counting.  After the presenter discussed her counting methods and findings and seemed somewhat unsure as to how to interpret them, Dr. PI chimed in and very amiably pointed out that the presenter had set parameters for said counts that made her results jumbled and irrelevant, and she should try measuring several new parameters in the upcoming weeks.

During this part of the discussion, my brain was asking, "why weren't reliable parameters discussed before they were carried out?  why weren't the specific cortical layers of interest identified separately and compared instead of being clumped into one group?  why was the cell size not defined as part of counting parameters? could double-staining be done to elucidate cells of interest more clearly?  what would you speculate this outcome might mean?"... etc.

This is why I shut up.  Questions better saved for a one-on-one with my grad student mentor in a learning environment as opposed to a lab mtg.  From what I gathered from the rest of the lab's input, this was somewhat standard.  There was a, "let's try this and see if it works, and if not we will exclude the approach in future" attitude, which I love.  But I also got the feeling that students were very much on their own in terms of project design, and methods were not cleared with a higher authority or guide before conduct, which is a foreign concept to me.  My instinct is to approach every study as if it were publishable, and to optimize the design as much as is feasible in order to produce a result that could contribute to a manuscript.  It did not seem that this was the general perspective in rotation lab #1.

Finally, there were about seven undergrads at the mtg getting a feel for whether they'd like to become part of the lab in the fall.  Also very new, since there were no undergrads at the teaching hospital from which I hail (only summer students).

It's going to be a very exciting term.  I cannot wait for Sept. 6th.