My Fear of Dental Procedures

I found out that I have two impacted teeth: one on the lower right and another on the upper left. Because of my pre-employment medical exam, I have to have them removed. I don't know why, but dental procedures intimidate me---in fact, I'm scared out of my wits right now! That's pretty ironic for a person who endured two days in the labor room and eventually had a c-section! I scheduled my first 'surgery' on May 30th so I at least have had one impacted tooth removed before the semester starts. My decision to postpone the removal of the impacted upper left tooth was based on (1) "gravity" of the situation (2) funds (3) time.

My newly found uber friendly dentist Pam told me that gravity will tend to pull the impacted lower right molar even lower, which will make it more difficult to extract. At least the other tooth can wait until the end of the semester. I think it would be best that the first extraction be over and done with ASAP. In the case of the right tooth, time passed is directly proportional to the degree of pain.

Since the extraction of an impacted tooth is a surgical procedure, I may need to pay at least 5,000 Philippine Pesos (around US$96.00) for it to be done. Argh. At least I'm sure of the quality of the service.

The recovery period would probably be at least an entire day, but you never know...so my dentist and I agreed that I would have the surgery in the morning.

I've been blaming myself these past few days for being complacent with my dental health. My husband and I have changed our ways---we will fulfill all our dental appointments from now on.

Coffee nights

It's 3:30 in the morning and I still can't sleep. I made the huge mistake of drinking coffee before going to bed....and I ain't on the bed yet. So, I decided to check out www.tasterschoice.com to pass the time. I've been a fan of Taster's Choice Original Blend for a long time and recently, I also learned to like the Decaf version. I used to be a Starbucks regular (hazelnut latte, tall, non-fat), but due to my pregnancy last year I had to stop drinking coffee--brewed and instant...well, maybe I occasionally had a cup of instant coffee. Luckily, I didn't experience major withdrawal symptoms from going "cold turkey" on coffee last year. The Taster's Choice website is very attractive and has a very nice "Recipes" section for making hot & cold beverages as well as desserts. Browse through their website, it's entertaining! If you're the big boss of Nestle Taster's Choice, I wouldn't mind a couple of freebies ^_^.

Encounters with rude people

I've always been wary of annual physical exams in the institution I work for, because it meant dealing with really rude health workers, finding my way through the many hospital buildings, lining up with the other patients of the hospital, enduring the heat, and being subjected to numerous invasive laboratory methods. Since I teach at the state university, I need to be examined by government physicians at the tertiary hospital just across the street.

I only need to have the following done: urinalysis, vdrl blood exam, drug test, chest x-ray, dental exam, and a physical. First, I claimed the medical exam referral from my department chair. Then, I went up to the 8th floor of the main tertiary hospital building (the university and the hospital are affiliated) to present my referral to the personnel office so that they can approve the medical exam. I went down to the ground floor and proceeded to the health service department to present the referral approved by the personnel office to claim the subsequent referral forms for the different tests. As you may have noticed, the inefficient method of presenting referral forms is taxing in itself. I was made to read the directions on how to go about the exam.

I then went to the hospital cashier to pay....PAY!!!!! for the tests! 210 bucks! I was, what the heck!?!
Since I basically had no choice in the matter, I just went directly to the radiology dept to have my x-ray done. Fortunately it was about 70 steps from the cashier and the line wasn't that long. Then I went up to the 2nd floor to have my blood exam and urinalysis...only to find out that I was freaking lost! Luckily, there was a man who also needed to go to the laboratories to submit his daughter's blood. Anyway, after asking an aloof health worker, we finally reached the lab.

Then.....I was led to a room for the urine test and the INCRDIBLY RUDE woman who was in front of a microscope kept on IGNORING ME! I wasn't disheveled, I didn't look like I was selling something, I was extremely polite....but no....it was just so difficult for her to tell me what to do. Finally she glanced at me with a raised eyebrow and protruded her mouth towards a pile of vials and a key. She did NOT say a word...I had to assume. GRRRRRRRR!
When I went back to the room, another lady told me to just leave the sample on the table.

For the blood test, I was told to go down to the admitting section to have my blood extracted. The med tech volunteered to bring the sample back to the lab. Thank God. I then went to the pharmacology section where the drug test should be done (it was in another building...about two blocks away!).

Yesterday, when I came back to the hospital (health service) to check on the results, have the dental exam, and the physical exam...I couldn't find my urinalysis and xray results in the files. The urinalysis was not done. They LOST the sample. I wasn't about to go back to the RUDE WOMAN so I said I'll have it done in a private lab. The x-ray results haven't come out yet. After 5 days!?! I was then told to go to the radiology department to follow-up on the x-ray result. I stood in line for 40 minutes! The result was already there....they x-ray people didn't forward it to the health service.

