why i am a workaholic/anti-social

I have been having more frequent bouts of depression recently.  It hits me at night, after a 11-hour work day when my eyes are inflamed (see "blepharitis" posts) and all I want to do is be with H.K. and sink into the couch/bed.  It is then that my mind slows down and I realize how many people I've blown off lately and what a shitty friend I have been and how in the world I thought I could meet all the social demands I had set for myself.

When this happened two nights ago, I unloaded in "drunk-dial" fashion on my dearest friend, Liz.  Master and Ninja of all things Life -- particularly mindfulness and self-acceptance in terms of chronic illness -- Liz helped me to find some perspective.

For more perspective, see this article.  Only after reading it have I been able to piece together my position on the social bailing that has made me so upset lately.

I have had a very difficult time explaining, not only to other people but to myself, why I have the energy to work 60-70 hours a week but not to socialize.  It comes down to two things: 1) I am a troglodyte, and 2) I absolutely love my work and am bewildered that I am actually healthy enough right now to do it.  The latter of these, as you may have guessed, is the more pertinent.

Having had Crohn's disease for ~14 years now, I have experienced many lows and highs.  During the lowest lows, I am bed-ridden, emaciated, and in consistent immense pain.  But during the highs... there is freedom.  There are windows of time when I can do whatever I want to with the energy that I do have.  And I chose to do science, because I love it almost as much as I love H.K., and I am compulsively -- sometimes obsessively -- driven by it.  It is much harder to find windows of health that allow me to embrace research than it is to find the stamina for being with people I love.  It may seem backwards, and/or fucked up, but I take advantage of my rare working windows at the expense of socializing.  It has nothing to do with my love for people.  It is simply a reflection of my passion taking precedence where/when it can.

The above article explains this conflict well.  You do what you can, when you can.  Sometimes your body bails on you and plans change.  Sometimes you overestimate what you will be able to accomplish and things further down on the list get put off or dropped.

Just because I am working does not mean I am healthy.  It means that I am healthy enough to do some things, but not everything.

Crohn's Wins and Technician Survival

In the absurdity that has been my final month in my current lab, I have neglected several announcements.  But this afternoon, I finished collecting data for and writing the first draft of my last Home Lab manuscript, and now I have a few moments to breathe.

1.  My first CCFA Take Steps for Crohn's and Colitis walk was, for me, a big success.  We raised some big monies with the generous contributions of many friends and family, including some fellow Crohn bloggers!

2.  Operation Raga Detox has gone swimmingly, and I managed within 2 weeks to bury the Throughput deluge in its own audacity (too visual?).  This, my friends, means that I will be trying to work things out with Remicade for a while longer before throwing in the towel, ripping the shirt, or what have you.  I'm pretty much on the BRAT diet for now, and between that and neglecting all coffee and alcohol (I dare you to try this in PDX where happy hour is like breathing) things are churning at a tolerable pace in there.

3.  Also, until today I hadn't been on Facebook or read anything from my extensive blogroll in 2 weeks.  While that was its own version of nice, I'm ready for a break from the 10-12 hour days (weekends included) and the monotonous and yet never-dulling misery that has been waking up and going to work lately to bust my ass and attempt to ignore my chastising and mocking coworkers (again, thank goodness for my summer student slash REAL replacement).

4.  In news that I still can't seem to grasp, my boss wants to continue paying for my health insurance until the student coverage kicks in, instead of having me dry up my funds paying for COBRA continuation and then being without coverage for the month following, which was my ingenious plan.  This is why I break my butt for Home Lab.  My boss/mentor/surrogate uncle/guru/guide gives me fancy tea and healthcare.  The conversation went something like this.

Boss Man: So, when you talk to Payroll today, see what it would take to allow me to pay for your continued health coverage until your student plan kicks in.

Raga:  Haha... no.

Boss Man: Why not?

Raga: Well... because you're not firing me, and you're already paying for my Big Conference expenses even though I wont be here.

Boss Man: Oh nonsense.  You're going to be working on the manuscript revision and poster after you're gone anyway.  Think of it as salary.

Raga:  I don't think I can do that, even if Payroll will let you.

Boss Man:  Look, I wouldn't offer if I didn't have the money.  And frankly, I wouldn't have the money without the work you've done this year alone.  What you've helped to develop in your tenure here will carry several future grants.  Covering your health benefits for two months is but a small token of appreciation.

 Raga: *sob*... Alright, I will try to think of it that way.

Why am I leaving this lab again?

Oh yeah...

friday night lights

Who has two thumbs and spends their Friday night learning how to use EndNote and finishing off the last speculations of a manuscript in hope of avoiding a nervous 4th of July breakdown?  This guy.  ..er.. whatever.

