Microbiology rotation done!

This is the first day in over a month where I’ve felt relaxed.

It’s been the best month clinical-rotation-wise, but it’s also been the most stressful. This is the end of my microbiology rotation, and microbiology is my favorite discipline. My dream day job would be in a micro lab.

So of course I put pressure on myself to do well, to learn fast and to know as much as possible. I did learn a great deal - there was a lot of new information on bacteriology, antibiotics, mycology (the study of fungi) and so on – and the technologists asked a lot of questions to make sure I knew what was going on. The end result was that I did enjoy the rotation, but I also felt as though I was under a microscope myself. I can only hope I made a good enough impression.

On top of that were my two part-time jobs and the need to study for a qualifying exam that’s less than two months away. So I came home exhausted every day – my apartment looks as though it’s been burglarized, with stuff lying everywhere – and I was way too tired to blog.

They let us have today off, which is a great relief. I’ll still be going to the hospital, of course, but that’s for one of my part-time jobs rather than lab work, so it should only be a few hours.

So, what goes on behind the scenes at a microbiology lab?

The lab processes hundreds of specimens on a daily basis. As well as receiving samples from people who are sick, the lab tests screening swabs (to make sure in-patients aren’t bringing any superbugs into the hospital), water samples, and even medications from the pharmacy department. Everything is sent through the front end, where it’s entered into the system and given an accession number.

The people in the front end work like maniacs as a result.

After that the specimen, like a piece of luggage in the airport, goes on to its final destination. Depending on what the specimen is or what the doctor has asked for, it could be sent to the blood bench, the virology department, the screeners, etc. The bottles of blood are incubated and rotated in a large analyzer that looks like an enclosed wine rack. Technologists at the different benches put the specimens on various agar plates to see what grows.

It is always good when nothing does, not only for the patient but for the technologist. If something does grow, that’s when the train of thought speeds up. Is the bacterium a pathogen (disease-causing agent) or just a contaminant which sneaked in somehow? If it’s a pathogen, what tests need to be done to confirm its identity? If it’s a pathogen, is it present in sufficient numbers to report?

If technologists reported everything they saw, they’d be either dead from exhaustion or fired for incompetence.

Once the pathogen has been identified, it moves on to the antibiotic testing bench. I moved too, and spent a week learning more about antibiotics than two semesters in college taught me. What antibiotics is the pathogen resistant to? Is it a superbug? What antibiotics can be reported? The analyzer may tell you that the E. coli is susceptible to tetracycline. But if you report that and if the patient is seven years old and if the doctor doesn’t know any better and prescribes tetracycline, the patient will go through life with discolored teeth as a result.

You have to know a whole lot more than the machines and the computer system (and sometimes the doctors), in other words.

I didn’t get a chance to see the virology department, but that was the only disappointing thing about my experience. I even identified a fungal species correctly on my last day, which was all the better because that was the only day we spent on mycology. But it’s great to come home and rest, to have a long relaxed breakfast rather than bolting it with one eye on the clock and to know I’ve got the whole of the Christmas holidays before the chemistry, the next and final rotation.

It’s pretty good to be blogging again too. :)
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Blood bank

So now I'm in the blood bank, AKA Transfusion Science. Between this, my two part-time jobs, studying for the CSMLS exam in February and doing revisions on During the Fire, I've been too busy for anything else.

But as well as my blog being overdue for an update, I like to describe the behind-the-scenes work in the hospital. So... blood bank.

When a patient needs a transfusion, a sample of their blood is sent to us for a type and screen. Most people know their ABO and Rh type (e.g. A negative, O positive), but pregnancy and previous transfusions can complicate matters. Being exposed to foreign antigens - and yes, a baby's can be treated as foreign by the mother's body - makes a patient's immune system react by producing antibodies, and this can lead to a bad reaction if they're given blood that hasn't undergone further screening. That's another thing the blood bank checks.

