I'm famous!

Okay not really.

But I had on a show on the Discovery Channel about sharks in the Mediterran while chatting with boyfriend. It was cool to see film footage of basking sharks (scary looking, but very peaceful to watch).

While talking about the different zones based on depths, and the different types of shark that inhabit them. When talking about the costal regions, blue sharks can be seen in that zone. The picture of the blue shark used looked familar.

Yup, it's the same one.

Honestly, it was the first picture on google image search that came up at less than 50KB.

the shoe finally dropped

And it left a mushroom cloud in its wake.

We have a department secretary (administrative assistant) that hasn't been around for about two months now. A couple weeks ago, I asked our deptartment administrator what happened to her. I was simply told:

"She's on family medical leave and we don't know when she'll be back."

Although currently single, she's raising two children. One of which signed up for the army and sent to Iraq. I said a prayer that she wasn't on leave because her son was injured in Iraq. But our new department manager doesn't divulge a lot of information (unless you're pulling teeth).

So I left it at that.

Today my clincal nurse came back in the lab from a restroom break. She pulled me aside. She told me that she had run into the administrative assistant and had a quick chat.

Turns out that she probably won't be coming back to work. And she's not on family medical per say. She's on leave while a legal issue gets cleared up.

The issue - she filed a sexual harrassement claim against her boss (the head of the department).

As the nurse put it: "Nothing good can come out of it, and both involved parties will pay."

I was floored. I like our department head a lot. He's always had this "so good to see you" attitude whenever you saw him. He was so warm and inviting. A family man with teenagers. If I had to find another lab to work in within the department, I'd want to work in his.

On the other side is the single mom of teens and more. She had been in our department longer than I have. She's had lots of interactions with this person when he was faculty (before the appointment to department head). Our nurse said that she practially started crying in the hall when she told the nurse about her situtation. I've never known anything to upset her in the past, so she must really believe that something happened.

Since this is the first I've heard of the situation, the crisis is quietly being handled by the college. Our department has had its share of controversy, and press of the harrassement is something we don't need.

Our current department head is still listed as "interim". He never wanted to be the official head. But our college has dragged its feet in hiring a permanent department head. So our interim head has been a good sport for years about the issue, and I don't think frustration would have set him to harrass a secretary.

No matter the outcome, it's going to be ugly.

Middle of the road

I hate how politics seems to be "us or them". Here's some political issues and where I stand:

Guns - let there be guns. Better yet, it'd be legal to shoot dumbasses that start wildfires by throwing out their cigarettes on the highway. I don't own one, but I have fun shooting boyfriend's when we go camping in the middle of nowhere.

UN - a good concept long lost to politics. Nuke it and start over.

The Middle East - nuke the whole area. Whoever wants it after that can have it.

Gitmo - I'm happy the Supreme Court said that military tribunals are illegal. I thought the President saying "try a small percentage in military tribunal, the heck with the rest and the Geneva Convention too," was a bit over the line on Presidental powers. Then again, I have issue with declaring war on terror too (like the war on drugs or obesity).

But what about the "high value detainees" that aren't in Gitmo or in Saddam's jail?

Global warming - stop the denial. We're toxic to the environment. If another contributing factor arises such as a major volcano erupting, that will just compound the issue to a potential disaster.

No, I haven't seen the Al Gore film...

Mexican immigration - I might switch affiliations to independant just to vote for Goldwater in the primary. The son of Barry Goldwater is taking a lot of flak for saying that anyone caught sneaking across the border will be put to work in "tent cities" at the border and have to help build the wall. Bravo.

But Goldwater Jr. is a lawyer by trade....

Government spending - the deficit worries me. What worries me more is the amount of funding to the NIH is almost as bad as during the Reagan years. Not to mention NASA cutting their research budgets. Which eliminates our two biggest sources of support for running the lab.

Illinois governors - I was appaled that Ryan commuted the death sentences of every person on death row in his state. Then I see that the new one is mandating HIV testing for all babies if the status of the mom is not known. I think this is invasion of privacy, but more laughable since HIV tests in babies isn't reliable until they're at least six months old (if the baby was exposed a birth, it'll take some time to develop viral titers and antibodies). Then there seems to be a new scandal involving corruption on the local level every year there. What a bunch of wackos.

Since I was born there, I guess that's not saying a lot about me....

Bone picking time

*grrr* I saw this article in a published journal (so I won't post the link here). It has to do with how too much pain medicine can turn out to make a pain patient more sensitive to pain. Here's a short exerpt:

Most patients don't understand that excessive use of opioids can actually make them hypersensitive to pain, said Dr. Lake of the Michigan Head Pain and Neurological Institute, Ann Arbor. “They believe the pain is stronger than the medication, not that the medication is actually making them worse.” This thought process can be the root of ever-increasing medication use, as the patient experiences “pain anxiety” and attempts to forestall pain by premedicating.

The first step is to teach patients how medication overuse exacerbates headache pain, he said. Only when they have a clear understanding of this relationship will they be open to adhering to medication limits.

Quite a few of his references go back to 1990 with some more recent references citing the benefits of biofeedback published in 2002.

First of all, he doesn't distinguish between the different types of pain. Most pain experts agree that there's physical pain (from injury, arthritis, etc.) and neuropathic pain (the kind of pain that triggers my headaches).

Since he cited references, I don't know how much real patient information there is. But MY experience is that anything they used to treat me (anti-epileptics, SSRI, or pain medicine) would work for about a month. Then the pain would come back, and they'd prescribe a higher dose, and the cycle repeated itself until I reached the maximum doesage allowed.

All those years on pain medicine, what do I have to show for it. I'm now allergic to demerol, morphine still doesn't touch my pain, and I perceive LESS pain when I have a physical injury. I've since all this happened broken two bones, and thought they were just a sprain. I also managed to get a deep gash in the inside part of my right foot and to this day I still don't know how I managed to do it. So now I obsessively search my body every morning in my lotion routine to look for injuries.

Yes, I know people that claim to be in pain when they're looking for a fix to their addiction to pain medicine. Drag the psychologists in for them. Can I tell the difference between an addict that may or not be in pain - probably not. Then again, I don't make anywhere near the salary of a doctor. (Though I had a very nice chat with a neurologist on the elevator ride in this morning.)

I hope this doesn't set back doctors that treat people that have a real pain issue. If it does, the suicide rate in the TN group will probably go up a bit.