I've finished up most of this beast of a paper.  My grand finale, so to speak.  My legacy, my investments, my several clumsy self-stabbings with syringes carrying various types of toxins, tea times with my boss, my first real collaboration, and four years of developing a disease model and a successful intervention are all wrapped up in these pages.

Did I mention that I'm still waiting on 1/5 of the data?

Not that there is any build up of pressure, what with less than three weeks to go before this baby is submitted and my butt is out the door headed for warmer climates.

Final projects are straggling along, throwing tantrums left and right as if I don't have an urgent need to get their boots and jackets on.

Coworkers are combative at every step, as if everything I attempt to teach is an attack on their person (I cannot emphasize enough what a drag this makes everything).

The only things that save me from unleashing a smackdown are tea times with my boss (when he is in town, which is not often these days).  Mornings of discussing data, the general state of the lab, the future of science and fine loose leaves.  These are why I work late on Friday nights.  These are why I do not dread going back to the lab Monday mornings*.  And they make it very, very hard to leave.

*only with the most recent stresses (see... most posts from June) has this ever been an issue.  In the four years prior, I have only ever loved to be at work.  It is amazing what negative attitudes do to their surroundings.

the weight of inadvertent flakery

For the record, this Ragamuffin has not been at her best lately -- physically or mentally.  There has been too much for a healthy me to handle, and I am not a healthy me.

The pressure at work has been astounding for several weeks now, accompanied by feelings of not wanting to be there (which are horrid, because I love my research with all my being).  Coincidentally, dearest Remicade seems to have stopped working its magic, becoming a premature delinquent and leaving me with a very big decision to make.  Therefore, there seems to be some competition between my mind and my gut for who is currently the most put out by Life, and who deserves the most coddling.  I've been closing the door on both of them and left them to tire of their own tantrums.  This has not been as effective as I had hoped.

The not being well has come at a very bad time -- it's a brilliant creature, Timing.  With a month left before the big move, I have been making an honest effort to gather with my friends (among many, many other things which are not the subjects of this post).  This has recently required one, and sometimes even two, after-work outings each week.  Such outings, while they can be so soulfully rewarding, are not accommodating to pain or heavy Throughput.  Therefore, I have been making plans freely with the best intentions, and inevitably canceling or rescheduling them with great embarrassment.

I am not a flake.  But my insides are.  Therefore, my most sincere apologies to those of you who I have slighted of late (none of whom read this blog, incidentally), and to those of you who I have yet to slight (some of whom do read, incidentally), be forewarned.

I have thirteen years of this practice under my belt, and yet I am still bothered when my flaking is not well-received.  Don't they understand by now -- my friends of ten years or more, especially -- that as type-A as I am, sometimes (often, lately) I just can't make it happen?  It comes as a surprise to me that many of them do not.  Love me as they might, they still do not understand the chronic nature of chronic illness.  And so despite my greatest efforts, I become a flake.

basic skillz

Insanely busy work days are days when you do not want to flaunt your laziness, allow me to take care of your sloppiness, undermine my mentorship or otherwise provoke me to break your face with my heel.

And yet, I am having to remind the same two people to refill a solution which they share with me when they use it up, or at least give me enough warning that I can make more myself before anything time-sensitive gets destroyed.  Here I am taking out the recycling because it's overflowing onto the floor and neither of my coworkers has thought to walk it down the hall so no one trips on it and dies.  Here I am doing these things because I have already mentioned at least two other reminder today, and if I mention any more they will instantaneously forget those previous.  Here I am doing these things because even though I am barely able to handle my own work load today, my coworkers cannot find a moment to get off of Facebook to earn their salaries.

Perhaps it's the coffee talking, but I feel like these are very basic skillz that I should not have to continuously remind people to improve... or develop.  If it were my place to give a verbal whooping, I'd be all over it; alas, I am mentoring/supervising my peers and so I must refrain.  

They tell me that in California, scientists are driven, enthusiastic and competitive in a supportive way.  I cannot express how much I yearn for this.

Can I get a "Rawr"?

stress management fail, Buffy and RagaDetox

A lot has gone down in the past 8 days.  Serious things like H.K. and Optimus Prius getting t-boned by a girl on her cell phone (H.K. is unharmed, O.P... not so much), bringing my young brother and his musician's gear home from college for the summer, sewage leaking underneath our kitchen which requires that H.K. and I live on the streets for several days this week, and family BBQ.  In addition, my boss has been away at a meeting and I have been left with Incompetence, Arrogance, a wonderful summer student, and the installation of and training on two new apparatus in the lab.

Smaller things that have gone down include an eye doc demanding that I expand the repertoire of my reading glasses to include computer-staring and T.V.-watching because my eyes have been blood red for a month now.  Never fear -- we ruled out iritis/uveitis, who were suspected based on prevalence in immunodeficient and Crohn's types.  Also on the list of less significant gripes is that while all of this was going on around me, I was also working on a manuscript, collecting data and taking care of my boss' mice, and cleaning up after Incompetence who continues to thoroughly live up to her name.