I'm just so frustrated right now....I no longer have the strength to write about the dental exam (ARRRRRGGGGhhhh-----I need to have two teeth extracted and 5 filled!) and the drug test.

I'm still not done with the physical...

I need to do all these things to get that teeny weeny paper saying that I'm fit to be employed for the coming semester.....If I don't get it ASAP, my salary will be on hold. (I deleted the sentences that followed this paragraph because I realized they were really egotistical...I'm calmer now)

Ig Nobels

Here's an interesting article I read last weekend...a funny spin-off of the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Weird Nobels, real math
First posted 03:14am (Mla time) May 13, 2006
By Queena Lee-Chua
Philippine Daily Inquirer

EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT THE Nobel prizes, but what about the Ig Nobels? These awards started in 1991 when science magazine editor Marc Abrahams began recognizing scientific work that "cannot or should not" be reproduced. With around 5,000 nominations yearly, the Ig Nobels are awarded in medicine, physics, chemistry, biology and peace, with secrecy perhaps as great as that in Stockholm.

The first winner was Prof. Bernard Vonnegut who in 1975 studied chicken plucking as a measure of tornado wind speed. Other Ig Nobels studied the effect of music on suicide, necrophilia in the mallard duck, the use of magnets to raise up frogs, the psychological defense of farting, and for peace, Japanese inventor Daisuke Inoue, for his karaoke invention (which makes people "learn to tolerate each other").

Winners are informed beforehand and are given a chance to turn down the prize, but surprisingly, few do so. The ceremonies are held at Harvard, with the audience peppering the stage with paper planes. Real Nobel prize winners present the awards to their Ig counterparts. I thank my colleague, Dr. Norman Quimpo, for sending me an article on the Ig Nobels, which can be found at www.english.aljazeera.net/.

Young Japanese
Now for real science. Believe it or not, powerhouse Japan is worried about its youth's declining test scores! In a 2004 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development involving 41 countries, Japanese children slipped in their ability to read and understand prose passages and diagrams.

Why? First, children excessively used mobile phones and Net chatrooms to communicate, both of which tend to ignore grammatical rules. Second, the Education Ministry introduced a liberal (criticized by many educators as "easier") curriculum in 2002. Third, more students are no longer studying at home. Fourth, children are not reading enough books. Fifth, teachers have been criticized for lack of quality.

Sound familiar? The Japanese government has been working overtime to make sure that such declines are reversed.

Understanding statistics
Knowing math can save lives. For instance, suppose a depressed patient read that the chances were 70 percent that she would respond to a certain antidepressant. So 70 percent of the time, the patient would feel better, right?
Not really. A better understanding of the figures would mean that if 10 people with depression were prescribed the drug, then seven would be expected to get better. But the statistics came from a large sample, and did not necessarily apply to individuals. Thus, the patient would either improve with the treatment or not, notwithstanding the statistics she heard about.

Confused? Harvard statistician Dr. Judith Singer put it this way: "The number of possible outcomes--in her case either responding or not responding to an antidepressant--has nothing to do with the actual probability of either outcome happening.

"For example, either a woman is pregnant or not. She can't be a little pregnant. But that doesn't mean that she has a 50-percent probability of being pregnant. A woman who takes a fertility pill may stand a much higher chance of actually getting pregnant than if she goes without it."

To help children understand math better, I recommend this nifty interactive dictionary website.

E-mail the author at blessbook @yahoo.com.

My sentiments about the Da Vinci Code movie

This post says it all...http://thinkingly.blogspot.com/2006/05/da-vinci-noises.html

RSS and Atom Programming Source

I'm relatively new to the blogging world so when I started noticing that orange button with the letters "RSS" or "XML" in some blogs, I became incredibly curious. Then I realized that it was a way for blogs (or some constantly updated sites) to make the lives of readers easier through "feeds". Instead of a reader visiting her favorite blogs/ sites one by one to check if there's something new, she simply logs on to an online tool (like feedster, bloglines, newsgator, etc.) where she can place all the "feeds" of her favorite web places. Unlike usual links, "feeds" indicate whatever is new at that particular site. The reader can just browse through the headlines of each site to see if she really wants to check out all of the sites or just the ones she finds interesting.

Thanks to the book by Danny Ayers and Andrew Watt, I now know what a freaking feed means. RSS and Atom are methods of producing feeds. Anyway, I haven't read through the entire book, because honestly, even if the book was written in the simplest possible way I still can't comprehend some aspects of the whole programming thing. It's like studying "Brain Surgery for Idiots" when you're in junior high school. In time, maybe I'll be able to really understand it. For now, I'll stick to pretending that I do.

