I want to rip my spine out

Oy, what a few weeks it’s been. The arm surgery never happened because my back went out. Like, full-on couldn’t get out of bed, the neighbor’s roommate had to drive me to Urgent care, over-medicated and still in pain OUT. I’m at the point where I can mildly function now, but the arm surgery was cancelled in favor of back surgery. They’re trying to get me in this week for a consult but I have an appointment scheduled for April 10th as a backup if no one cancels this week. Then I’d have to have the pre-op and get in the surgery rotation ASAP. So I’m basically waiting for them to say, “let’s cut, lay down” while trying not to gnaw my own leg off. 

It’s a severe L5/S1 bulge that’s impinging on the sciatic nerve. Everything hurts. Sitting, standing, walking, even laying down. Constant pain. When I told them that the high doses of hydrocodone were doing NOTHING, they had me in for an epidural cortisone shot. Told me that it had an 80% chance of working, yay!

It didn’t work.

It’s amazing how ornery you get when you are in constant pain and can’t function the way you want. No wonder those with chronic illnesses fall into depression. 

So that’s where I am. My parents are coming in Saturday for Easter and then staying a few more days to help with the house, take care of me and the dogs, and to give me a mental health break. I’m hoping any day the docs will call and tell me to come in so I don’t have to wait until the 10th. 

So that’s the story, Morning Glory. Between my back and my arm and cabin fever, I’m surprised I haven’t pulled all my hair out yet. Wheeeee.

Alternatives to Immiticide

An oldie but info is still pertinent to pet-owners, shelters and rescues:

So as you may or may not know there is another shortage of Immiticide, which is the only FDA-approved heartworm treatment for heartworm-positive animals. It’s called a “fast kill” method because there are two consecutive daily injections, followed by a few weeks of inactivity. Merial, the company that makes Immiticide, has no idea when they will produce more citing “could be two weeks, could be six months” so here are three alternative plans of action. Each one of these alternatives is a “slow kill” method but there is only so much activity restriction you can place on an animal (dogs especially) before they go stir crazy, so adjust as best as you can.

1) Heartguard alone - This once-monthly treatment is simple and relatively inexpensive, however considering it takes up to two years to rid the animal of heartworm and, during those two years, the worms cause continuous damage to the heart and blood vessels, it is not the most recommended course of action. Your pet would also have to be kept relatively inactive for the entirety of that time or the increased heart rate risks pieces of worm breaking off and traveling on the blood stream resulting in a clot on the lung.

2) Paratox - This is a holistic heartworm treatment. It’s a liquid that’s put on the food twice a day that’s made of plant chemicals and Interleukin-2 (an immune system booster). The result is the same as Heartguard alone in that the animal must remain inactive during treatment which is usually 30-45 days of treatment followed by 2-3 months off, at the end of which another heartworm test can be conducted.

3) Heartguard (Ivermectin) + Doxycycline (an antibiotic) - This combination targets the bacteria that live on the worm and without them, the worms will die. They begin to break up (this is the same with Immiticide and the other treatments) and pieces of the worm will then be carried in the blood stream to be exposed of.

The problem with an active dog is because an increased heart rate will cause more worm pieces to be carried out at a time than a normal resting state and this can cause an increased chance of a pulmonary embolus (essentially a worm clot on the lung) so if your animal has any indication of respiratory distress, coughing, wheezing, inability to breath, take them to an emergency vet clinic immediately or they can die. The dosing lasts for 4 weeks on and then 3-4 months off at which time the animal can be re-tested for heartworm.

If negative, you’re done. If positive, at this point you can do another round of Doxy or you can use Immiticide (if available) and the benefit here is that the Doxy will have already broken up a significant chunk of the worms so the drug has less work to do and, therefore, less of a chance for a lung clot.

This is the treatment my new little brother, Squiggy, has just started. He will be living with me for a month starting on Friday and then will live in PA with my parents for the rest of his adorable little life.

Grammy Bear

The weekend of Memorial Day last year, the Saturday night before the holiday, I got a call from my dad telling me that my gram was in the hospital again. He is like me, very non-plussed and come-what-may. But he wasn’t. I could hear the stress in his voice from having to see my gram like that and having to see my mother watch her mother in pain and anguish.