Needless to say, I died of tired on Sunday and have not yet recovered.  I need several days of incubating in my robe and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathons... through closed burning eyeballs.

Either from the pain in my gut or eyes, or from the agonizing ordeal that is going to work every day lately, I have not been managing my stress smartly (enter the 5 cups of coffee and ~2 bottles of wine I consumed last week).  I have decided, therefore, to eliminate coffee and alcohol from my diet this week.  To some people, detox means flushing one's body with 8 cups a day of sunflower and stinging nettle teas and eating nothing but flax seed and green vegetables; RagaDetox just means no coffee or alcohol.

None of this sounds very remission-y.  But.  My boss is back in town, and things are beginning to look up... sort of.

in which Remicade is a Mercedes Convertible, and I decipher Russo-English science

It has finally happened.  I -- organizational and scheduling fanatic -- have missed an infusion.  By two weeks.  How did this happen?, you may ask.  I'll tell you.

I rescheduled my infusion to be two days after I met with Dr. GI, so that if we decided to scrap the Remicade and move on to "sexier cars" (his words), I would have drug-free buffer room to start immediately.  In fact, what happened was that when the nurse rescheduled me, she in fact neglected to reschedule me.  So my appointment came and went, as did my alleged infusion date, and I called the clinic to see why they had no appointment for me.  "You were a no-show on the 14th," is what I was told.  "But I rescheduled for the 27th of May, I just did not receive a reminder from Epic as I typically do and so I have not yet been infused -- I must not have been rescheduled" I retorted.  "Oops," the nurse replied, not at all withdrawing the reprimand from her previous remark, mind you.

Not all that exciting a story, really, but I wanted to get your hopes up.  The recent increase in Throughput over the past two weeks may be in part because I am overdue for my drugging.  Dr. GI was firm in his conclusion that it is not because I've increased my veggie intake.  My miniature experiment wherein I ate only crackers/rice/broth for a day and produced a 50% decrease in Throughput the following 24 hr period was noted.  The 50% reduction did not convince him.  And since I've been buffering all my veggies with fluffy carby foods over the last week with no Throughput let-up, I am beginning to side with him.  It is possible that my notably increased nausea and dependence on Percocet to survive the evenings are weighing in.

So... I'm taking my Remi from the 8- to the 6-week interval -- perhaps the 4 -- and if in the coming two months I do not see improvement, I will concede to move on to "sexier cars".  For now, I will deliberate between Humira (the Benz), Imuran (the Lexus) or LDN (the Prius).  I refrained from challenging Dr. GI as to whether Imuran was a Lexus or, in fact, an Astin Martin.

Meanwhile, in my small corner of the world of science, I am reviewing my first manuscript as a Peer.  It has been translated from Russian, and while the findings are very exciting, the syntax, run-on sentences and hugely neglected Methodology section have been problematic for my novice brain.  I spent 6 hours on Sunday trying to get through this thing (during this same period, my boss pummeled through a 140 pg dissertation... pwned).

Something I am gleaning from my meager experience in reviewing and being reviewed is that reviewers tend to hope that you cite them in your work.  Often, when we (my lab) produce(s) manuscripts, we request reviewers whose work we cite in the present work.  The Russian paper from this weekend didn't cite any of our work anywhere, which was not really offensive so much as remarkable because their findings were so intertwined with ours, and supported by some of our previous publications.  They did not defend discrepancies between their data and that of other studies which they did cite (which was a weird door to leave open), nor did they speculate on the correlations within their own data set (also odd).  It is a very different experience to read a submitted manuscript than a published article.  I think I like it...

don't worry, be happy now

Oh Bobby McFerrin, how mesmerizingly you sing my counsel...

I've been abnormally exhausted the last few weeks.  As proof, I slept like a rock until 10am this Sunday.  It's stress, I'm sure, which shows glaringly in my consistently burning and bloodshot eyeballs.  It's stress, I'm sure, from work.

The day of my departure creeps ever closer (yes, with two months to go I'm already panicking), and my colleagues slash successors are not easing my nerves with their competence.  Ever aware of my capacity for excessive worry, I am trying to be the patient observer and not accuse anyone of , well, amateurishness.  This is increasingly difficult for me to do.  The urge to approach my boss and request the authority to tell my protégés that they are doing things totally wrong and that I refuse to pass on my legacy to them unless they change things is throbbing in my brain.

Halp.

My internal monologue to my inveterate coworker goes something like this:

It is one thing to consistently force the colleagues with whom you share equipment to clean up after you.  That's just disrespectful on a peer level, like the time (last week) I mentioned your error, and witnessed its repeat no less than four hours later.  But when your neglect of expensive and sensitive apparatus results in its corrosion or other damage, you're disrespecting your boss and unnecessarily costing him many monies.  These monies should be on reserve for actual screw-ups.  The equipment is plenty capable of doing this on its own, thanks.   

