gall stones

So, I have gall stones and the recommendation is to have my gall bladder removed. The consult w/ surgery is in Dec., first available. So inbetween I just hope I don't have any more attacks. Surgery is apparently a small affair just an overnight so I guess we'll see.

I feel good though so that is great! It is has been a good week thus far, Happy Halloween!

Alive

Yikes I can't believe it is the end of October already, where has all the time gone?

I haven't been writing because I've been sick. I had a great conference with a good presentation, meetings etc. And I got to go to the cool aquarium w/ my nephew. Spending time with family is wonderful and we got to go to a kick ass concert too! In an outside amphitheater with tables where you could eat and enjoy a glass of wine. I got to have John Mayer play live while I relaxed and drank. How great is that?

Then I got home and had a gall bladder attack. Not so pleasant. If you have intense and I mean intense pain in your chest, under your ribs, like something might explode out of you... and you are puking from the pain and then rolling on the floor in agony, it may be your unhappy gall bladder! Not thought of often, working with your liver, contracting after you eat, fairly innocuous, until it strikes! I am still waiting to find out if I have gall stones, but that may have been the trigger. I pretty much rested all last week. The first couple of days, walking or jostling of any kind (rolling over) caused extreme pain and nausea. Breathing too deep, same thing. Thus I basically ate about 4 crackers and a banana a day. I feel good now though :) So I am very happy. I think my stone may have left me... adios buster! And I lost 7 pounds! That is the most I've lost in a long, long time so I'm very happy about that too. E says the weight will probably come back when I eat again... but for the moment it was nice.

Today I'm back in lab, where I found a mess awaiting me. The charts were filled out improperly, the treat bin was left empty, the counters were sticky... I mean I wasn't gone that long people!

ready to go

Yay! Today I'm flying to the big conference and as a bonus I get to stay w/ my sister and my two nephews. Plus I got the authorship on the poster (of which I helped with) so that is great too.

why are there always politics?

So I asked my PI if she would add me as an author to a poster that I did work for, but which she and my lab mate forgot to put me on when they submitted the abstract. Technically that isn't allowed because I won't show up in the program, and for the big conference we go to I wouldn't really care. Except we also go to a small satelite where I might actually find a post doc job someday or at least make connections that could really help me out. And this is the first time our lab has brought something to this small satelite conference so I don't want to the the one person without anything. My poster is on different stuff and wasn't appropriate to submit to the satelite so it will just be at the big conference. Anyway she didn't really give me a straight answer so I will ask to see the poster before it gets printed just in case!

Aside from that, my poster is a collaborative effort and that lab randomly emailed me and said I should get my poster printed to match their lab format (which happen to have unattractive color schemes--oh my eyes!) Which at first glance seems appropriate as we are all presenting in a row at the conference, however it will also look like their lab has bucco posters, while my lab will not be as well represented. Is this subconsciously done so that their lab looks fantastic? My PI has had some struggles so she didn't want me to do it. This puts me in the middle. I don' t want to seem ungreatful, I don't want to piss off the other PI, but I do like my poster the way it is too. What woud you do?

late night

It is about 12:20 at night and I'm headed home right after this. I stayed late to work on this poster for an upcoming conference. I thought I had until next Monday, but then I heard (around 5 pm) one of the co-authors will be out of town this Thursday, so I needed to send a copy of it to him tommorrow... I had only done my intro and methods as I was still re-analyzing some data today. I finished that and made about 9 graphs for the poster, plus wrote summary result statements. I still need to go over the conclusions and enter my citations but I'm a lot closer than I was. Ahhh, I forgot I didn't finish reading for class tommorrow either, and I need to email the prof. but that will have to wait, I'm a bit fried now. Although I feel really good, my eyes are just dry. It is sort of fun sometimes to work late. Although E called me around 9:30 saying what are you doing? He had an exam tonight so I figured he wouldn't even be home until then, but he got home an hour earlier and was waiting for me to go eat at the bar w/ half price wine bottles tonight.... bummer!