Then the blood can be further treated (e.g. irradiated to kill donor white blood cells which might otherwise attack the recipient) before being labeled and allocated via the computer system. It took me a good few days to become at all familiar with the computer system where everything that happens to a unit of blood has to be documented. I've never worked anywhere where accountability and cross-checking were more important.

Which is understandable. Issue the wrong unit and a patient could die. That's another thing the blood bank does - investigation of transfusion reactions, when a patient has a bad response to the blood they've received.

The Transfusion department also handles blood products (platelets and plasma) and recombinant products like clotting factors for people with hemophilia. It's a fascinating place to work, and the staff are friendly. The teaching tech assigned to us, though, is a bit of a prankster. One day I was in the walk-in freezer, getting some immunoglobulin to be issued to patients. The light switch is outside the freezer, so he crept up and turned it off.

I was so startled I swore. Naturally, he thought that was hilarious. Thankfully I didn't drop the bottles of immunoglobulin, which would have been somewhat less hilarious.

Off to work now.
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The Full Monty

It’s easy to imagine the high-concept for this film: “Six unemployed steelworkers become strippers”. But that short-changes The Full Monty, because it’s much more than a bawdy comedy. There are a lot of films I enjoy, but only one so far where I’ve shelled out for the DVD, and this is it.

The films begins after Sheffield’s steel industries have collapsed, and months of unemployment have left most of the former steelworkers depressed and cynical. Gaz can’t afford child support, despite his various schemes for earning a quid here and there, while his best friend Dave is physically as well as financially impotent. Dave’s wife, now the family’s breadwinner, feels he’s given up on her as well as on himself, so she goes out for the night to watch the Chippendales perform.

But that gives Gaz an idea. “Them buggers can, we can,” he says, and proceeds to round up a reluctant handful of his fellow unemployed.

Gaz is the linchpin of the film, a wonderfully drawn and acted character. In private he’s unsure of himself; with the rest of the gang, he’s driven, confident and energetic. He’s engaged in a constant juggling act as he tries to keep everyone more or less doing as he wants – all so he can continue to see his son.

The other characters are great too, though. Gerald, their ex-foreman, still hasn’t told his wife that he’s been unemployed for six months, so every day he dresses in a suit, takes his lunchbox and heads out to the Job Centre. Lomper is pale, skinny and suicidal – the scene where Dave fixes Lomper’s car’s engine and smoke immediately begins to fill the car’s interior is hilarious. Guy can’t sing or dance, but with his physical attribute, he may not need to. And Horse can dance, but needs a hip replacement. “Me breakdancing days are probably over, but there’s always the funky chicken,” he says.

As if six of the unsexiest wasn’t a recipe for success, Gaz is then put on the spot by a woman who asks why anyone would pay to see them instead of the Chippendales. “This lot go all the way,” he claims, giving the film its title and nearly scaring all the others into hanging up the G-strings for good.

But as they exercise and rehearse together, deal with their various problems – which eventually involve the police – and work up the nerve to take it all off, they slowly start to regain the friendship, confidence and masculinity they lost along with their jobs. For a comedy, this film touches on some surprisingly deep issues. It made me care, it made me laugh and it made me buy the DVD. Recommendations don’t get much better than that.




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From blood to worse

The Hematology rotation ended on Friday.

Two-thirds of the way gone, and I feel as though I’m running on empty. Here’s why.

Last week our clinical coordinator at the hospital informed us that there were a couple of part-time positions open at another department (Molecular Genetics), for students to help with administrative work. Date-stamping reports and sending them out, filing and photocopying and so on. I applied and got one of the positions, which was great in terms of getting a foot in the door.

It also pays five dollars more per hour than my Saturday job at the used-book store, so that’s good as well. I worried a lot about my finances after paying the final tuition fees. This job is going to help so much in that regard.