When I leave, there will not be anyone to clean up after you before IACUC or the VMU folks drop by (or to forget to do so, for which mistake my ass has been burned several times).  Frankly, I've enjoyed that you are prompt with coffees and homemade treats to share in apology, but I urge you to bribe yourself with these things, for I will no longer be around to play the forgiving role, and you will have to take the heat from the higher-ups for your own mistakes.

In addition, I'm sorry to say, consistency of timing does indeed play a crucial role in behavioral data collection.  Specifically, if you begin testing a subject at 9am one day, you cannot then begin testing others in his cohort at 3pm the next round.  Hormones, circadian rhythms and neurotransmitter levels alike are in play here.  It is clear from your conduct that you may have forgotten this, despite your ten years of experience and self-touted expertise in animal research.  So I remind you and beg your to be cognizant of these variables in future.  

Please, please take to heart the things I am teaching you.  This research cannot afford for you to defy my every word to satisfy your ego.  I know you've been in the business much longer than I have, but I have been mastering these things which are new to you, and I will humbly argue that my experience with them gives me seniority.

To my new colleague/trainee:

If I may be so bold, it has come to the point where I can no longer tolerate your arguing with my methodology and telling me that every explanation I give you is wrong.  Lookit, bud; I have spent four years developing my techniques, optimizing and expanding them.  I am no idiot, and as much as it pains me to be arrogant, I do take ownership of this.  Having published five manuscripts based on my research and my techniques, written by my own hand, I'm pretty sure that the scientific world has at least begrudgingly accepted my analyses and interpretations.  I have been respectful of your questions, praising of your intelligence and encouraging of your perspective.  I had hoped that my example would be enough to convince you that it is ideal to respect your mentors and peers and their experience, but it seems that subtlety eludes you and I must take measures to be verbal... but not too verbal. 

Chill.  It'll make you a better scientist.  There are reasons that I do things a certain way, and, similarly, there are reasons that I do not do things certain other ways.  I am open to suggestions -- part of science is constantly optimizing and when I leave you will certainly improve upon what I have developed.  You may contest or challenge my rationale, but you may not blatantly tell me that I am wrong and you refuse to do it my way but that you have no idea why.  Sorry, bud.

Please, please take to heart the things I am teaching you.  This research cannot afford for you to defy my every word to satisfy your ego.  I know that you are fresh out of undergrad and think you know everything and the world is your oyster, but I have been mastering these things which are new to you, and I will humbly argue that my experience with them gives me seniority.

I stress because I worry (perhaps selfishly and egotistically) about my legacy collapsing when I leave --I hope that this is an exaggeration of the circumstances.  Mostly though, I stress about the amount of my work that is being passed on to my boss -- yes, my PI -- because my colleagues are not capable of learning the skillz.  Seriously.  I do not want to leave my boss in a situation where he is too overwhelmed to function.  The man is the reason I have any shot of being a good scientist.  He provided me with every opportunity under the academic sun, and I do not intend to leave his research teetering on a cliff.

Deo volente, I will refine these thoughts and project them in the upcoming weeks... ...

fiber and loose ends

This post being about fiber, I thought it fitting to tie up -- or at lease re-lace -- a few loose ends (tehe...).

The ants have been Terminixed into oblivion (or scared away for the moment).  The rotting flesh has relented just enough to inspire the hope that it will one day be gone (I now have a sexy little bald spot -- fortunately hidden -- which I dare to dream will be refilled in the happy future).  And finally, my zest for experimental cooking has been reborn and outrageously fiber-themed.

In truth -- there was a day where I ate an egg, a kale and apple salad (uncooked... wtf?) and grilled asparagus.  It's like wishing for death by intestinal rupture.  But I've been on a good streek...

 That's not my beer.

The fear that I might have to resign from Remicade in the near future sparked a desire to reintroduce as much fiber into my diet as possible while I still can, and perhaps get to a point where I can rely on it for maintenance.  I have long been jealous of the folks who are able to maintain a level of comfort through the Simple Carbohydrate Diet, which I have never been able to do without catapulting into a flare or exciting a collective of food allergies.

Since the insane kale asparagus day, I have backed off somewhat, eating raw veggies only occasionally and always buffered by starch of some sort (yeah, the gluten-free thing didn't last too long either thanks to dear and shamefully neglected GERD), or Tofu.  Grilled julienned zucchini and seaweed is my new favorite lunch kit -- small, fast prep and consumption, filling enough.  The Lab forces me to eat healthier lunches anyway because I have this compulsion about not eating finger food between bench runs, and sometimes have to neglect my meal midway through to make time-sensitive sample transfers or solution adjustments.