It was late when he called, 11PM. I had been fighting a cold and took some Theraflu to help me sleep. So when I got the call, I tried to figure out how the hell I was going to drive to PA overnight with Theraflu in my system. I decided on a 5 Hour Energy. Squiggy wasn’t in the picture yet, so I loaded up Raina and a backpack full of clothes and hit the road. My dad called me again after I’d been on the road for about an hour, begging me not to drive through the night, especially since there were intense storms up the coast right where I’d be traveling along 95N. He said he didn’t have it in him to worry about me on top of everything else. That’s what made me turn around and go home.

I tried to sleep but got very little. The whole next day I spent either on the phone or texting my parents, and my cousin and close friend Stacy. I debated making the trip home and my mom told me that she didn’t want me to see my grammy like this and to please not come because she couldn’t handle that. Again, I granted her request and spent all day Sunday cuddled up with Raina in bed attached to my phone/computer.

My mom called me Sunday night to say that they’d finally given my gram something to rest. Up until then, she’d been unconscious but still thrashing her body around, there was fluid in her lungs that they couldn’t get rid of and she couldn’t breathe. She was clawing and kicking and unconscious the entire time. I’ve seen my grammy in pain. She’s been in the hospital a hundred times. Diabetes, scoliosis, lung cancer, breast cancer, quintuple bypass, etc. She was always a tank who could survive anything. But old age (84) and years of infirmity had left her weak and tired. She’d said on a number of occasions that she just wanted it to be over, that she couldn’t do it anymore. I slept a bit that night since my mom told me Grammy was resting.

Then on Monday morning, the call came. She was gone.

I took a little while to pack up my and Raina’s stuff and got on the road. I cried most of the way home, on and off. Your heart is torn in situations like that. My grammy helped raise me, she’d hold my hand until I fell asleep at night because I didn’t want to be alone. She’d record a week’s worth of ALF episodes for us to watch at our sleepover on Friday nights. She’d insist it couldn’t have been me who drew on the wall in crayon, even though I was an only child and signed my artwork, because she didn’t see me do it. Knowing that she was out of pain was a comfort, but knowing I’d never see her again was my life’s biggest heartbreak.

In the days following, we had a wake (a viewing) and Grammy was cremated. She didn’t want to be buried in the ground, an interesting decision for a lifelong Catholic, but I loved her even more for that. In the months leading up to her death, my uncle interviewed her about her life and recorded it. They played it on a tiny portable DVD player and when I went in to watch it with my cousin, I wound up crying my eyes out. Her answers were sweet and funny and feisty and sad. I missed her so much in that moment.

My gram had four grandkids, my three cousins and me, and she left each of us a small box with things she’d put into each over the years that were special to her that she wanted us to have.

My cousins opened theirs and saw Mont Blanc pens, cameos, open-faced lockets, and pins…she loved her pins. She always wore a rose or a “Grandma” pin with our birthstones on it.

When I opened my box, which was a tin for Danish Butter Cookies (nom), I saw all of this:

Lots of old jewelry, and I finally know where I get my love of triangles, an engraved heart from my grandpa to my gram on the left, her wedding ring on the top left, some freshwater pearls on a broken earring in a baggie (top left), the open-faced locket with a munchkin picture of me in the keystone position (top center), the “Grandma” pin with all of our grandkids’ birthstones (middle right), a note I wrote to my gram on the top right, and then the shit in the middle.

I pulled it out to show my mom and my cousins and we all laughed our asses off. We had NO idea what that metal thing is, some kind of tool, obviously, but no idea what it is, and a ball of string tangled into a rubberband.

Grammy’s birthday was the 4th of July. She was the youngest of seven kids, the oldest also born on the 4th of July, just 21 years apart. I had already bought her card so I made it out and keep it together with the tin of her things. The jewelry is all wonderful and I treasure everything she left me, but I will keep that frickin ball of string for the rest of my life.

So today, even though it’s commercialized beyond all hope, take an extra five minutes out of your day to honor the ones you love. Tell them how you feel about them. Don’t be afraid to share those parts of yourself. What are you saving them for?

At Night

When it’s late at night and raining, like it is tonight, I can more easily admit to myself that I don’t know much about what the future holds. During the daytime, I have to pretend I have the answers. I have to make stuff happen and be dependable. But at night, at night I can relax and decompress. I can look out the window and watch the rain falling. I can see the sky on clear nights. I can imagine what’s out there and realize how small and insignificant all this is.