A career in forensics

C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation (and its spin-offs), Law and Order, Crossing Jordan, Bones, even S.O.C.O. (Scene of the Crime Operatives of the Philippine National Police) has roused the interest of many people in pursuing careers related to criminalistics and forensics. I have to admit that I am one of those who fantasize about being able to dust for prints, survey crime scenes, test for trace evidence and solve cases (I deliberately did not include performing an autopsy because cutting up a person, dead or alive, is unthinkable....maybe another species down the food chain would be alright)---while wearing a tight black tank top and having perfectly done hair and make-up just like Catherine Willows.
Whenever I get fixated on something (this happens a lot!), I scour the local bookstore for books related to that fixation. I came across The Forensic Casebook, The Science of Crime Scene Investigation and immediately bought it. It was a good investment. It did clear up certain things about the life of a CSI, rather a CSA (Crime Scene Analyst). It's not a glamorous job. The compensation is not at par with the amount of work one has to do as a CSA. The book enumerates the forensic science/ crime scene positions typically found in a forensics unit (or crime lab), such as the one found at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Major tasks, collateral functions, qualifications, experience and training requirements, licensing/ certification, working conditions, as well as the average salary of each position were presented in detail by the author. The positions include: evidence custodian, criminalist, crime scene analyst, document examiner, firearms/ toolmark examiner, forensic laboratory technician, latent print examiner, and photo technician. Too bad the book only features the educational institutions in the U.S. that provide courses that lead to careers in forensics.

Here in the country, I only found one recognized program in forensics at the Philippine College of Criminology and it's a graduate degree (M.S. Criminology). But a degree in biology, biochemistry, chemistry, and physics could also jumpstart a career in forensics. I'm very proud of Dr. Raquel Fortun, who is a well-know forensic pathologist in the country and is affiliated with the institution I work for. But I'm far from being an honest to goodness scientist...maybe I am, I just don't know it?!? What the heck...

(I got the photo from Amazon...they provide a sneak peek of the book).

Parasitology Links

This post aims to provide useful links for General Parasitology Students everywhere...including references.

General Parasitology:
American Society of Parasitologists - http://asp.unl.edu/
Atlas of Medical Parasitology - http://www.cdfound.to.it/HTML/atlas.htm
Kansas State University Parasitology - http://www.k-state.edu/parasitology/
Karolinska Institutet Parasitic Diseases - http://www.mic.ki.se/Diseases/C03.html
Ohio State University Parasitological Resources - http://ryoko.biosci.ohio-state.edu/~parasite/home.html
University of S. Carolina Microbio & Immunology Online - http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/book/parasit-sta.htm

Medical Protozoology:
Malaria - http://www.malaria.org/
Tulane University Protozoology Guide - http://www.tulane.edu/~wiser/protozoology/guide.html
University of Edinburgh Parasitic Protozoa - http://www.nhc.ed.ac.uk/index.php?page=24.25.366
University of Wales Aberystwyth Protozoa - http://www.aber.ac.uk/~mpgwww/Edu/ParProto/ProtoTxt.html

Medical Helminthology:
Dr. Arfaa's Medical Helminthology - http://mywebpages.comcast.net/fredarfaa/frmain.htm
Onefish's Fish-Borne Parasites - http://www.onefish.org/servlet/CDSServlet?status=ND0xNTY5JjY9ZW4mMzM9KiYzNz1rb3M~

Medical Entomology:
Cornell University Medical Entomology - http://www.entomology.cornell.edu/MedEnt/index.html
Iowa State Entomology Index - http://www.ent.iastate.edu/list/directory/114/vid/5
Dr. Benecke's Forensic Entomology Page - http://www.benecke.com/maden.html#3

Diagnostic Parasitology:
DPDx CDC Laboratory Identification of Parasites - www.dpd.cdc.gov/DPDx/
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Diagnostic Parasitology Laboratoy - www.parasite-referencelab.co.uk/
Merck Manual of Diagnosis & Therapy Collecting and Handling Specimens for Laboratory Diagnosis of Parasitic Infections - http://www.merck.com/mrkshared/mmanual/tables/161tb1.jsp
University of Pennsylvania Diagnosis of Veterinary Endoparasitic Infections - cal.vet.upenn.edu/dxendopar/

Suggested References:
I highly recommend the following text books as reference materials (based on experience). The book descriptions were quoted from the editorial reviews provided by Amazon. I didn't present the books as bibliographical entries, because it's more convenient...for me, that is.

Foundations in Parasitology 7th Ed. (the earlier editions are still useful)
Authors: Larry S. Roberts Jr., John Janovy, and P. Schmidt
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Book description: A parasitology text for biology and/or zoology students at the undergraduate level. Emphasizes principles with related information on the biology, physiology, morphology, and ecology of the major parasites of humans and domestic animals. This is not a diagnostic manual for medical students.