Unfortunately, fiber -- particularly insoluble fiber, which is the star of this new dietary whim -- also leads to very unpleasant bus rides to and from work.  The kind of bus rides that I have mentioned before (so many times, in fact, that it should really be its own tag term).  The kind of bus rides that elevate anxiety and provoke daydreams of flowing off of public transit in a deluge of... well, let's keep this PG-rated, shall we?  Fiber alters [read: lengthens] my schedule in order to accommodate new time slots between meals in which it is safe to travel.  The starch buffer helps to a degree.

Yes, that is an ice Lego minifig in my BenchFly mug of diet soda (allow a woman some indulgences...).

Is it worth it?  Are the long-term benefits of eating healthier foods during this pain-free window going to have efficacy?  I like to think of the inconvenience as analogous to a woman who wears anti-ergonomic heals despite the arch aches and blisters, and to hope that I wont later appear to myself as ridiculous as she does to me.

re-calibration

See those 2.2 red lines in the left hand document?  That is what I've accomplished today.  Somebody shoot me in the foot.  Do it quick so I can have an excuse to go outside and recalibrate.

pleasant surprises

It doesn't surprise people that I was a gymnast and dancer for most of my life.  I have a gymnast's short, thick build.  You can tell that I had muscle definition once.  My thumbs by default fold in slightly when I walk, and I do that thing walking downhill where my toes point outward and the ball of my foot hits pavement first, which weirds people out.

The person it does catch off guard is me.  Every so often I remember that I once was a ball of energetic artistry.  I chose to remember today.

The last several days I have felt myself plummeting into a frequency of sporadic depression.  The PWD kind (previous posts on which I have not tagged --denial--).  Somewhere between half-watching that masterpiece of theater and screenplay, Vertical Limit, while reading yet more horribly depressing articles about the aftermath of Osama, I decided that enough was enough.

So today, I dove whole-heartedly into protein assays and the first sections of my next manuscript, came home and paid homage to my Once Self.

I pumped the Reggae and broke out one of the hip hop warm-up routines that I used to teach to intermediates.  On the treadmill.  Win.

how Crohn's made me a better scientist

Many people are able to recognize their type-A personalities early on in young adulthood.  Type-A folks always make better scientists, we all thought.  Not so with yours truly.  I spent much of my responsible years thinking that I couldn't possibly be type-A because my memory was not terrific and I habitually make small-to-moderate sized mistakes.  Not long ago, I realized how type-A that thought was.

There were other signs: I always wanted to be the group leader because I didn't trust anyone else to get 'er done, but I was very conscientious of bossiness; I needed to have an organized schedule, but it didn't need to be the same day in and day out; I am only ever early or on time, but never late.  Ultimately, the driving force of these tendencies is actually Crohn's.

needing to know where the nearest restroom is...

scheduling things perfectly so that there is always room for a five minute Throughput break... or an hour long retreat to a hidden spot to wait for the pain to go away... or doctor appointments...

scheduling time for food prep... bringing food to places where I know I wont be able to find edible things...

These things necessitate the very efficient scheduling of experiments and juggling of multiple procedures, and allow me to transition "easily" between technical mode (bench) and theory mode (grants and manuscripts).

However, I try to remain flexible.  Science is anything but predictable, so when things go wrong or results are totally unexpected, I thrive because my particular type-A-ness is most enthusiastically channeled through trouble-shooting.  Or, H.K. and I often plan trips that turn into spontaneous (mis)adventures, which I love.

Interestingly, this does not cross over into the more irritating "things that go wrong": for instance, my gripe today is that Dr. Derm "jumped the gun" in diagnosing my Staph-infected psoriasis last week, and found out this morning that "the rest of the culture" showed that what I have is in fact resistant to the antibiotics he prescribed me.  I'm soo glad to have already taken 5 days of unnecessary antibiotics that make my gut hurt on top of everything else.  So glad.  And extra happy about not getting refunded for my doctor's eff-up.

Someday, I hope to trouble-shoot these most irritating instances of being screwed over more efficiently. (although I must say, my little cry over the ant horde last night helped my ceaselessly-bloodshot eyes immensely!)

Grumble.  Rediscover the terrible music I listened to in high school.  Move on.

defeat

I effing hate ants.  This afternoon marks a peak incident in the rising number of the pests who have over-ridden my bathroom, living room and kitchen each morning and afternoon for the last several weeks.  Maybe it's because I worked a very long and labor-intense day.  Maybe it's because I had coffee this morning and am still on-edge.  Maybe it's because I'm tired of planting spiders in various corners of my home and willing them to gorge themselves (yes, I actually do this and spiders have become so my friends through Spring that I do so with my bare fingers).

