Monthly Archives: August 2014

U is for ulcers… and other things that maybe aren’t completely your fault.

The letter U has been bugging me and over the last several days, I have written and then deleted thousands of words about all sorts of things. The unexpected was a good thought, but I really already hammered that point home when I first started writing last fall. Ululation is what came to mind when I made my initial list, but pretty much all I had to say about that was, “Dang, that’s an excellent way to express strong emotions. Like the whistle on a tea kettle… got to have a way to release the steam…” and then I realized I’d pretty much already done that before, too.  And I had already written about Unicorns back in January. Too bad, too, because I feel like I could have gone the Voldemort direction with that…

But then last night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, the story of Nobel Laureates Robin Warren and Barry Marshall popped into my head. (And then I emailed myself a sleepy and disjointed message that I’m now trying to decipher…) Warren and Marshall won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2005 for demonstrating that peptic ulcers, previously attributed to type A personalities and high levels of stress, were actually an infectious disease resulting from gastric colonization with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. (So… you count sheep, I count microorganisms. It’s whatever.)

I thought about those ulcers and I thought about all those people for all those years who felt so sick and then felt even worse because they thought it was their own fault– if only I could calm down! Relax a bit! Then I would get better.

Turns out, a prolonged course of antibiotics probably would have been about the only thing to do the trick. I wonder how that felt– good to know it wasn’t your own fault? Sucky that you felt like it was for so long?

And yet, ulcer sufferers aren’t the only group of patients to have blame placed squarely on their own shoulders. Many other disease sufferers are seen the same way– tummy troubles? Unless you can get a diagnosis of Crohn’s or celiac disease, you end up in the IBS catchall and if you could just eat better, reduce your stress, whatever, you’d be fine. Mental illness too… unless you’ve suffered from one, there’s just no way to know what it’s like and we have very little understanding of why. But truly, I can imagine nothing worse than fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome or any other number of exceptionally difficult to diagnose autoimmune and rheumatological disorders… throw in the fact that women are much more likely to suffer than men and we recognize quickly why the term “hysterectomy” was coined (because women needed all their lady bits removed to cure hysteria…. I’m not even kidding… feel free to rage, I’ll wait…).

 

Once upon a time, Antonie van Leeweunhoek looked through his homegrown microscope to observe what he called “animalcules” that later proved to be the agent of infectious disease. (Note: I really liked the book Microbe Hunters. It’s an over-dramatized, yet accurate, story of the history of microbiology and very engrossing if you’re into that sort of thing.) Eventually, we as a society stopped believing in humors, airs, and miasmas and started recognizing the reality that was contagion. Today, researchers work tirelessly to investigate pathways of cause and effect; to uncover the mechanism behind the diseases we still don’t understand. And someday, I have to believe the blame will end up in the right place… that is to say, off the sufferer’s shoulders.

But what about societal ailments?

Those are a little tougher… tougher to recognize. Tougher to understand. Tougher to cure.

What do I mean by societal ailments?

Things like obesity and fat-shaming.

Things like racial intolerance and categorizing young black men as thugs.

Things like blaming a woman for her own rape because of the clothes she was wearing.

Things like assuming homelessness is self-inflicted.

These things have causes too. Some personal, most not. Personal accountability is important, of course, but ultimately, the causes are insanely complex. Insidious. Difficult to pinpoint and even more difficult to comprehend.

I have, of course, a million thoughts on the above examples. I’m sure you do too. The point I think it’s really important to make here, though, is that all of these things are a little more like ulcers than we may realize.

You see, even the cause and effect of H. pylori infection and gastric ulcer is subject to mitigating circumstances. Approximately 80% of the world is estimated to be colonized by H. pylori, yet far fewer people than that actually ever have overt symptoms of disease, be it gastritis, ulcer, or cancer. Many other factors play a role, things we still don’t completely understand (although, guys, my friend, Dr. Jones from Indiana (I am not even kidding!) made major strides in figuring out some of those factors).

{I got some images from here and here... but I assure you, this composite did not exist until now.}
{I got some images from here and here… but I assure you, this composite did not exist until now. You believe me, right?}

We can’t control the world we grow up in anymore than we can control the microorganisms that colonize our body or the genes our cells express. So maybe, just maybe, we can stop blaming each other… stop blaming ourselves for every little thing, and look to the humble ulcer as an example of why.

 

This should have been the first thing I said, but dang: NERD ALERT!!!

T is for Truth and t is for truth.

My drumline instructor when I was a freshman in high school once told us a really terrible joke about tuning piccolos (the extremely high-pitched mini-flute-like instrument absolutely essential to any John Philip Sousa march). I don’t remember it exactly, but it went something like this…

Q: How do you tune two piccolos?

A: Shoot one of them.

I told you it was horrible.

Yet, I was reminded of that punch line when I found myself facing this similarly challenging question yesterday afternoon…

Q: How do you get two biostatisticians to agree on an analytical approach?

The punch line has got to be similar.

Statisticians never agree.

Never.

Except there’s a difference. Bring a person with perfect pitch into the room (perfect pitch is an amazing and rare gift– I’m pretty sure Kevin from the LHS drumline, the guy who we called upon to tune our timpanis, had it. Absolutely amazing.) and you’ll be able to figure out which piccolo is hitting the right note and which one needs to adjust. That’s a Truth. In contrast, in biostatistics, there are many different ways to come to an answer and determining which way is the right way is really just a matter of opinion. Each approach may seem like an obvious Truth to the statistician that espouses it, yet both approaches are actually truths.

See the difference? The big T versus the little?

There are, in my mind, two different kinds of truth: Truth and truth. As a scientist, my tendency is to think of them in terms of a law (Truth) and a theory (truth). A Truth is a fact, a thing that is undeniable. Gravity is a law, it’s a fact, it’s a Truth. That gravity has an abnormally strong effect on me, thus explaining my general tendency toward clumsiness? That’s a truth. The truth can be different for you and me. The Truth cannot.

Like the word innocence for the letter I, the notion of truth keeps popping up over and over again in my life just as I hit the letter T. So it must be the word. (It was going to be Toot Sweets and Truly Scrumptious because I love Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, but Truth/truth gets a little deeper– so let’s go with that instead.)

Things that can feel very Truthy for me might not be even close for you. Take the Oxford comma, for example. (Are you into nerdy things like grammar? If so, I highly recommend you click on that Oxford comma link– it’s an amazing infographic entitled “The Oxford comma: Decried, defended, and debated” from Holy Kaw and I love it!) I have strong, personal feelings about the Oxford comma and will use it always, but there are two different opinions on that point and Oxford comma yes or no– either way is technically correct. Therefore, your own personal thoughts about the Oxford comma are just a truth. Not a Truth.

QED. (I was proving to you that the notions of law and theory, Truth and truth, don’t always have to be applied in a purely scientific capacity. I should have made that clearer from the get go. But now I’ve proven it and I’m not going back to re-write.)

I’m currently listening to the Audible version of the second book in the Divergent series. So intense! So good so far! Most recently, Tris and Four (pardon me, Tobias) were interrogated by the Candor faction (which for those of you not in the know, values honesty above all else) under truth serum. They were unable to lie and both were forced to admit some hard truths– big, important, sensitive, and personal truths. After each confession, the interrogator would be joined by  everyone in the group for a chorus of the phrase “Thank you for your honesty.”

I liked that. That’s a good response to a personal truth, whether you agree or not. Whether it’s Truth or not. It’s respectful and neutral. Granted, it would probably be an awkward conversational moment if the exact phrase was actually used in real life (e.g. You: “My pants are too tight.” Me: “Thank you for your honesty.”), but I do think the notion of appreciating someone else’s honesty is a good one. A very good one. (Perhaps a better way to neutrally appreciate such a statement would be, “I’m sorry you feel uncomfortable.” But I’m an apologizer… so… you could probably come up with something better. You get the idea, anyway.)

As I thought about the concept of Truth vs. truth and my truth vs. your truth, I realized how important it is for me to always remember that there is a difference. It’s important from the perspective of sharing my truth and accepting the truth of others.

When I share my truths, I have to phrase them as such– I need to start with a phrase that lets the other person know that this is what I believe to be true, but that it doesn’t have to be their truth, because it’s not necessarily the Truth, no matter how correct it feels to me. Similarly, when someone shares their truth with me, even if they are certain it is the Truth, I have to remember that it’s ok to have a difference of opinion.

There are a lot of things we talk about where this distinction is important.

Robin Williams is gone and he took his own life. That is the Truth.

Why he did it, what it means, what can be done in the wake of this tragedy– we all have a different truth about that. I don’t know anyone in my generation who isn’t touched by this tragedy… and that it is a tragedy, I think that is a Truth.

Depression is like that though. It’s divisive because that things are bad feels so incredibly true for the person who suffers, regardless of how things look on the outside. Of how things Truly are. You cannot tell a person at the bottom of that pit that the pit doesn’t exist because to them, it is all they can see. The successful career and the happy appearance are True, but depression is a truth it’s hard to see as anything less than Truth for the sufferer. I promise.

