One Word Turn-Offs

I realized today, as I flipped through profiles on the online dating site where I am a  member, that I cannot date someone who is unable to spell everyday words correctly. Here is why.

I completely believe in putting your best foot forward. For example, if you have a job (or medical school) interview, you wear an appropriate suit. Not flip-flops, not Bermuda shorts, not a T-shirt. In the online dating world, this means writing a good profile. And by "good" I don't mean Pulitzer Prize-winning writing. I mean something honest, sincere, maybe with a little humor, if that fits your style. But it also means, in my book, spelling things right. If you don't, that suggests one of three things to me:

1) You are lazy

2) You are unprofessional

3) You are uneducated

Or at the worst, perhaps all three. And pardon me if I don't want to be with a guy who is uneducated, unprofessional, and lazy. My standards are a little higher than that at this point in my life. 

As I said, I'm not looking for amazing writing. This has nothing to do whatsoever with content (I won't get into that). But sloppiness, when it comes to language, makes me cringe. Fine examples that I found today (and just today!) include:

- One guy spelled "Chicago" wrong. No, I'm not kidding. I wish I were.

- When he meant to talk about his "role" model, another guy used the word "roll." I realize that homophones (words that have the same pronunciation, but different meanings) can be confusing. But "role model" is a pretty commonly used phrase.

- One profile question asks what you are looking for in a partner. One guy mentioned that he wanted somone funny and "quick whited." I'm pretty sure he wasn't talking about bleached blond hair here ... or was he?

I know this doesn't bother everyone, but words, as well as how people use (or abuse) them, matter to me. And I'm looking for someone who understands that, at least on a basic level.

My First Research Symposium

One thing I have learned about "being" in science is that it involves poster presentations. Some people like them, some people hate them, but they are a part of the job. I saw my mentor and supervisor at UIC, Olga, make several posters (to present at various conferences) while I was working there. And for the Drosophila genetics conference, Dr. Kreher made one as well (which I wrote about earlier, and which included me as a secondary author!). 

Today, I will present my first and very own poster at Dominican University's "Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Investigations Expo" ("URSCI" for short). This is an annual event at Dominican, where students from across different disciplines present their research work through both presentations and posters. For the poster portion, which is what I am doing, you have a designated time that you are supposed to stand by your poster and explain it / answer questions about it to anyone who is interested. While this might make some people nervous, I am really excited about the opportunity. I love talking about science (obviously), and I am also adept at explaining it in more basic language for people who might not be familiar with the concepts or procedures. That is one thing I learned well in journalism - you have to know your audience. So I know how to tailor my explanation, based on the people with whom I am talking.

The title of my poster is "Antibiotic Resistance of E. coli to Rifampicin and the Mutagenic Effects of Caffeine." The work stems from a project I did in my Research Methods in Molecular Biology class, which I took last spring with Dr. Kreher. (I am currently working in his genetics lab with the fruit fly larvae.) 

It was a fascinating project, and it had two components. As a class, we reproduced the experiments done in the late 1980s by two researches, Jin and Gross. They investigated how E. coli develop antibiotic resistance to a drug called rifampicin, which is used for tuberculosis. Based on their research, and previous work, they determined that rifampicin inhibits the bacteria's RNA polymerase (which is what transcribes mRNA, which is later used to synthesize proteins). That's bad for the bacteria, because without the necessary cellular proteins, the bacteria will die. But Jin and Gross also discovered that the bacteria can develop, at a particular rate, specific mutations in the gene (rpoB) encoding for a particular subunit of its RNA polymerase. These mutations allow the bacteria to survive treatment with rifampicin. 

We repeated Jin and Gross's experiments, growing E. coli on agar plates containing rifampicin (as well as another antibiotic, carbenicillin, to which our bacteria had been engineered with a resistance gene, so that only the bacteria we were studying would grow - no random bacteria from the environement would grow, because the carbenicillin would kill it). We were able to generate resistant bacterial colonies as well, and sequenced their DNA. In comparing the sequenced DNA to the wild-type rpoB (RNA polymerase) gene, we found some of the same nucleotide mutations as Jin and Gross, as well as a couple of mutations that were unique to our experiments.