Maybe it's just because I came home and walked into my kitchen and stepped on a two-inch thick trail of ants leading from behind the fridge to the [sealed] garbage and recycling bins (it is of note that the traps that I set in the crevice between the fridge and wall were totally desolate).  Perhaps it has something to do with my being startled into jumping for safety to an ant-free zone and looking down to see that I had skipped onto yet another trail of ants -- headed, seemingly, to my dishwasher.

I would even go so far as to speculate that it has something to do with my spending 25 minutes (yes, I clocked this shit) vacuuming up ant trails, taking out the garbage and recycling and Lysoling every inch of linoleum.  This was precious energy that I so carefully preserved throughout the day, and which I had hoped to use to run this evening after a long day of standing at the bench and staring into hours worth of statistical manipulation.  It could, however, also be because when I re-entered the kitchen with emptied/Lysoled bins, the two-inch thick trail of ants had entirely replenished itself...

It could be because of any of the above reasons that I am now feeling totally defeated, exhausted and not chillaxed.  However, I think it was walking out of my kitchen feeling that I had finally won the battle, plopping heavily onto my couch and seeing that my living room carpet was alive with tiny black beasts that ultimately did me in.  I just gave up and cried into the couch pillow.

In a history of 9 houses/apartments, I have never seen anything like this.  I cannot wait to move out of this miserably maintained crap hole.

Nothing like a little H.K. humor and some garlic broccoli to  lighten a girl's heart.  Isn't it something that I am more likely to be undone by ants than by Crohn's?..

I am the Entertainer

I luvs nausea-free mornings.  I luvs them.

Today is Behavior Day, which marks the highly anticipated culmination of five weeks of therapy for my most venerable participants.  It also means that for the next ten hours, I will sit down perhaps once, juggle a protein assay whilst crunching data between behavioral tests, and probably not eat until supper.  I might even present said data to my boss before attempting to toss together an abstract to submit to SfN 2011 before the deadline in two weeks.  Maybe.

And I will most definitely be checking in on Wiley to see if my most recent manuscript re-submission has been accepted.

One must take advantage of days like this.

Remicade, and other stories

In a striking turn of events, I feel like a bag of bones today.  A very nauseous, very tired, ever so slightly irritable bag of bones.

My umpteenth Remicade infusion was Saturday, and I left the hospital feeling ill, which typically does not happen.  Full disclosure; I did enter the infusion clinic preemptively concerned about having developed Remicadibodies and having an allergic reaction.  This manifestation stemmed from my sort-of-recent hyper-allergenic condition (read: psoriasis, dermatitis, new mouse allergies, hives).  While there was no immediate reaction to be seen -- bummer -- I did not feel well for hours afterward.  In fact, I did not feel well for any part of Sunday either.  And, in case reiteration is necessary, I do not feel well today.

It is highly unlikely that this is more attributable to Remicade than to the gluttonous amounts of [cooked] leafy greens I've been eating of late.  I would even stretch to suggest it might be a result of the increased carb-heavy (read: salty, sugary, processed) foods whose ingestion I have defended on the basis of not being able to chew anything with much of a texture (potentially making the leafy greens an even more obvious culprit).  Thanks to Remicade, I'm not in very much pain, but those manifold side effects are aggregating.

And yet, this bag of bones was here at work promptly at 7am processing tissue samples and simultaneously probing nitrocellulose membranes.  This means I have what it takes to survive six years of this work load ten fold in graduate school, yes?..

on not so terrific starts to the day

Dear 3am,
          Back off.  It's not going to happen for us.
          Not without Prednisone, anyway.
                               - R

I keep waking up in cold sweats with anxieties about my jaw falling off and my lab falling apart when I leave in July.  Perhaps it's my overzealous ego rearing its ugly head, but I like my teeth and no one can deny that the pace in my lab will slow when I leave.  In my defense, my boss is stressed about it, too.  Half of my stress comes from wanting to assure him that everything will be fine when I'm worried that it wont.

It's really not so terrific to dread going in to work each morning because your guilt pangs are so intense and your confrontational skills are so lacking that you spend the wee hours of the morning anticipating incidents and practicing being stern with hard-headed and cocksure trainees who are convinced that they don't actually need to be trained.

Were I feeling better, I'd just go for a run and start the morning, but I'm not.  Everyone around me is flaunting their cold, and my defective immune system is trying to convince me that I haven't caught it.  Well played, I-Sys, but not well enough.

Three cheers for no nausea though, eh?

SfN 2010

As I sit recovering from a week of travel, rich food and constant bombardment with science and brilliant minds, I can't help but feel proud of my restraint.

I paced myself well, got a bit of sunshine, and suffered from not a single Crohn's attack.  There was a great deal of rich food at my fingertips.  Several days begged for lunches out in downtown San Diego, as >31,000 neuroscientists poured out of the convention center and into the streets to acquire sustenance for the afternoon's activities.  Our lab was also cocktailed, wined and dined by a very lovely medical liaison -- just a wonderful woman -- which called for rich Italian food. 