The problem is that after putting in eight hours at the lab and then two more hours of work, there’s nearly an hour’s commute home and I drag myself into the apartment, wiped out. Way too tired to blog, which is why this has been quiet lately.

Part of it was also because last week I was running about trying to get my immunization records in order to fulfil HR requirements, so that was exhausting too, and I ended up catching a bad cold that knocked me out for two days. But I’m feeling a little better now, and hoping that I can somehow survive the frenetic schedule until the end of January. I also really need to study more and keep up with writing.

Still, at least I did OK with Hematology. The next rotation is Blood Transfusion, so I’ll be working with the same substance but running different tests. And on that note, in Japan, it’s a popular belief that blood type has something to do with personality.

Forced to quit after barely a week as Japan's reconstruction minister for remarks deemed offensive to victims of the March earthquake and tsunami, Ryu Matsumoto had an unusual explanation for his behavior -- his blood type.

"My blood's type B, which means I can be irritable and impetuous, and my intentions don't always come across," he said Tuesday after his resignation.

Link

If your intention is to show responsibility and remorse, obviously not.
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Deserts in fantasy

I grew up in the Middle East so I have a soft spot for deserts and will read almost any fantasy novel which features them. My favorite act in Diablo 2 was also the second one, which is set in the deserts of Lut Gholein.

Creating a distinctive desert can be a lot of fun, too.

1. Terrain

Deserts don’t have to be vast stretches of sand dunes. They could be rocky instead, with great spires of weatherworn stone that fall away into deep canyons, or great expanses of pebbles which make ground travel slow if not hazardous. As for the sandy deserts, sand can be simply sand, or it can be granulated chemicals, salt or the crushed remains of bones. It could be red sand, green sand (like the poisonous desert in Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon) or white sand.

And in Dune, there were drum sands which amplified the sounds of travelers’ footsteps and attracted sandworms.

2. Magical features

I’ve blogged before about unusual physical phenomena, and a desert would be a great place to display some of these. Walls of whirlwinds or sentient sands could provide conflict and action as well.

3. Flora and fauna

It’s fun to imagine the kinds of creatures who have adapted to life in the desert. Dougal Dixon’s After Man and The New Dinosaurs are treasure troves of such imagination, but even existing fantasy creatures can be adapted for a desert life. Unicorns might be black—and partially metallic—so that they can use solar power, for instance.

4. Humans and humanoids

If there are settlements of people in the desert, how do they cope with the heat and the scarcity of water? Are they nomadic, moving from oasis to oasis, or have they simply adapted to the point where they don’t need to drink more than a handful of water per day (and if so, there should be other physical and social modifications).

A great book set in this environment is Colin Wilson’s Spider World Book One : The Desert (out of print, though, and I couldn’t even find a copy on Amazon). The humans, who live in burrows, use giant slave ants to gather water and a tamed wasp to hunt—the wasp injects prey with a neurotoxin. Of course, the humans become the hunted when their spider overlords drift over the desert on silken aircatchers, mentally searching for prey far below.

Deserts can be—and probably should be—as varied and dangerous in fantasy as they are in real life.



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A Perfect Red

This is the story of a color – and of the lengths to which people went to discover, obtain, steal and synthesize it.

Amy Butler Greenfield’s A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage, and the Quest for the Color of Desire spans the globe and history, beginning with the use of red ochre in Neanderthal rites. Mysticism and metaphor are bound up in this color, and more than one condemned aristocrat wore it to their executions.

Yet a bright deep true red was difficult to obtain, and for painters and dyers that made it all the more valuable. The best dye, though, was derived from the cochineal beetle native to what was, at the time, the Aztec Empire.

And so cochineal passed into the equally-reddened hands of the conquistadores, although most of them preferred gold. From then on it became part of a Spanish monopoly on dye, which the British countered with government-authorized piracy and the French with a spy. If you enjoy history, especially the dramatic swashbuckling aspects of history, this book is a great read, but what really kept me hooked was the introduction of science.