The second part of the project was to choose a substance - any substance within reason, that could be procured at a store or from a chemical supply company - and see how that affected the mutation rate. Each student (there were eight of us in the class) had to choose something different. I chose to work with caffeine, which is a suspected mutagen, based on some scientific literature that I found. So my hypothesis was that treating the bacteria with caffeine would increase the rate of mutation, and hence the rate of antibiotic resistance. I tested two concentrations of caffeine, 1 mg/mL and 3 mg/mL. What I found was very interesting - not only did the caffeine fail to increase the mutation rate, it actually (especially at the higher concentration) killed much of the E. coli! So I did some more literature research, and found that caffeine has been shown to also have an antimicrobial effect on E. coli. Who would've thought?! 

I absolutely love science. You don't always get what you expect, in terms of results (I certainly didn't), but you usually learn something. And that's the point: discovery.

Adventures in eDating

For a long time, I've been skeptical of online dating. Even though one of my cousins met her husband that way, it just seemed weird to me. If I am a relatively attractive, relatively sane, relatively intelligent person, shouldn't I be able to meet someone like-minded the old-fashioned way? In person, that is? Well, that doesn't seem to be working. Especially since I'm at school most of the time, surrounded by undergraduate students who could practically be my children. (Not quite, but you get the idea.) So I've decided to give the online dating thing a go. It's been ... well ... interesting. Let me explain.

I've had two dates so far, both of which were with guys who seemed pretty normal during our messaging and phone conversations. But during the first date, it seemed as though we spent half the time talking about this guy's two greyhound dogs, and the other half talking about Renaissance literature. Especially Shakespeare. Now, don't get me wrong. I like Shakespeare, probably more than the average person. Having been a high school literature textbook editor, I even worked on the lesson for Macbeth back when I was at McGraw-Hill. So I'm also probably more knowledgeable about Shakespeare than the average person. But that's not what I want to talk about -- for the majority of the time -- on a first date! So that was a "no."

While that first date was simply dull, the second was simply disastrous. Again, it appeared that this guy and I had quite a few things in common, and our online messages and texts had gone well. So we agreed to meet at a hip taco place for lunch last weekend. He arrived a few mintues before I did (I had trouble finding parking), so he texted me that he'd found us a table. When I got to the restaurant, I looked around for a single guy sitting at a table. I didn't see any. So I texted him back, asking where he was sitting. Then I saw a guy stand up, and I recognized him from his photos. And I looked at where he is sitting. Seated next to him were a little boy and another guy! (His son and his best friend.) I froze for a second. I don't know if my mouth literally dropped, but it just might well have. Now, answer me this: Who brings their elementary-school-age son, and their best guy friend, on a FIRST date? Bad form, and seriously bad parenting. Bringing your kid on a date like that is putting him through Internet dating, too, which can be traumatic. I'm not a parent, but if I were, I wouldn't introduce my child to someone until I had established a stable relationship with him. And another bad sign: this guy was missing one of his canine teeth. I don't consider myself a superficial person, but c'mon! Modern dentistry has come a loooong way in the last 100 years, so get it fixed, man! That's simply not attractive, and does not exactly make a good first impression. So again, a "no." 

But I'm not losing hope. There are many fish in the Chicago sea (er, lake?), so anything could happen ...

Shadowing: Open Heart Surgery

Yesterday, I shadowed an anesthesiologist friend of mine. I had shadowed him before, and seen some amazing procedures, both in terms of the anesthesiology and the surgery. But this time was the best by far. I got to see a fascinating cardiac case -- open heart surgery. It was a complex case; a double valve replacement (mitral and aortic) and a valve repair to boot (tricuspid). 

