Fun in the ER

Once I was in the ER, the paramedics transferred me to a bed, and the nurses took over hooking me up to a heart, blood pressure and pulse-ox monitor.

Much of the details are fading now, but eventually the ER doctor came to see me, and explained that they would be doing a few tests to see if they could determine if it was a heart thing, a blood clot, or just my acid reflux. The first two they would care about, the last not, since it’s not life-threatening. The tests included drawing blood, of course, a CT scan of my lungs with contrast injected into me (whoa! fortunately I’m not allergic to this like my brother is), and chest X-rays (actually, the doctor didn’t mention these, but I was just wheeled across the hall to X-ray after my CT scan).

Again, not sure how long later, but the doctor came back and said that the blood work indicated a possibility of a blood clot, so even though the CT scan results weren’t back yet, they were going to start treating me for just in case. They started me on heparin, an anticoagulant (i.e. “blood thinner”). It was beginning to look like I would be there all night, and likely be admitted at some point. I asked Andrew to head home and put together an overnight bag for me, and grab some dinner somewhere (the ER had box lunches, but they were just ham sandwiches…not good for a vegetarian).

After Andrew got back and we ate (I had to wait for about an hour for the doctor’s approval and the nurse to clean off the tray in the room), the doctor came back, and told us that the CT scan was negative, but that they wanted to keep me around and do Doppler ultrasound scans of my legs in the morning. This was about 2AM, and I decided to send Andrew home. He was already very tired, and is still a fairly new driver (less than a year), plus the roads were unfamiliar to him, so I wanted him to get home.

It took another 2 hours before I actually got a room upstairs.

A few notes:

• Being in an ER is like riding on a spaceship at close to the speed of light relative to the rest of the world — you age much more slowly than anyone else. Every minute feels like 20, and there is no way to get any sleep, what with the noise in the hall and in the next bed, with people constantly coming in to take blood and the updates from the doctor.
• Girls are not designed to give urine samples. This is especially true when a girl is doing this while connected to an IV, wearing a untied hospital gown and shorts.
• It’s no fun getting blood taken for an arterial blood gas test. This requires blood from an artery, and they tend to run deeper than veins. Plus, they like to continue bleeding for a while, which means I have a bruise on my wrist.
• Having blood taken from the back of the hand might be even worse than the arterial blood. At least when you’ve got someone who keeps poking around and trying to get more blood when there doesn’t seem to be any to be had (despite having been on the heparin for several hours already).
• The gurney/bed I had was not long enough, and my feet were dangling off. In addition, the IV pole that I had had a bad wheel, so it didn’t push very well. Ugh. I must have pissed someone off somewhere.

My first ambulance ride

I thought Thursday was bad, but that’s just because I hadn’t lived through Friday and Saturday yet.

Let me just preface this by saying that I’m home now, and feeling fine. I need to go to my doctor this week for some follow up, but they wouldn’t have sent me home if they thought there was anything life-threatening going on.

The excitement started Friday afternoon at about 4:15 after I’d woken from a short nap and settled down in front of Judge Judy (my one vice) and I started feeling a bit of discomfort in my chest. No problem, I thought, this is just my acid reflux acting up. But the the pain got worse. And I started sweating. And I tried taking a few deep breaths, since that usually makes anything better, and the pain increased when I did that. Frankly, I started to worry.

I decided to grab the phone, go upstairs, and lay down on my bed for a little while, since that should help. The trip upstairs made things worse, but I crawled in bed just knowing it would make it better. While I was laying there, I thought I might throw-up, so I went to the bathroom, but the second I sat in front of the toilet, the feeling faded, and I was feeling pretty bad, so I went back to the bed.

That’s when I thought I should call Andrew. (Actually, I wanted to call my insurance’s advice line, but the number was downstairs in my purse, and I was remembering how much my trip up the stairs hurt…I didn’t want to brave the stairs again.) I tried to sound calm, but my voice likely showed how much pain I was in. He said he was going to head home right away, but thought it might be a good idea for me to call 911.

Read more…

Random Notes

A few random things:

• Dog lovers already knew this: Research shows dogs understand language (via Salon.com)
  

  The researchers found that Rico knows the names of dozens of play toys and can find the one called for by his owner. That is a vocabulary size about the same as apes, dolphins and parrots trained to understand words, the researchers say.
  Rico can even take the next step, figuring out what a new word means.