It’s amazing really, that we’re expected to do laundry and dishes and pay bills when the universe exists. I hate the minutiae sometimes, I really do. I don’t want to always think about what I have to do. I want to think about what is possible. But so often that’s chalked up to daydreaming and responsible people don’t daydream, or at least that’s what I’m told…but I don’t listen.

I daydream all the time. Sometimes I wonder if I have adult onset ADD because my mind tries to wrap itself around these intensely complex concepts and I can drift off from the awe of it all. I think I daydream because I long for night, when my mind quiets and things become more clear. I’d like to think that. I don’t know if that’s really true, though, because my real dreams are usually fraught with themes that show my fear and uncertainty.

If you believe in dream diaries, which I didn’t used to but they’ve been very telling, then you’d know that my dreams are usually nightmare-esque. I’m running and scared, trying to defend myself or others, fighting off people who are trying to drag me down into the unknown. I once dreamt that my dad had died and I used his body as a shield against a ninja who was chucking throwing stars at me and they stuck in my father’s body. I had used him as a human shield because he’s always tried to take care of me.

Then another time, Steve Martin and I were in a cabin…yeah I don’t know…and it had a screened in porch and these armed guys with swords were crossing the ravine down below and were coming up to attack us. I thought I had a sword in my hand so I parried only to realize it was a fish and the fish flopped down, not inflicting any damage, so I had no real defense against the attack.

I dream about weird shit. I dream about girls in giant tanks full of water and tape worms and the tape worms go in her mouth and down her throat. I never dream about anything real, though. I don’t get epiphanies in my dreams like some people. I don’t find the answers, magically. I just keep mulling them over again and again until I’m so exhausted from the analysis that I just stop thinking about it and put it to rest.

From what I hear about most of us, that seems to be universal. We stagnate because we fear change. We have analysis paralysis and never move forward. It’s hard to move forward when you’re uncertain in which direction you want to go. I’m an introvert who craves one-on-one or one-on-few interaction, and yet I love getting up and speaking in front of a group or a crowd and teaching them something and making them laugh. I’m a dog-lover, animal advocate, scientist, teacher, activist, writer, actor, singer, daughter, cousin, niece, best friend, lover. My mind swims with everything that I am and everything I want to be. I envy those who have one passion and know what they want to do with their lives. I can’t make that decision, to focus on one thing and cut the others down or out completely.

I keep trying to make myself, though. I keep trying to make myself pick one thing and master the shit out of it. I have no idea why. I have no idea why I’m unsatisfied with simply being and living my life.

That’s not completely true. I read a lot of blogs and am friends with a lot of people with entrepreneurial spirits. They are always working on something amazing that takes a ton of ambition and a ton of energy to do. They seem to live it and breathe it. They constantly blog about it. I am lucky if I remember to blog every month, even though I feel like I have a ton to say, I just wind up internalizing it instead of saying it. I say it, just not so often on this site. Probably because it’s a personal site with no real niche, just a generalized world-view and the stupid little pieces of my life that no one cares about but me.

Ah well, the ramblings of a single 30 year old woman who has all the choices in the world and no idea which one to choose. Life could be so much worse. I do envy the people who know which road to travel down, but I am so grateful that I am able to make that choice myself and not have it made for me. The great dichotomy of life.

ScienceOnline Attendees in the Triangle

We always want to prolong the high, don’t we? Luckily for us North Carolinians, there are a bunch of us local to the Triangle area that can hopefully meet throughout the year and keep that SciO high in tact.

Two days ago, a few of us met at Fullsteam Brewery in Durham and tacked ourselves onto the already-scheduled Durham Tweetup. The vibe was intense and there were tons of people in the space, but we were still able to find each other and get some great conversations going.

Photo from the Durham Tweet Up at Fullsteam Brewery. [Regina Twine - triangle.com]

There are a few variables, however, so I need to poll my #TriSciTweetup people to figure out preferences and scheduling. Check out the form below and let me know what works for you. I’ll send a follow-up message in about a week or so once I get some input.

http://briannevillano.wufoo.com/embed/z7x3k1/

 

If you can’t view the form above, please visit this link instead.