One interesting thing was that before the surgery, they weren't entirely sure whether they were going to be repairing the tricuspid valve. So the anesthesiologist did an echo by sliding a probe into the patient, near the patient's heart, and rotating the probe to look at the different valves on a screen. He could also turn on a blood flow feature, which showed us different colors, each color illustrating a different blood velocity. This allowed us to see whether there was regurgitation, aka "regurg," which there was, from all three valves in question. (The image of a heart echo above shows mitral regurgitation, or blood flowing in the wrong direction, similar to what this patient had.) 

During the surgery, I was on the anesthesiologist's side, behind the surgical curtain. But they got me a step stool so I could peer into the field. I did this during almost the whole surgery, with the exception of a quick lunch break. I watched the initial incision, the cracking of the rib cage (with a giant chisel!), the separating of the pericardium from the heart, cutting into the heart, the placement of the valves. It was amazing to see a live, beating, human heart just a foot or two away from my face. And then suddenly, it was no longer beating, as they had put the patient on bypass to do the more delicate parts of the surgery (the valve replacements and repair). They cooled the patient's body to 25 degrees, and literally bypassed blood flow to and from the heart, oxygenating the blood with a perfusion machine and returning it to the body via tubing. They also used a cocktail of compounds (including potassium) to keep the heart from beating during that time.

It was a long surgery; around five hours. (And this does not count the time the anesthesiologists spent prepping and anesthetising the patient.) I felt privileged to be able to see how modern medicine has made such a procedure possible. And so incredibly ready to start medical school ...

Finances and Fashion

As a full-time student, I have grown used to living on less, since I am living on loans. Soon, though, that loan money will run out. Which means I will need to re-enter the workforce. That's not the problem - I have no aversion to working hard (if I did, I would certainly be going into the wrong field!). The problem is the economy. There are fewer jobs out there and more people applying for them. But I have a couple of strategies, which I hope will help me survive the next year and a half.

1. Apply Early, Often, and Broadly
I am looking to work in a research lab for the next year (my so-called "glide" year). School ends in early May, and I'm looking to start working in June (giving me some dedicated MCAT study time), but I'm starting to apply for jobs now. Given that I was laid off several years ago, I am pretty handy with the whole job search thing. So I believe that if a job gets posted online, I will find it. And thus far, I have found around 30 jobs to apply for in the Chicago area, all research lab positions, most at higher education institutions (one at a private hospital lab). I am applying so early because I know how long it can take these institutions to sift through resumes, give interviews, and make decisions. I want to give myself the best shot possible at landing a job before that loan money runs out. I am also applying to a broad range of positions. Sure, a genetics department position would be great, but I'll take what I can get. As long as it's a lab job and it pays the bills, I'm willing to do it.

One of the vintage pins I've recently sold
from my new Etsy store, FashionRelics.

2. Sell My Stuff
I'm not much of a salesperson, but Internet selling - that I can do. And I actually have quite a few things to sell. I was an avid collector of vintage hats, clothing, and jewelry for many years, and have built up quite a stash of items. None of them are super valuable, but all put together, they're worth a pretty penny. So I have opened a new shop on Etsy.com called FashionRelics (fashionrelics.etsy.com). I have had fun sifting through my vintage goods, photographing them (thanks to my dear friend Lisa for the dressmaker's mannequin!), and posting them on Etsy. I just started listing things this last week, and have already sold three items. It's not much, but it's a start. And since I'll likely be moving at some point, no matter where I end up going to medical school, paring down my possessions isn't such a bad idea, either.

3. Consider Alternative Living Situations
I love my one-bedroom apartment. I hope to be able to stay here during my glide year. But if I don't get a job by June, I won't be able to afford it. Thankfully, my wonderful and generous mother has offered to let me move in with her. Granted, it's not my first choice - I like my space and privacy. Don't get me wrong - I love my mom, and we get along fantastically. But I'm 30 years old, and moving back in with mom just isn't the most appealing prospect. But it would save me tons of money, so if that's the sacrifice I have to make, I'll make it.

Following a dream as big as this one does require sacrifices - I knew that, and am constantly reminded of it. I am willing to part with some material things, move out of my apartment, and possibly take a job I'm less than thrilled about to make it happen. Because in the long run, it will all be worth it.