• The two most asinine things I’ve seen on my commute around the beltway happened this week:
  • During a slow-and-crawl segment of the commute, drivers in two cars in the two left lanes started chatting. They didn’t stop even when the gap in front of them grew to more than 10 car lengths.
  • A semi-truck, pissed at an SUV in the second left lane for going too slow, changed lanes into the left lane (after honking at the SUV for about a quarter of a mile in slow-and-go traffic), and then when the traffic in the left lane started slowing, he started crossing back into the second-left lane, even though that SUV was still next to him. The semi went slow enough to get the SUV to pay attention and change lanes, but frankly was just asking for an accident.
• The war-of-the-worlds-like background drone of the cicadas has faded to nothing — I only heard it once this week for a few seconds. There are still a few flying about (one landed on the windshield wiper of the tow truck yesterday, and hung on for a good 30 seconds), but mostly all I see are the dead bodies around. (More disturbing, I think, are the random unattached wings that are lying around.)

Reagan’s Procession

I got caught watching a bit of the procession of former President Reagan’s body while rewinding a tape, and was touched by a couple things. First, let me just say that I’m not a Republican, and that, frankly, I was too young during his presidency to really form an opinion of him as a President and as a man. I do respect him for coming forward 10 years ago to announce that he had alzheimer’s, but other than that don’t really have an opinion of him.

But as I watched the procession — the part where the military pall bearers were conveying the casket from the caisson to the Captiol’s routunda — I felt for Nancy. This is what would normally be, for a family, a private time where she could lean on family members. Instead, she is escorted by a member of the military and paraded in front of cameras from media around the country…nay, around the world. While I realize that much of their lives was spend in front of the media, a moment like this is difficult enough when surrounded by family. I cannot imagine going through it surrounded by the media. I feel for Nancy, whether or not I mourn Reagan’s passing.

The other thing that occured to me was that I would hate to be one of the military members chosen to carry the casket. I realize that it’s a huge honor, and those men must feel priviledged to be a part of the procession. However, I have served as a pall bearer once. It was for my baby nephew, who died from SIDS. The two nights between agreeing to be a pall bearer and the funeral, I had the most horrific nightmares about dropping the casket and ruining the funeral. I can only imagine the kinds of nightmares that might be had by a pall bearer for a former United States President.

Grad Life: Women can be our own worst enemy

This is an entry into my Grad Life journal that I’ve been avoiding. I was so excited to start classes my first fall. I had spent the summer fairly isolated from students my age, working on porting a oscilloscope’s control program from DOS to Unix. It was nice to get into the “real world”, but frankly, I had not done much programming, and felt completely out of my element. I actually missed the classroom, which was where I knew I could shine.

That was before I knew she would be there.

She was a professor who had gone through CalTech in the 60s, back when women didn’t make it through CalTech. She still showed the scars. She‘s a well-respected member of the astronomy community, and her hard work has really paid off for her career. However, at least to us students, she came across as a bitter woman with a mission to make grad school as hard for us as it was for her.

I do have to give her some credit. She took over the class at the last minute, becuase the professor scheduled to teach it passed-away just a month before the class was to start. In addition, her knees were giving her a lot of trouble, and she was developing cataracts. (Reports from a year later, after she‘d had surgery on both her knees and eyes were that she was much easier to get along with.)

Many of my bad memories of that class have faded in the last 6 years. However, there are two incidents that epitomize what she thought of us students in the class:

• One day, we were supposed to use what we were studying to come up with possible quiz or test questions. A fellow student brought the question, “How is the interstellar medium like a high band-pass filter?” (I think — that’s at least the gist of it). Her response was, “And how is a grad student like a low band-pass filter?”
• Another time, she turned back some homework to the class. As she was handing it back, she said, “Some of you girls might notice that I’ve put some harsher comments on your papers. That’s becasue I think you need some toughening up.”

Can you even imagine if a male professor had said that to the class? But since it was her, it was okay.

Even before these incidents occured, I felt uncomfortable and unhappy in that class. In fact, labor day weekend, which was just after the first two days of class, I went to visit my aunt in Altanta, and complained to her that I was already unhappy.

I looked for jobs in November of my first semester. The only reason I didn’t keep persuing that avenue is because my aunt offered to take me swimming with dolphins the following summer if I just stuck it out my first year.

Oh, and I found out something else about her last week. An acquaintance had another story about her. She wrote one of the qualifying exam questions asking students to find the distance to some object given a bunch of parameters, including H_0 = 50 km s^-1 kpc^-1. This acquaintance, while doing the problem generally correctly, had gottn 10/100 on the question with the comment, “H_0 is not 50”.

I’d like to say that things are changing, and I really do think they are. The next generation of female astronomers seem to have lost the bitterness present in a segment of the first generation. Now we just need to push the first generation out of positions where they interact or influence the upcoming generation, and we can at least bring better experiences to those just entering into astronomy.

Denver AAS – Day 4

This is the first day that I actually went to talks.

The first talk was by a sociologist, Elaine Seymour, entitled Hidden Losses. Her group is looking at factors that influence whether or not a woman entering the sciences actually makes it to a tenure-track position. One of her main points was that the women who make it to a tenure-track position are those who maintained a straight trajectory. Those who don’t make it have been derailed for one reason or another (starting a family, family illness or death, lack of sufficient support, etc.) I fall into the latter group — I was derailed because I couldn’t handle the lack of financial support (at least that was the biggest factor). I look forward to seeing the final paper that comes from her group’s research.

The other session I went to was a panel discussion on the status of women in astronomy.

I find that I feel more depressed about the state of women in astronomy the more I go to talks. In my day-to-day life, I see plenty of women working in astronomy. However, I found out that even my advisor is fairly sure that the only reason she got her current position is because the center was required to hire a womam. This makes me happier that I’ve chosen to get out. There is a part of me that feels guilty for “letting down” future generations of women by not persuing the tenure-track. However, I know that I wouldn’t be happy forcing myself down that track. Plus, the direction that I would like to move my carreer is important and there are few people willing to do it.

The conference wrapped up at 4PM, and we started pulling down the booths. It was nice of the Colorado Conference Center to turn down the lights to a “twilight level” before they had even delivered our boxes to pack up the big monitor and stand. Yeah. That will make us get it done faster — in the dark.

Walked around 16th street and grabbed dinner afterwards, then called Andrew and packed in the evening.

Denver AAS – Day 3

Even less excitement than Day 1. In fact, the only thing I actually remember about the day is going to the Corner Bakery for lunch. Oh, and I’m currently drinking a regular (i.e. non-diet) Dr. Pepper, and I’m ready to start crawling up the walls. No more sugared pop for me!

Later: Grabbed dinner with JD at a bar on 16th. Not bad — though I was really bad and had dessert (cheesecake buritos). Called Andrew and finished Stiff by Mary Roach.

Denver AAS – Day 2

I’ve decided that conference exhibit halls have time eddies, and our booth is caught in a large unyielding one.

Notes on the day:

• Perhaps the big news was that Sean O’Keefe, the NASA administrator was at the meeting to give a speech. Before the speech, he came through the exhibit hall and stopped at several booths. He stopped at ours, and was introduced to Kim. They chatted for just a minute, and I stopped paying attention, which was the moment that he was about to move on, but stopped and extended his hand for me. Oops. I looked like a total idiot. Oh well.
• I wasn’t able to go to his speech — we went to lunch to be on hand for the booth after his speech. However, the buzz was that the speech was heartening. He emphasised that NASA is still going to have a strong space sciences program; that just because the exploration push has come about that it doesn’t mean the end of the other scientific endeavors of NASA. He also did mention Constellation-X by name just after talking about the current missions and before going through a laundry list of other upcoming missions. Kim was happy that he did that, and hoped that it meant something good about our prospects.
• I’m continually surprised by the fashion sense of scientists. I’m not exactly a fashion-conscious person, but I at least try to wear things that match and don’t make me look too bad. A few examples:
  • On days that people present posters, they generally try to dress up. That’s fairly easy for the men. However, some of the women choose to wear dresses or skirts — these are women who have probably not worn a dress or a skirt since their parents dragged them to church in high school. In fact, I think that many of them are wearing the very same skirts or dresses that they were dragged to church wearing.
  • There’s a guy I’ve named “capri boy” walking around the posters all afternoon. He’s wearing khaki colored pants that stopped just below his knee. They are like capri pants, but on a guy. Now, I’ll conceed that he is a tall man, but this was beyond “floods”, beyond the inability to find pants that were long enough.
• At lunch, JD and I walked down to Sonic. The highlight was my strawberry squishy. Yum. I miss Sonic squishies.

