Blog of Bermanism

Firstly, no, I do not have SARS, but it freaking feels like it. I got pretty sick after my little skiing-stunt with Chris in Lake Tahoe this year. I was blessed with the same cold that everyone else in the universe got, complete with a cough that never completely went away. It mostly went away until a few days ago, when some unknown and mostly-horrible smell started to pervade our apartment. Rachel’s currently superhuman sense of smell found the foul stench days before I even knew there was a problem. She emptied the trash, cleaned the kitchen, sprayed Febreeze, changed the baby’s diapers (oh wait, not yet…), and still the smell continued to get worse. With her nose to the ground, she followed the acrid smell until she was on the floor in front of her vanity sink in the bedroom. She opened the cabinet underneath and released an intensely powerful smell that I could only classify as decomposing rat. I called our manager and they sent someone out to check it out. They thought the smell was being caused by standing water under the apartment, but removing it didn’t do anything to make it better (and, we talked to the guy to bailed out the water this morning and he said that the water came back the next day and that it was fresh and clear and that he could have drank it. It was not causing the smell). So, we remain in an apartment that smells like a dead guy covered in glade plugins. It’s really pleasant. Want to come over?

Anyway, the point of that story was to illustrate that at the exact same time that the mysterious smell attacked our olfactories, we both started to feel the onset of fairly extreme allergies. In Texas, we both had crazy allergies and took Zyrtec religiously to combat the issues. However, since living in Northern California, neither of us has had any significant problems. I’m allergic to most pollens, so spring time here (which is accompanied by a huge floral bloom in all of the trees) makes me sneeze from time to time and get my trademark swollen eye. But, it is nothing that needs medication and I can usually make it through the spring just fine. But, since the smell, both Rachel and I have been congested and coughing like crazy. It feels like someone dumped acetone down my lungs in my sleep and that I have to cough out the skin that lines them to get rid of the feeling. It is really annoying. And, poor Rachel can’t take anything for it due to her serving as an incubator at the moment. So, I’ve opted to suffer with her (which she thinks is stupid, and probably is, but those medications put me off of my game and I need to be on right now). So, we’ll call it sympathy allergies, since I didn’t gain sympathy weight (I actually lost a little). So, the allergies are driving us nuts. We’ve narrowed the list of allergens to two possible sources, spontaneous interdimentional aggregation and mold. Both of us are intensely allergic to molds, and, it turns out that dead things mold, a lot, and the spores are released from death molds can travel pretty far to find more dead things to feed off of. So, we’re back to the dead thing, which is probably stuck under the baseboard of Rachel’s sink cabinet. I suppose that the good news is that it’ll be gone, along with the mold in a couple of weeks. In the mean time, we both suffer, some of us needlessly.

In addition to this crazy SARS-like condition, I’ve found myself to be horribly stressed out. The impending birth of my child, while exciting and wonderful, is causing me all sorts of trouble in the rest of my life. My job as a Neuroscience Researcher, as many of you know, is kind of demanding. You really have to work your ass off to get anywhere in the field. Up until recently, I’d been trying to operate on the principle that a good amount of quality work yields the same quantity of results as working inhuman hours. I’m not sure if I’ve disproven that ideology, but it has definitely gone out of the window for me right now. I’ve essentially got 3 – 5 weeks left until we have our child and my productivity drops dramatically. I’ve decided that I need to have the vast majority of my Parkinson’s project completed within this time frame so that I can work on the data and writing of the paper at home while bouncing the little one on one knee. It turns out that I bit off a lot in trying to accomplish this goal. I have an insane amount of work to do, but I’m getting through it in around 60 – 85 hours/week. It’s back to grad school times for me right now.

In addition to trying to finish my project, I have three other projects that I’m trying to move forward on, two collaborations with other people in my lab, the entire mouse colony to maintain (~1500 animals), and the rest of my responsibilities in the lab to cover. It is a little nuts. But, wait, there’s more!

In addition to Rachel’s unfortunate feelings of hugeness, her constant need for urination, and the large amount of emotional support that I should be giving her right now, I have a lot of stuff to do around the house to prepare for the baby, which largely removes my ability to work on the weekends. I’m fine with all of it, it is just a lot to deal with, and I’m so freaking tired all of the time that I think my ability to take things as they come and relax has been worn down. Work has been a mess for me. I’m really stressed out about all of it and I’m letting people get to me more than usual. I’m not going to expand on that topic, you can email me for details. But, suffice it to say that I need to get back to the place where I’m confident in my abilities as a scientist despite what others may or may not think about me. I’m usually very good at being confident without the approval of other people that don’t matter much. But, the last few months have worn that ability down for me. If I can manage to get that back, my cheery optimism will return with it.

Anyway, I’ve rambled on long enough. With any luck, I’ll have a more positive outlook on things by this weekend and I’ll be able to post a cheerier post, unless out government screws all of that up too. They’re working on causing as much damage as possible in their last 10 months. Go team!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS