future neurosurgeon seeks SWM 33-42; must be lower maintenance than a cat

January 20, 2006 at 4:45 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

My poor cat went starving today because I was at the hospital from 5:30am till 10pm yesterday, and all the pet stores selling her cat food were closed by the time I was excused. Mercifully for us both, today they let me go early (4:30pm), so I went straight to Petsmart and bought her food before I came home.

We won’t even talk about how long it’s been since I cleaned her cat litter. I’ve just been putting out a new KatKit litter box, or adding litter to the old one, whenever it needs cleaning. It’s going to be an ugly scene when I eventually clean it for real.

That’ll be sometime this weekend. I can’t believe I actually have a whole weekend off. I don’t even have to go in to the lab. So the apartment may actually get cleaned this weekend.

Today I ran my first flow cytometry assay–with a lot of help and supervision, of course. It’s not an easy thing to get right. I’m doing well just to be able to conceptualize the experiment, given how many other directions I’m being pulled in right now. Learning what they’re doing in this lab is like climbing a huge mountain when you can only climb 100 feet a day. Their goal is to find a treatment that will extend survival of glioblastoma patients, who currently have an average survival of 9 months post-diagnosis. They seem to be attacking the problem from several different angles, and it’s hard to digest all the theory on the cellular-molecular immunologic level at which their working. Will I ever get to the point where I can think up an experiment myself?

The thing about research is that there’s such a dichotomy between the big picture of your hypothesis and the piecemeal and tedious work that is done to acquire and analyze data in support of it. It’s hard to think on both levels.

So my days now are spent going back and forth from rounds to the OR to the lab and back to the OR. Lather, rinse, repeat. And yet, I’m not exhausted, nor do I dread having to go any of those places. Which is usually how I am with at least one thing I’m doing. In fact, I’ve been known to use my dread of some things to motivate myself to do other things I dread. I’ve accomplished a lot that way. But as a lifestyle, it sucks.

MD Anderson is a fabulous research institution, and a good hospital on top of that. I’m very fortunate to have landed here post-Katrina. And although I would love to go back to New Orleans, it’s clearly in my best career interest to stay here as long as I can.

In any event, perhaps I can get some reading done this weekend. And maybe a workout or two.