After the meeting, JD, Stef, Doug and I went down to the Tattered Cover bookstore on 16th. I bought a few books, a copy of Skeptical Inquirer magazine and bookplates.

Stopped at Subway on the way back to my hotel room, where I kicked back and watched Down With Love on HBO.

Grad Life: The Target Incident

The “Target Incident” is perhaps my quintessential grad school money experience. I’ll start by detailing my monthly budget — this will highlight why money was my constant concern (making it difficult to to concentrate on other things).

In New Mexico, I lived in a three-bedroom house, ostensibly with two roommates — one person for each room. However, both of my roommates had significant others who essentially lived with us, and the brother of the primary renter came down to live with us during the week (he lived and worked in Albuquerque on the weekends). So, in reality there were about six people living in the house at most times. I was tired of living with people.

When I moved to Maryland, I decided that I would get a place on my own. Afterall, I was 27 and it seemed time to try my hand at being alone (well, alone with my two cats). Also, since I had two cats, I wanted a one bedroom apartment rather than an efficiency, so the cats would have some room.

The rent for my apartment was $635 per month. My take-home pay from my fellowship was about $1000 per month. That left $365 to live on. Oh, but I needed to pay out $125 to my credit cards just to cover the finance charges. And I had the $50 phone bill, a $45 cable bill (that was probably a mistake), and $20 to keep gas in my car. That left $125 for everything else — cat food and litter, groceries, necessary-items, and any surprises that might come up. Needless to say, the budget was a bit stretched.

So, one December I found myself at Target picking up essentials — cat food and litter, toothpaste, toilet paper, deoderant, tampons, contact juice, and paper towels.

On my way around the back of the store, I saw a display of Christmas table clothes. I stopped to see what they had, and found the cutest vinyl cloth I’ve ever seen. It had little santas, angels, candy canes and reindeer on a green background. I think it was the reindeer that did it for me — I love reindeer decorations. I so wanted that table cloth. I knew that I couldn’t afford it, but decided to look at the price anyway.

$2.99.

Less that $3. I sat and debated for a bit. I looked at the contents of my cart, and thought about the money I had in the bank and the one measly paycheck I’d be getting before my trip home. That paycheck had to pay a few bills as well as a few meals out when I went to visit friends in Minnesota. Plus I’d already decided that I couldn’t get a Toys-For-Tots toy. Nor could I get the cats any Christmas presents. There was no way I could justify a $3 table cloth for myself.

But it was only $3. My god, how could I not find $3 in the budget.

I debated internally for several minutes before replacing the table cloth on the display and hurrying to the checkout. $3. I was nearly in tears as I checked out and brought my purchases to the car.

I realize, and even at the time I realized, that it was a silly thing to get upset over. But to not be able to pull even $3 out of the budget seemed a ridiculous and depressing thing.

The story does have a happy ending, though. I happened to talk with my Mom the next day (or maybe later that evening), and I mentioned the incident, trying to make it humorous but not succeeding. She ended up telling my Dad, and he Fed-Exed me a check for $50, telling me to just have fun with it. I bought my Toys-For-Tots toy. I bought the cats a new round “cave.” And, yes, I bought that $3 table cloth, which I displayed until I got rid of my round kitchen table two years ago.

^* Some people might not worry too much about a Toys-For-Tots toy, but I had a nephew who died from SIDS at 4 months 21 day old. Since we lost him, I have been buying toys for TFT each year for a boy who would have been Tyler’s age that year. It’s my way of honoring his memory and hopefully bringing a little joy to a child.

Grad Life: Intro

For the past several years, I’ve looked at myself as a recovering grad student. While I am a grad student again, the situation is quite different from my life of 1998-2000, and I don’t think that any further damage is being done by my half-time status.

Somehow, during those years, I lost parts of myself that I really liked and respected. By 2000 I had become more relcusive and shy that I was when I started grad school. I also found that while I was a strong student, in my personal life I became less independent — I no longer enjoyed doing anything outside my apartment by myself. I wouldn’t just go off to a play I wanted to see even if I couldn’t find a friend to go with me. I wouldn’t try a new restaurant if it meant I had to go alone. Pre-1998 I would do that.

Part of my recovery process has been to document both the good and the bad parts, and hopefully in the process I’ll recover part of what I feel I lost during those years. So far I’ve been doing this in a paper journal, but I’ve been lax about writing, so I hope that doing it here will encourage me to write more and more often.