The scientists of that time tried to discover what exactly cochineal was – because after cargoes of dried beetles, smaller than peppercorns, had been stolen or intercepted, no one was quite sure what they were. Antony van Leeuwenhoek, who invented the first microscope, initially mistook them for seeds. As science became more advanced, though, dyes were synthesized—possibly the final blow to an industry that had survived warfare and espionage and biopiracy.

As well as being well-researched, this book is highly entertaining, with several chapters ending on cliffhangers. I even checked Amy Butler Greenfield’s website to see if she had written any other books which blended fashion, history, politics and science into such an absorbing read. Maybe a non-fiction version of The Color Purple? I’d buy it.

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Aspen Mountain Press : A horror story

Since I published through a small press, I'm interested in news about such presses, especially those specializing in the genres I write. Aspen Mountain Press is (or was) a romance e-publisher and small press, and although I've never read any AMP books, they had some very distinctive covers.

AMP was established in 2007, so it seemed capable of lasting the distance. But the first signs of problems began in August 2010. This post on the former head editor's blog tells it all - and it's a nightmarish situation.

The story is a long one, but if you're interested in how a press can go very, very wrong, read this. It's unforgettable. Not to mention tragic, because the senior staff tried incredibly hard to pull the press out of the fire and ultimately even that effort was sabotaged by the owner. Apparently she was too depressed to work more than two hours a day, but well enough to cash checks and use royalty money for her personal expenses.

What puzzled me about some of the comments in the blog post, though, were the authors who had received only one or two royalty payments... but who had six or eight books (they specifically mentioned books, rather than short stories) with AMP. That's a lot of books to submit to a publisher which isn't making regular payments. I hope they manage to get their rights back - difficult at best with a publisher which isn't responding to even certified mail - and find a better home for their books.

On that note, the former senior staff of AMP set up another press called Musa Publishing. Although it may be better if writers wait and see how this press does in the long run, Musa has the same great cover artist and a good contract as well.

After the ordeal that was AMP, its writers and editors alike deserve a happy ending.

Edited to add : There's a Part 2 to the story. Authors who received their letters of rights reversion in the mail are still seeing their books offered for sale on AMP's website. The wheels have really come off the bus there.

I have no idea when or how this will end, but at least spreading the news will mean fewer people buying books that are being illegally sold, books for which the writers are not being paid.

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Hematology rotation

I once said that the two most challenging disciplines in Medical Laboratory Sciences, for me, were the ones beginning with H. So it’s a good thing I’m getting these over with at the start—and Histology actually wasn’t that bad. The first week of Hematology has left me feeling a little wiped out, though.

Hematology is the study of blood, which is partly why there’s so much more of a workload in this particular lab. Not everyone gets biopsies or Pap smears done, but everyone has blood tests. As a result, techs work around the clock. I’ve been on the seven-to-three shift, but that’s fine for a morning person like me.

For the first week I helped run the analyzer. That does the work of testing the specimens; what the technologists do is to interpret the results. Which ones are significant? Are they consistent with the patient’s previous results? What follow-up work needs to be done? Can a result be released if the analyzer has flagged it? When do we need to call in critical values?

And all these decisions need to be made in seconds. At first I didn’t know how the technologists managed to do that so fast—especially given that the screens are full of information—but towards the end of the week I was getting a little better at it. I also set up further tests with the blood and did all right. Though there seems to be a real scarcity of chairs in the heme lab, so I usually trudged home with aching feet.

On the other hand, I found out that the technologists like to get normal samples to use for comparison purposes, and will give student a meal voucher in exchange for some. And as you guys know, I adore freebies. So I let them take my blood and they let me run it on the analyzer, which was very cool. The technologists also proclaimed me “disgustingly healthy” after seeing the printout, so they might be tapping me like a maple tree in the future.

