Category Archives: Science

9AM….everyday

Americana, Around home, Science,

 

 

Everyday at 9 AM, I go into Sequoia Hospital for an intravenous shot of an high-octane antibiotic – daptomycin, Daptomycin with a capital “D”? – to protect my cow aorta valve. Every day for six weeks; Saturdays, Sundays, New Years Day, at 9 AM. I do not think that I have done the same thing at the same time for six weeks in my entire life, it is very strange – not bad necessarily, but strange – and I am having a hard time getting used to it.

What is also strange is the PICC line in my arm, just below the armpit, that runs through a vain – or artery, I am not sure which – up, through my shoulder, and down to a large gaggle of pipes near my heart. According to Wikipedia, the PICC lines are used when intravenous access is required over a prolonged period of time or when the material to be infused would cause quick damage and early failure of a peripheral IV, and I think that is the case with me. I had a peripheral IV port in my hand that they used for a couple of days and my hand is still sore.

I think of the PICC as a very small, very long, hole that runs from outside my body to, almost, my heart. It is very handy: anything anybody wants in me can just be shoved in through the hole; the Flue Vaccine I forgot to get earlier in the year, a Pneumonia Vaccine I didn’t even know I should have, lunch – I guess. But, and it is a big BUT, protecting that hole from bad stuff getting in is a big deal. A much bigger deal than protecting a  IV because any bacteria traveling up the PICC would end up right next to my heart which is what they are trying to protect, in the first place, by pouring in the dosages of antibiotic.

Tuesday is the changing of the covering-dressing day and it is sort of emblematic of my whole Sequoia experience and – by only slightly fantastical extension – our health care system.

 

The changing of the covering-dressing is almost ritualistic in its detailed, loving, complexity; it is driven, in large part, by outside vendors coming up with new, improved, and increasingly expensive ways to do it; it is staggeringly wasteful; and once you see it, it is hard to think of a cheaper, simpler, way to do as good a job. First the nurse takes a sterile envelope containing sterile gloves and opens it to to form a sterile area, then she empties all the cleaning supplies and sterile dressings on to the sterile area. After she puts on the gloves and facemask, my existing dressing is removed and the area cleaned.

Each part of the new dressing comes in a sterile package that is now waste and has to be carefully disposed of. As an aside, much of the waste has my name and birthdate  on it and each time that happens, it has to be disposed of differently so that my name doesn’t end up in the garbage where somebody could see it. End aside. Then the new dressing, including a jell-packet of disinfectant, is put on to cover the entry point of the PICC.

Lastly, the new dressing is dated. Then, probably for the second or third time, the nurse asks me my name and birhdate and gives me my daily charge of daptomycin. I have no idea what all this costs, somebody once said that the daptomycin, alone, is $110.00 and it comes with its own – wrapped in a sterile covering, of course – connecting line and two syringes to flush the PICC line before and after the dose.

Then I am happily on my way, back into the world.

 

 

 

 

Ask for Adenium obesum; Google will give you about 12,600 results in 0.12 seconds

Americana, Current Affairs, Evolution, Psychological Musings, Science

2200326606_e8204a5105_o

Or Dorstenia foedita in 0.17 seconds with about 7,830 results*. We truly live in an an age of wonder.

My grandmother was born in the late 1880s – about 16 years, give or take 5, before Wilbur and Orville first flew the Flyer – and she died after John Glen orbited the earth.  I used to marvel at the change she went though, but it is nothing compared to the change we are going through.

True, from horse and buggy to orbit seems like a big jump.  But very, very, few people will ever go into orbit; it just isn't part of our life. But everybody – OK, maybe not everybody, but everybody with a small rounding error – has a computer and access to the World Wide Web. Really, access to an almost infinite well of knowledge.

With a smart phone – and we will all have smart phones soon – we have access everywhere, anytime. All the time.  Astounding! A huge percentage of the world's knowledge – maybe not knowledge, but facts, at least –  is at our fingertips. Literally, as Joe Biden would say. What do walruses eat? When was Hypatia murdered by religious fanatics? How far is the airport from a hotel – any hotel you want – in the downtown section of the capital of Paraguay?

We are living in a time of wonders that were inconceivable 20 years ago.

 * somehow I find it very amusing that Google can come up with results in 0.17 seconds but – apparently – doesn't have time to count the exact number of results

Archeology as projection or We usually find what we look for

China, Evolution, Politics, Science, Travel

Psychological projection…is the unconscious act of denial of a person's own
attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the
outside world, such as to the weather, the government, a tool, or to
other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that
others have those feelings. Wikipedia

Machu Picchu

In 1988, I had the opportunity to see Machu Picchu with a native guide who was an archaeologist. When I say native, I mean an Inca. Or a decedent of one of the other tribes subjugated by the Incas. Every once in a while, I read a sort of rhetorical question along the lines of what ever happened the Incas. – or Mayas? or, for that matter, the Romans?

The answer is nothing, they are still there but, because they are the indigenous people, they are usually ignored. Anyway, this anthropologist was one of the first indigenous people, in Peru, to get a degree in Anthropology. And he immediately set out to prove that the European anthropologists were full of shit.

Hiram Bingham, who is given credit for discovering Machu Picchu thought it was the estate of an Inca emperor or high priest, and he had all sorts of theories on what the various structures were. Usually the theories revolved around some sort of bloody sacrifice. Our guide thought it was just an run of the mill small town, like an Inca Healdsburg, and the only reason it was noteworthy is because it wasn't sacked by the Christian explorers like everything else.

He also showed us, what the Europeans thought were several "sacrificial altars" that even had little channels that "carried the blood away". Except that he showed us that the channels were lines that lined up with the sun or moon's location at
the Winter and Summer equinox. They were really solar and lunar observatories. One channel was even lined up with the true North-South axis.

He went from altar to altar, site to site, saying Look, look at this, they don't even ask what it is for. They don't even speak good Spanish and they don't speak any Quechua. They don't talk to the locals. Why not, they are Incas. I am glad to say that now pretty much everybody agrees with our guide. 

I bring all this up because, yesterday, I read an article in the NYT that there is going to be a show in California of mummies and artifacts found on the Silk Road in China. It looks like it will be a great show. The Chinese have found, or re-found, an old cemetery in a desert region of western China. And in this cemetery are mummies that turn out to have European features and DNA from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia, but not China.

Small River Cemetery

According to the NYT,

As the Chinese archaeologists dug through the five layers of burials, they came across almost 200 poles, each 13 feet
tall. Many had flat blades, painted black and red, like the oars from
some great galley that had foundered beneath the waves of sand.

So what do they think these 13 foot tall poles are? phallic symbols,
signaling an intense
interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation. The whole of the cemetery was blanketed with blatant sexual symbolism.

Maybe they are right, but, in reality, they have no idea. Just like Hiram Bingham had no idea so he projected the bloody rituals on the Incas, the Chinese anthropologists project their idea of sex-crazed Europeans on these 4,000 year old mummies.But it still should be a very interesting show.