Nearly two years ago now, Sister Doctor was rotating through psychiatry as part of her third year medical school rotations. During that rotation, she came into contact with an elderly woman who was hospitalized for severe depression and suicidal ideation. She did not want to live. The woman touched Sister Doctor pretty profoundly, whether Sister Doctor realized it or not, and the way she spoke to me about it after the encounter struck me as particularly beautiful.

The woman had tried, in vain, to explain to someone who had never experienced depression herself what it was like and ended with a statement acknowledging the fact that without personal experience, it is not something that can be understood.

I can’t be certain, but I think that most medical students, most people for that matter, would have launched into an explanation of biochemistry and book learning and medical diagnostic criteria that would effectively minimize their own feelings of inadequacy.

Sister Doctor did not.

What she said to me was that she really wished she could spend an hour inside that woman’s head… to really know what it felt like, because the woman was right, she had no idea what depression felt like and couldn’t relate.

Wow.

What if all doctors thought that way? What if all people thought that way? What if when someone shared a truth with us that doesn’t match our own truth we said, “I wish I could understand what it is like to be you in this moment…” “Thank you for your honesty…” ???

Depression is like that.

Chronic, undiagnosable  illnesses are like that.

The truth, with a little t, is like that.

S is for my Seth.

Tonight after work, I was in the kitchen canning some pickles (that’s a brag) and Seth was working on hanging up a brand new spice rack for me inside one of the kitchen cabinets. It seemed to fit, but it shouldn’t have– according to his measurements. He couldn’t figure it out. So I said, “Perhaps we’re not really muggles after all!”

He didn’t even bat an eye.

True, Seth vetoed the idea of having boy-girl twins and naming them Luna and Ron… but he doesn’t really seem to mind the Harry Potter stuff too much otherwise. And doesn’t even question me when I use references in every day conversation. (Conversations or tasks. I’m not going to lie, sometimes I try to use spells.)

Clearly, Seth is my soulmate.

 

Today, August 6th, is Seth and my third marriage anniversary. I can’t even tell you how excited I was when I realized that both August 6th and the letter S were approaching– perfection! So this post and the letter S are dedicated to my darling Sethy Stankowski (see how I just outsmarted The Google right there? I hope so anyway… he probably has more impressive credentials out there on the interwebs than a gushy blog post).

Seth and I met at RA training at Michigan Tech in the summer of 2002. I was immediately smitten with him, despite the Kermit and Piggy-ness of it all…

We were babies... babies at a Packer game <3
We were babies… babies at a Packer game <3

I was 18, Seth was 21, and here we are, nearly 12 years later, celebrating our third marriage anniversary. Our life isn’t the life I had planned for myself before I ever met Seth, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t want it any other way. I love that Seth and I share so much of our life stories. At this point, we’ve practically grown up together… we’re completely different people than we were when we first met, but still just right for each other. We’re balanced. We’re ridiculous. We’re very, very good <3

 

In 2002, before things were actually serious, everything seemed so overly serious. Thanksgiving break of that year (it’s a whole week long at Michigan Tech to account for the long drives and unavoidable bad weather) was basically traumatic. I’m embarrassed to admit it now, but I definitely cried through most of the UP on my way home and getting back to Seth was all that mattered. These days, when things actually are serious (as in we’re married and own a house and have real jobs and a pup to take care of), a week apart can be nice sometimes… for both of us. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all of that. We both travel for work on occasion, Seth more frequently than me, and as exhausting as traveling for work can be, it never feels quite so bad. (Except when Seth is in Miami in January and I’m busy bundling up and shoveling snow in Wisconsin. Then it feels quite bad.) You know the song Home by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros? Well, I only knew it by the lyrics until 30 seconds ago and I had to Google it to tell you about it… anyway, that line:

Home! Let me go home! Home is wherever I’m with you!

Seth makes me really get that. He is my home. Oh look… they make printables. Going to need one of those.

{Source}
{Source}

Despite being together for such a long time, I still have no problem gushing about Seth. And I do mean gushing. I love him so fiercely, so completely, and in such a way that even his little weirdnesses are adorable to me– the socks between the toes, the general dislike for pants, the obsession with all modes of mechanical flight (e.g. helicopters, airplanes, the cars that will someday fly).

But the weirdnesses aren’t what’s really up. Seth is hard working, crazy intelligent, sharply funny, extremely kind and generous, and humble to a fault (except when it comes to being better than me, and to be perfectly honest, that’s a good thing for my big head).

 

I was kind of stuck about what exactly to say next. What to tell you about the amazing man I married. I thought about telling you about how he helps all of our elderly neighbors with their technology, odd jobs, and shoveling (he’s literally the youngest in our corner of the neighborhood by 50 – 60 years… lit-er-all-y). Or maybe about how he loves on our pup and it’s just the sweetest and cutest thing in the world. Alternatively, I could wow you with tales of the crazy handiness he’s capable of– I’m so impressed with everything he’s done to our house to make us warmer, safer, more efficient, and extremely tech savvy and future proofed (love that phrase– future proof). But as I was writing this, my Pandora flipped to the Mamas and the Papas singing Dream a Little Dream of Me (it’s my She & Him station– so good). I love this song, every version of it, but given that I was going gaga over Seth at the moment, this line really struck me…

Stars fading, but I linger on dear– still craving your kiss.

And it reminded me of the very, very beginning. Back when we were so new and I was so nervous. Our first real dates, just the two of us, were at night, under the stars.

On our first date, we drove all the way to the Paulding Light an hour and a half from campus– somehow he already knew I was in love with ghosts! I was so nervous about driving so far with such a quiet guy, but he really surprised me. He actually sang in the car! My friends assured me that I didn’t have to lie about it when we got back– they could not believe I was telling the truth. We saw the light that night, it was amazing.

On our second date, we took a trip out to Misery Bay toward Ontonogan and laid on the beach to see the northern lights. They were all around us, swirling and twirling and twinkling, and it was like being in a planetarium, only real. It was amazing. An absolutely amazing night. I’ve seen the northern lights several times, but never like I saw them that night. I loved Seth even then.

A few nights later, we ventured out to Boston Pond just north of Houghton to star gaze… and again, it was amazing. We stood shivering against Seth’s truck and he asked me how long it took me to make each one of my curls every morning. It was the cutest, the sweetest, the most endearing thing he could have said. I have the biggest smile even just thinking of it.

Paulding Light for a haunting, Misery Bay for the northern lights all around us, Boston Pond for a celestial star show… and 12 years later, a cozy home in Marshfield with the person who inhabits half of my heart. Stars fading, still lingering…

Photo Credit: Lindsey Marie Photography
Photo Credit: Lindsey Marie Photography

 

PS: Being the dedicated Wisconsin-ite that he is, Seth’s pals have (I assume affectionately) dubbed him “Cheesecurd”… in which case, I am clearly a freaking cheese factory because I can’t stop being such a sappy, cheesy, sentimental nerd! But for realsies, I love my husband, and I’m cool with you knowing it– knowing it so hard it makes you roll your eyes, groan, and shake your head at me all at once!

R is for rocks.

My mom is a teacher. A conservative estimate suggests that approximately 37.2% of my weirdness can be explained by that fact.

One of my favorite “games” (games in the way that a graham cracker is a “cookie”) when I was little went something like this…

My mom: “lamp… table… chair…”

Me (with excitement): “chair! lamp! table!”

Alphabetizing. Super cool.

For real, I loved it though.

As much as I loved alphabetizing my mom’s little lists of words, my favorite thing to alphabetize was my set of rocks and minerals flash cards.

Nerdiest sentence ever written? Maybe…

And why did I have rocks and minerals flash cards? Mom?

But to me? Rocks are crazy cool. I’ve loved them for as long as I can remember and I’ve carried the mason jar full of my most treasured rocks around with me as I moved from Ypsilanti to Houghton to Hancock to Bethesda to Silver Spring to Rockville to Marshfield… all over the dang place, because I just love them all so much.

The mason jar full of rocks. (The second one-- I broke the first by allowing a baby to play with it. Poor decision.)
The mason jar full of rocks. (The second one– I broke the first by allowing a baby to play with it. Poor decision.)

(Btw, I was storing things in mason jars before it was cool. I’m a total mason jar hipster.)

Each rock is special for a different reason too. Each one has a memory. Each one serves as a touchstone.

My grandparents brought me lava rocks (two different kinds!), pumice, and coral from Hawaii when they went to visit my aunt who lives there. At the time, I could imagine no place more exotic. And rocks that came straight from a volcano?! Too cool!

Yes, that's Curly's nose. She shares her mom's enthusiasm for rocks and I couldn't get her away from the lava rocks!
Yes, that’s Curly’s nose. She shares her mom’s enthusiasm for rocks and I couldn’t get her away from the lava rocks!