Fortunately for the intestines of yours truly, San Diego is brimming with fresh seafood.  I even ventured to eat three stunningly delicious prawns and had no backlash.  Nausea was minimal, throughput disconcertingly normal, and energy manageable.  I ate scallops with mushrooms, kale, pomegranate seeds and pumpkin puree (butterless).  I ate mahi tuna sliders with ginger (creamless, and oddly low in oil).  I ate mussel and clam capellini and, randomly, amaretto and cherry liquor coffee with biscotti.  I survived, I suspect, because rich meals were limited to one a day; other meals being oatmeal or Odwalla protein bars.

Unsurprisingly, I arrived home fatigued and drowning in adrenaline.  We flew in Thursday evening, and work the following day was driven by excitement and seemingly uninhibited by exhaustion.  Thank goodness for a weekend empty but for catching up on crap tv, football, laundry and blogging.  I am not -- I repeat not -- ready for the onslaught of Thanksgiving-Hanukah-Christmas-New Year-Interviews.  Chuck Norris, help me.

A beautiful and enriching trip.  Feel free to see my science blog for details.

in which i grow tired

Well, I am broke.  Thus far in October, I have had eight separate doctors appointments spanning five doctors.  I have three more -- count 'em, three -- this coming Wednesday before I head south to Willamette U. to be on a career panel for up-and-commer scientists and then get infused with Remicade before flying to San Diego for my first major conference.  With all due gratitude to my government bosses for providing excellent coverage for their employees, never underestimate the paycheck-dissolving power of copays and prescription fees.  I can no longer afford to eat sushi twice a week.  Woe is me!  My bedside table is officially over flowing with all my vials of drug, and I'm not entirely sure that my body is tolerating them either.

However, our home is thoroughly draped in Halloween splendor and this Saturday's party -- whether or not my guests decide to appear in costume, ahem -- will be well-worth the cooking frenzy (let's not kid ourselves -- I am not above a last-minute run to Costco to make sure the meal is edible).  And Sunday... Sunday is reserved for horror flicks and football.  Hell.  Yes.

The cycle has snowballed, and I am, as yet, uncertain whether it is calming down.  Despite all the more tangible symptoms, the fatigue is what is most getting in my way.  Because of the fatigue, I don't run in the mornings.  When I don't run in the mornings, the depression comes on all the more easily.  When the depression sets in, I don't sleep because I spend the evening terrorizing and bloating my sinuses.  When my sinuses are bloated, not all the sinus irrigation/flonase/sudaffed/fexofenadine or promethazine in the world can help me sleep.  And when I don't fall asleep, it doesn't matter how many times my bladder forces me to get up through the night.

Where is my colon in all this, you ask?  It's fidgeting on the sidelines trying so valliantly to get onto the field.  "Lookit me! I'm giving you car sickness every morning and every afternoon!" it wails, "I'm giving you the most delightful smorgasbord of Throughput and you're not even paying attention to me!"  Alas, my loyal companion, you have taken a back seat to other -- dare I say, more pressing -- issues.  Never fear; your time in the lime light will come again soon.

on reclaimng life

Having gotten through the most terrifying aspect of this season (the GRE), and having experienced the worst case scenario (not only unimproved, but slightly lower scores than last year... when I was high, nauseous and in pain), I am successfully emerged on the other side of doom.

Oddly, I am less bothered by average scores than I expected to be.  The relief of its being over with is much more potent than the disappointment with my performance on this particular exam.  Frankly -- and I'm not alone here -- I regard that test as far more highly referred to by graduate school admissions committees than is wise.  That said, I am acutely aware of how biased, political and funding-based the admissions process is in general and, therefore, am aware that average test scores will not be my undoing.

That is, of course, unless my average scores prevent me from being invited to interviews.  The thing is that highly prestigious schools will triage applications to the discard pile if they are not at a particular level.  Here is why I think that is a complete bullshit filter for applications:

This summer, I had the privilege of teaching several intern students.  Two of them were at he high school level, and were very fun to teach because they were fledgling scientists with lots of interesting questions and a flare for the work.  At least by the end of the summer, when the results of their month-long project started trickling in, their enthusiasm was wonderful.  This is why I love teaching.

In another vein, however, I had the privilege of teaching some biochemical techniques to one of our veteran students who has been doing analysis in another part of our lab for three years, and whom we had come to regard as a genius.  This student happened to be entering his senior year as a Biochemistry major, was applying to graduate programs, and was using his last summer month with us to buffer his resume by learning some new techniques.  He was, for all intents and purposes, my peer.