My Twitter list for NC members of SciO is here. Feel free to browse and let me know if you have additions/edits.

If there are any SciO attendees who live near each other, this is your chance! Get together periodically and keep the love alive!

The Business of Science: A ScienceOnline2012 Recap

Many of the attendees at ScienceOnline2012 were academic scientists and/or science journalists and bloggers. They had distinct niches that they were studying or preferred to focus on in their writing. I love it all and often can’t make up my mind what I love more. So it was a little rough to be an industry scientist and also a newbie to the unconference, this being my first year (but not my last, I’m sure). I’ve always been social media and internet savvy and working for an old-school corporate entity often conflicts with that mindset, but when I heard about SciO12, I knew I had to be a part of it.

Some scientists are lucky. They hold onto the passion for their field of study no matter what is thrown in their paths. Other scientists, like myself, have grown disheartened with the business of science. Maybe if I would have thrown myself into a doctoral program instead of terminating at a masters degree, and stayed in an academic setting where I felt most at home, I’d be at the same place as many of the other SciOs.

Maybe.

All I know is that we have to continue to move forward, hone our skills, make connections and keep growing as people.

The sessions at SciO encompassed a whole host of disciplines from science documentaries and internet outreach to conflicts between scientists and the journalists who cover them. There was an art show, a film fest, and I focused more on the social and performance/production side of things, sticking to video production, ebooks, social media and advocacy.

It was thrilling to be a part of that energy and to feed off of it, to feel passion for the subject I decided in an 8th grade genetics class would become my career.

So to Bora, Karyn and Anton, for an amazing job organizing and pulling the whole thing off, I want to say, “Thank you.”

To David Shiffman and Austin Gallagher, for showing me the importance of visualization and outreach in helping people understand science, I want to say, “Thank you.”

To Matt Shipman and Dr. Ann Ross at NC State, for an impressive tour of the Forensic Anthropology lab there, I want to say, “Thank you.”

To Mireya Mayor and Chancellor Woodson of NC State, for inspiration and generosity across the board, I want to say, “Thank you.”

To Tom Levenson, for your award-winning work on Origins and sharing some of that brilliance with the rest of us, I want to say, “Thank you.”

To Dawn and Brian Crawford of BCDC Ideas, for logistics that kept 450 attendees plugged-in and happy, I want to say, “Thank you.”

I don’t know what my future holds. Thanks to SciO, however, it holds a little more oomph.

Boom Boom Blues

My girl has some serious storm anxiety. Ironic considering her name: Raina.

I can easily tell that she’s in a storm trance because her eyes and her face completely change into something that doesn’t even look like her. She starts to pant and pace and shake uncontrollably. She jumps up on me and then runs away and comes back every two seconds to rinse and repeat.

Against a lot of dog trainers’ advice of “ignore them and they’ll calm down”, I try to comfort her. I try to hold her while I’m reading a book or just lay on the bed in a relaxed state that I hope she’ll mirror.

That usually doesn’t work. Not gonna lie.

However, there are three things that work in three very different ways.

a) Her crate. She loves her crate, often times laying in it for hours on days when she takes lazy naps. She hates it when I wash the blankies and toys she has hidden away in there because it removes her scent-sense of home. When it storms, I put her in her crate and she will get angry for about five minutes. She’ll bark at me and make a fuss, but in a few minutes she’s generally subdued and will lay there, calmly panting, until I let her out.

b) A car ride. For a dog that hates the thunder and noise that a hard rain can generate, she sure loves driving in it. I’ll even roll down the window and she sticks her face out into the rain and sniffs hard. A ten minute drive, while not always appropriate due to gas prices, can calm her down drastically and allow her to drift off to a restful sleep as soon as we get back home.

c) Cooking in the kitchen! Surprisingly enough, I’ve learned that giving her a distraction that also keeps my energy distracted from her distress is a win/win. I start cooking something, even if it only takes a half hour, and she will sit in the laundry room off the kitchen. It keeps her in a calm state without making her angry in her crate.

Now, there are certain times when driving or cooking is not going to work. Four AM, for instance. For those times, there is the crate. For all others, I try to use the less-stressful of the options.

Who knew? My dog loves to drive and cook. She’s so cultured.