My Grandpa John even stopped one time while driving through the Appalachian Mountains to pick up a rock for me. He knew I’d never been there and thought I’d want a piece. He was right; I still have it, even though I have been there myself now. The strong silent type with a heart of gold, my grandpa. He always knew how to make me crazy happy!

My dad brought this polished heart back from Connecticut when he was there on business. I loved so much that the natural features of the stone made in incomplete, yet still so perfect. I remember thinking that it was absolutely genius to carve the heart so that it would have a natural hole at the bottom. I don’t know why. Abby’s heart was perfect, but I liked mine so much better (no offense, Ab, I’m sure you loved yours too… mine was just better). See:

All the way from a Connecticut airport!!
All the way from a Connecticut airport!!

My Aunt Patty and Uncle Phil brought me a piece of mica back from Georgia. Natural glitter?! Too cool! And hematite is so cool and smooth… it always reminds me of putting my face against my mom’s arm. It reminds me of her jewelry.

Hematitie (left), mica (right)
Hematitie (left), mica (right)

I found this peacock ore myself on the shore of lake superior. I learned more about minerals after that… and more about iron and copper mining in the UP. Fascinating.

I found a cool rock, I busted it open-- peacock ore inside! Score!
I found a cool rock, I busted it open– peacock ore inside! Score!

Rocks from lakes, big and small. Rocks I saved up to buy with my baby sitting money from Natural Wonders (my favorite ever store in the Briarwood Mall). Rocks that looked neat and smelled funny (I had an exquisite sulfur specimen that I couldn’t justify bringing to college with me and likely still resides in my parents’ basement). Rocks that I convinced myself were fossils and some that really were. And so on and so forth. Rock after rock.

It is going to take me FOR-EV-ER to get these back in the jar just so... worth it for the photo. And to inspect each one again for the first time in a long time. They never get old.
It is going to take me FOR-EV-ER to get these back in the jar just so… worth it for the photo. And to inspect each one again for the first time in a long time. They never get old.

I like the way they look. I like the way they feel. I like the way they smell. I like the way an unpolished rock completely changes if you get it wet. I like that there might be a surprise (an ore! a fossil! an agate!) on the inside. I like that they just exist that way… through natural processes of the earth, through amazing series of coincidences of chemistry and pressure and temperature and time. One individual rock is like one individual life. Unique. Special. Worth knowing and remembering.

Sometimes I’ve thought that maybe I should have been a geologist– or at least taken Rocks for Jocks in college. But I’m not, and I didn’t. So it’s just a little hobby.

These days, when I watch my niece Emma pick up and carry around hand fulls of rocks, berries, pine cones, twigs, leaves, and flowers, I am reminded of how much I have always loved such things… and how much I still do. Something about the symbols of the outdoors are so enjoyable to me and I feel inspired to bring them into my house. Jars of rocks, buckets of sea shells, frames full of branches, and prints of leaves. A little throwback to the naturalist child that I was and jars full of memories– my own and others. The sea shells are from my grandma, and she and her mother collected them over many, many years. The branches were from someone else’s birch tree, left at compost just for me to find. I pressed the leaves from plants in my year and spray painted their silhouettes onto canvas. And the rocks are, as I described, many storied. And it always comes back to the rocks.

A friend of mine from Michigan Tech (we worked in the Writing Center together) posted a picture of the rocks in Lake Superior relatively recently and I was absolutely enamored. I mean, look at this:

Photo Credit: Angela Badke
Photo Credit: Angela Badke (amazing, right???)

Who needs the teeny tiny sand and salty water of so many beaches when you can find beauty like this on the shores of Lake Superior? Just gorgeous. Just rocks.

 

When I was in Arizona in the spring, I went on a guided tour of the Desert Botanical Garden and learned a ton about desert flora and fauna and was especially fascinated by all of the cactus facts. The tour guide kept quoting ages of certain cacti, though, and I wondered how exactly you could tell the age of a cactus since they don’t have rings like trees. I (nervously and nerdily) asked the question, and the Seth Rogen look-alike tour guide explained that it’s all through observation. Expert naturalists spent tens, even hundreds of years, multiple dedicated lifetimes, observing the natural history of so many different cactus species for the sake of knowledge. Not because the cacti change anything, not because they serve as medicine or fuel or food or anything like that, but just because they’re interesting. Naturalism at its finest, perhaps? I think I’ll do the same of rocks… just sit back and enjoy the beauty.