He was also a complete dolt in the lab -- more clumsy, less interested and with the worst memory I had ever seen in a person, scientist or otherwise.  I was completely taken aback by his lack of apt for deduction (read: common sense).  Please understand that this is not an exaggeration; I was shocked and befuddled that teaching my peer was like teaching a kindergartner.  I had to cut in half what I had planned on teaching him in that month because he could barely handle what he was initially tasked with.

How this boy could possibly be an academic genius became more and more puzzling.  Yet, his GRE scores trumped mine.  And he will be invited to interview at Stanford (yes, he is applying to the exact same programs that I am), and I will not, because his scores are higher than mine.  He will bomb his interview, because he knows almost nothing about what he's been doing for the last three years, and has very poor social skills (for which I do feel bad for him), but he will get them, and a small part of me dies whenever I think about that.  Despite this, he may actually be admitted to programs that I am rejected from because the more prestigious the school, the more weight is put on his exam scores.  I have effectively buffered the resume of a boy who, for all his pompous yet oblivious innocence, will never be a decent research scientist much less a Stanford-grade one.  What's more, he has no idea why he wants a PhD; it's just another step in the academic achievement track.  And this, as I studied for my own second-go at the GRE, was infuriating. 

However!, having faced my worst fear and come out the other side, I am happy with whatever school I am accepted to because I know what I want and what I'm doing, and will be a huge asset wherever I end up.  Whatever I want to make happen with what I'm given will happen, because that is something I've consistently been good at.  Getting into an amazing school instead of an average one, however, would be much welcomed reassurance that I belong in this field.

I could write volumes on how to best approach finding a graduate school, preparing yourself, exploring options, what the GRE actually says about your scientific potential, and negotiating the politics of science, but this data dump is dry enough as it is.

To end on a pleasant note -- and I must, because I feel better now than I have felt in two months -- this weekend was beautiful!  I worked on my grant while being infused for four hours on Saturday, stopped at New Seasons to pick up special sandwiches on the way home, and took the bikes and Frisbee out for some exercise at the park for the afternoon.  It was freeing, and wonderful to be able to throw myself back into real life. 

 

Today, I will finish my next manuscript and make some progress on applications having filled my tummeh with my new favorite Lisa-inspired breakfast: waffled eggs with chive Tofutti and onion bagel.

I feel good.

Hell Month

As Hell Month comes to a dragging close, I feel inclined to explain my "prolonged" absence and attempt to begin September anew.  August is typically difficult for me no matter what; it's the month where summer student projects realize their failure to culminate properly, when grant money comes in, when last years money must be spent or be lost to the government, when deadlines abound, and when I realize that I have been dawdling all summer and must reclaim some kind of focus.  This August, however, has been particularly acerbic.

I have not written much since July because my emotional mind has been inhabiting a very dark place.  It appears that I did not actually recover from my PWD phase until very recently.  Since I have not cried for a mind-boggling four-day continuum -- with the exception of M&L's wedding yesterday, which does not count -- I think it's time for a celebratory return to the real world.

This August, everything came crashing down.  My baby brother alone and unhappy in his new college surroundings; summer student projects failing to culminate; the complete revamping of my journal papers, which would be fine except for that the longer it takes my boss to edit them, the less likely it is that I will have their publication on my graduate school C.V.; weddings of those dear friends who decided last-minutely not to attend my own or send a gift, or a card, or even acknowledge an intent to do so, but who expect my attendance at showers, bachelorette parties and their special days (and, yes, I know exactly how that sounds); the sickening regrets about my own wedding that I seem to hunt down, which is its own special kind of painful and stupid act; the desperate need to get H.K. on my health insurance, which has been delayed by the marriage certificate fiasco, the name-changing social security card fiasco and the title and registration DMV fiasco that is guaranteed to occur; the realization that I am, Crohn's wise, exactly where I was last year at this time and somewhat terrified that it will all begin to replay at any moment, and the major anxiety that last year will fully repeat itself and I will not get into school again, even though I'm more qualified than 90% of applicants in the country (yes, I know exactly how that sounds, too).  This is do-or-die year.  If it doesn't happen now, it's not going to.

There have been several instances of tummeh turbulence that put my Crohn's panic into play.  Namely, a weekend out in Seattle with dear friends where eating out twice a day, despite my greatest efforts -- and I was very careful... excepting the alcohol -- sent me into a painful reenactment Monday evening.  Secondarily, the immense stress I've felt deep into the dorsal horn of my spine makes even butter a dangerous contender.  'You're doing so well,' I tell myself, 'don't throw it all away in the name of gustatory freedom.'  And it's so much more easily said than done.

Sleep?  None to be had.  Exercise?  Fluctuating with the consistency of supermarket produce quality.  Meditation?  Intimidatingly unsuccessful unless there is alcohol involved.

I need something good to happen here.  In the mean time, I am at least escaping from the grasp of beastly depression.