Next week I’ll be in Coagulation, monitoring all the ways things can go wrong with the intricate systems of blood clotting. That’s OK, but I also found out that the certifying exam I have to take in February will cost $499. See why I love freebies?

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Thomas Nelson : Send referrals to vanity press

A year or so ago I signed up for Thomas Nelson’s book blogger program (called BookSneeze), and now I request occasional copies of their books to review. The books arrive quickly, there are no obligations to give a positive review and I’ve come across more than one keeper this way.

But a few days ago, the BookSneeze team sent me an email titled “An Exciting Offer from Our Friends at WestBow Press‏”.

Houston, we may have a problem. WestBow Press is Thomas Nelson’s vanity-publishing arm, and made it to the top position in my list of the most expensive ways to be printed. So I thought they were offering me a chance to see my work in print for $999 and up.

Wrong.

Use your blog to earn revenue and guide Christian writers. As a BookSneeze® Blogger, you are passionate about books.

But as a writer, I’m passionate about writers being paid for their hard work.

The WestBow Press Affiliate Program rewards influential bloggers like you with $100 for every referral you make, once that referral publishes their book.

…

Well, obviously they’ve never read my blog.

I’m fine with earning a little through my blog. Although I draw the line at Google ads and any content over which I have no say, I’m an Amazon affiliate and promote Swag Bucks here as well. On the other hand, that’s because I use both Amazon and Swag Bucks myself, and like the services they provide.

But there’s no way in hell I could promote WestBow Press as a good thing when writers will be $999 poorer right off the bat. Even the ten free paperbacks they get with the cheapest package aren’t entirely free. According to WestBow, “Packages include the cost of the free books, but you’re responsible to pay the cost of shipping and handling.”

Why doesn’t the email suggest I refer writers to Thomas Nelson? Wouldn’t that be a better choice for writers than a vanity press asking for a grand at the very least?

Use your blogging influence to empower others, and earn something for yourself in return. Since there's no added cost or effort required on your part, every published referral is pure profit for you.

I’m not interested in being a Judas goat for any amount of profit.

Other bloggers, especially if they aren’t aware of WestBow’s exorbitant prices, may well sign up for this. But I also hope this attempt to get referrals indicates that vanity presses are feeling the pinch as more and more writers resort to affordable self-publishing instead.

And that’s just fine by me.

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The Write Agenda : Soliciting donations to burn books

Writer Beware is a watchdog group which collects information on the publishing industry and on literary scams. Its founders, Ann C. Crispin and Victoria Strauss, are multi-published authors as well as being honest and helpful to other writers - and I'm speaking from experience there.

So of course the scammers try to discredit what they say. Normally such bad-mouthing is best ignored, but when I read Writer Beware's latest blog post, a follow-up seemed called for.

Because there's a hate group calling itself "The Write Agenda", and it's called for a boycott of books from anyone who criticizes it. Or criticizes scams, in general. Perhaps that's why I'm on the list too. At least I'm in good company.

I'm not sure what this list is supposed to achieve. Maybe if "The Write Agenda" was a huge group of librarians, booksellers, etc. it would have some effect, but right now it's an anonymous person or persons who can't seem to do more than conduct a half-assed smear campaign. Despite its many claims, websites and sockpuppets, "The Write Agenda" doesn't seem to attract much support (its Facebook page, for instance, has 32 likes).

Anyway, if I were that easily intimidated I would never have left the Middle East.

Not that that's all, though. According to another writer, "The Write Agenda" posted one-star reviews of its critics' books on Goodreads, though these have now been removed. And "The Write Agenda" also wants to burn its critics' books, so they're soliciting donations.

Sadly, they don't have a Photoshopped picture of a collection bin with my name on it, but maybe they'll buy a few copies of Before the Storm anyway. If anyone's doing a Fahrenheit 451 on the books of people who tell the truth about scams, I don't want to be left out. And if money's tight, "The Write Agenda" can always get e-copies.
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