Human Parasitology 2nd Ed.
Authors: Burton J. Bogitsh, Thomas C. Cheng
Publisher: Academic Press
Book Description: "Liberally accented with photographs, diagrams, and clinical case pictures, this text is straightforward, adequately referenced, and logically organized... this edition provides a bridge between the well-known exhaustive compendiums and brief treatises for the college level student considering a career in the biological sciences or healthcare fields... Clinical correlations and therapeutic options which enhance the biology presented are included. I particularly liked the easy to follow life cycle diagrams and the many electron micrographs which clearly delineate important characteristics of these microorganisms... Its modest price, well-written style, and up-to-date information should make this text a course director's favorite."--John S. Czachor, MD, Wright State University, Division of Infectious Diseases forDOODY'S PUBLISHING REVIEWS

Practical Guide to Diagnostic Parasitology
Author: Lynne S. Garcia
Publisher: American Society for Microbiology
Book Description: Designed as a training aid for laboratorians this volume supplements the large standard textbooks in clinical parasitology, containing brief and easily accessible summaries of diagnostic procedures and organism morphology. The book offers descriptions of the parasites with clear illustrations, both diagrammatic and photographic. The emphasis throughout is on practical information and the book is full of "how to" tips gleaned from the author's own experience of many years in the clinical laboratory.

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In order to find journal articles related to Parasitology, you may use any of the following:

Parasitology Online - http://www.parasitology-online.com/parasitology/show/
PubMed - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?
Science Direct - www.sciencedirect.com/

Spontaneous Human Combustion (SHC)

I kept my eyes peeled on the TV when I came across National Geographic's "Is it Real?" show featuring SHC. Is it real? I don't know. Maybe. It falls under the category of the paranormal, like crop circles and big foot. I remember seeing an episode of CSI where Grissom and Sara tried to determine whether a woman's unexplained death was caused by SHC. The woman was found burned into ashes while sitting on a living room couch. Nothing else inside the room was burned and no trace of accelerant was found. In the end, they found out that the woman fell asleep with a lit cigarette and was ignited possibly through the 'wick effect.'

Alternative Science says that the 'wick effect' proposes that in certain rare circumstances the human being can burn like a candle: a clothed human body is like an inside-out candle where the fat, or fuel source, is inside and the wick is outside. Once burning begins, the melted fat seeps into the clothing and burns like a wick, slowly over a period of many hours. The fire is usually caused by a match or cigarette (watch out chubby smokers....never sleep with a lit cigarette!). You can check out the article written by Dr. Mark Benecke (he's a funny guy), the forensic biologist featured in the Natinal Geographic program...it has somewhat gory black and white images. For now, spontaneous human combustion remains to be a mystery.

Time's Most Influential

Time's current issue is a must must must read! I found it incredibly informative and entertaining, especially since many of the articles about the world's most influential people were written by other well-known individuals. Some of the notable authors include:
- Condoleezza Rice for Oprah Winfrey
- Al Gore for Jim Hansen
- Henry Kissinger for Franz Beckenbauer
- Oprah Winfrey (how influential is she???) for Elie Wiesel
- Charles Barkley for Steve Nash
- Vivienne Tam for Sean "Diddy" Combs
- Luke Wilson for Reese Witherspoon
- Tom Cruise for JJ Abrams who created Alias & Lost
- Heidi Klum for Tyra Banks
- David Spade for Howard Stern
- Mario Batali for Rachael Ray (love 'em both!)
- Ziyi Zhang for Ang Lee
- Vanessa Redgrave for Philip Seymour Hoffman.

I urge you to get a copy---it's a collectible! You may also visit Time Online (check out my links) for the electronic copy....and no, I do not work for Time. I just love the magazine, that's all.

My current fixation on trading

I'm a magazine junkie. The funny thing is that I only realized it a few days ago when I saw how completely filled my magazine shelf was in my old bedroom! It's a good thing that I'm not a sloppy reader so that my collection, if I may call it, is in good condition. A few days ago, I had the most brilliant (not really) idea of selling a few of them on eBay Philippines and Girl Talk's Shop Crazy.

Trading entails a lot of patience and I mean a WHOLE lot. Perhaps, newbie traders go through that initial stage of enthusiasm about earning a couple of bucks without much effort--I know I did, until I turned on the television a while ago. A came across Euromaxx and they featured eBay Germany. I became disillusioned when an eBay expert said (of course in German, which was dubbed in English =p) that many young, naive sellers enter the market unprepared and that only a handful of people actually become rich through eBay (and their lives, in my opinion, aren't that exciting because they become so consumed by the business). If at all, eBay benefits couriers and shipping companies the most.

I'm now taking it slow...my magazines aren't going anywhere. I'll focus on my day job.

Note: If you're an eBay expert, I would really really really appreciate your advice. I'm particularly interested in trading partners here in the country if you know of any.