Single ... Again

As the title of this post says, I'm single again - officially. As in, officially divorced, as of Tuesday morning around 9:45 a.m. It was crazy how quickly it all happened. It literally took 10 minutes in front of a judge to undo 10 years of a relationship. My attorney asked me a few "yes / no" questions, I answered them, the judge said his bit, and then he wished us (both Geoff and myself) luck. Geoff and I were back in the car by 9:55 a.m.; the whole thing had started shortly after 9:30 a.m. 

I got a little teary-eyed as we left the courtroom. Those 10 minutes went by in a blur, but it was an emotional blur, to be sure. I entered my former marriage thinking it would last forever. It didn't. That is painful to contemplate.

So instead of looking back, I try to look forward. I look toward applying for my MD/PhD in June. I look toward hopefully working in a lab for the next year. I look toward a new chapter of my life, and someday, a new relationship. 

Until then, I'm single again. And I'm OK with that.

Drosophila Conference: Part II

Things are coming together, thanks to the Drosophila genetics conference I have been attending this week. What exactly do I mean? What I mean is that I think I have discovered what I want to study for my PhD. And it represents a beautiful dovetailing of my research passion, and clinical compassion.

Let me explain. On Thursday afternoon, I attended a session at the conference entitled "Drosophila Models of Human Disease." This was the session I was most excited about, because disease is what I am interested in. Although until Thursday, I wasn't sure which disease. That became more clear to me after a presentation by Dr. Susumu Hirabayashi from Mount Sinai School of Medicine. He presented his work on "A Drosophila Model Linking Diet-induced Metabolic Disease and Cancer." In other words, a compelling example of how diabetes and cancer are connected. (Which is something I was not aware of previously.) I found myself riveted throughout the presentation - it was an elegant, and eloquent, demonstration of the use of Drosophila melanogaster genetics to explore a disease that has devastating implications for the people who suffer from it. To be more precise, some 25.8 million people in this country alone, according to the American Diabetes
Association (http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/diabetes-statistics/). That is, approximately, a whopping 8.3% of the U.S. population. And that proportion is only going to get higher as baby boomers age, and as more and more people become overweight and obese.

Diabetes is not unfamiliar to me. In fact, only a few days ago, I wrote a blog post about a diabetic patient at the free clinic where I work as a Spanish medical translator who refused to start taking insulin, and the lessons I learned from that encounter. Probably the majority of the patients for whom I translate have diabetes, in part due to the fact that Latinos are at a higher-than-average risk for this disease (as are African-Americans). From those translating sessions, and from conversations with doctors at the clinic, I have learned a great deal about the various complications associated with diabetes, as well as the treatments for it.

As I sat listening to Dr. Hirabayashi's presentation on Thursday, it clicked: studying diabetes would represent for me a confluence of my passion for genetics research, my compassion for the Latino community, and also my clinical experiences and knowledge thus far. I found myself nearly bouncing with excitement (although I contained myself, for the sake of the conference attendees sitting behind me). 

The next day, I rewrote my "significant research experiences" essay (which is for my MD/PhD application) to reflect what I had learned at the career luncheon, as well as to reflect my discovery of this new research - and clinical - interest. Which really isn't so new; it's more a matter of me only now putting the pieces together. I also began investigating laboratory research opportunities to study diabetes and other metabolic disorders at various graduate schools. I found many such opportunities, both at schools that were already on my "to-apply-to" list, as well as schools that were not. (I will likely be adjusting that list accordingly.) I also discovered that my dual experience with two of the most popular model organisms in science - mice and fruit flies - will serve me well, as most researchers studying diabetes use one of those animals in their work.

If I do indeed decide to study diabetes (for the PhD side), that would lend itself very nicely to becoming an endocrinologist (for the MD side). That would involve doing a residency in internal medicine, and then a fellowship in endocrinology. I have been wanting to find a research subject that coordinated with a medical specialty, and this does exactly that. 

Do I have it all figured out? No. Could I change my mind on this? Sure. But it is nice to have a jumping-off point, and a potential goal, as I embark on this MD/PhD journey.