The Best Combover Ever

So I'm sitting in my genetics class, listening to a lecture on thalassemia, a disease caused by low hemoglobin production.

This guy is talking about a patient he met in the 60's and has studied, so he's got to be pretty aged.

He has kindof curly hair, but only around the crown of his head. And he's attempting a combover. Unfortunately because of the curly hair, he can only cover about 20% of his bald spot with a curly tuft of hair.

It's pretty cool.

Genetics

This morning I had genetics.



Today we covered neurodegenerative diseases and their genetic causes. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, fontotemporal dementia, and some prion diseases... you know. And then we studied genetic anticipation, where the disease progresses each generation, as in Huntington's, myotonic dystrophy, and fragile x syndrome.

For the last part of our class (after 2.5 hours of lecture) a lady was invited to speak to us. She was a carrier for fragile x syndrome, and had a son and a daughter with fragile x syndrome. She was a previous medical student, and in her medical training in 1991 hadn't even heard of fragile x syndrome. When her son was born, they thought he was pretty normal, but he walked at a late age, and didn't start talking until later. Finally, after running genetic tests three times, they found that he had fragile x syndrome, the result of too many CGG repeats on the X chromosome.

The lady showed us pictures of her son, and explained the symptoms. She said that males with fragile x have large ears, long faces, and large foreheads. Her son likes to push things around, like push toys, lawn mowers, and snow shovels. He gets excited about social interactions, but gets nervous when he is actually in them. He sometimes throws a fit if he has to stand in line for a long time, or is somewhere he doesn't want to be. He needs help learning, and needs extra attention.

And then I was thinking... what kind of kid was I? What kind of (I don't think I'm completely an adult, but I'm probably not adolescent..) pre-adult am I? Do I have a genetic syndrome? Was I restless as a kid? Can I attribute my dislike of carrots to a genetic cause?

Almost in tears, the lady went on to explain how she and her son - whose name was "Anders" which is the German word for "different" - were looking for solutions, and hoping for medical advances.

It was a great feeling. I was sitting in a room with a bunch of future doctors and PhD candidates interested in medical advances. In the future, one of us might be involved with the solution to the problems caused by fragile x. And this woman knew that. It was an exhilarating feeling.

And then I came home. And although my genetics homework due on Tuesday is still as beasty as it was before class, it somehow just got a little more worthwhile.

Flight

I had a rather remarkable flight home this weekend.

My grandparents were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary, so it was important to them to have all of the grandchildren around. So my uncle and his family flew in from Indianapolis. And my other uncle flew in from Arkansas. My brother flew in from Austin. And I flew in from Boston. Ironically, my sister had a UVU volleyball game, and missed the luncheon, pictures, and most of the reception, although she was only 20 minutes away.

I arrived at the Logan International Airport at 5:55am after catching the first Silver Line bus to the Airport, which happened after I caught the first Red-Line subway of the morning, which happened after I walked 20 minutes through the dark streets of Cambridge to the subway stop because the buses here weren't running yet.

I got onto the 6:30 flight to SLC, and sat in my window seat. Tired, I dozed off, and only barely noticed that another young man sat down in the aisle seat. I caught a glimpse of two very tan legs, and heard "Oh hey guys!" as clouds of tanning lotion scent wafted obtrusively into my personal smell space.

And there she was. The Hoochie.



She rustled around as she prepared her purse, book, ipod, and other personal items for the flight. After takeoff, she pulled her book out of the seat-back pocket in front of her. I caught a glimpse of the title. "The Ethical Slut" as she opened the book and laid it on her bare thighs.

I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt, and reasoned that people could probably be slutty in their choice of ethics. Perhaps this book spoke out against those who - for example - were passionate vegans, then suddenly started eating meat again and became avid, aggressive Apple supporters. I could understand an author who spoke out against following fad ethics.

But she didn't take my benefit of the doubt.

I read the subtitle of the book: "A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities." I confirmed the fact that it was a real book after looking it up on Wikipedia. Although the cover looked more like this.

She read the opening page, turned the page, read for about 10 minutes, then with an exhausted sigh folded the corner of the page over, and put the book away. Groggily, I decided not to start a conversation with her, and fell into a restless slumber until we arrived in Salt Lake.

And then she got off the plane, on her way to her connecting flight to Las Vegas.

I hope her layover was long enough to get some reading in.

The Worst Thing Ever

So my time in Boston has been pretty pleasant.

And things are generally getting better. For example, when I moved in, I moved into an empty room with baby-blue walls. My roommate left me this cubby-hole thing, about four feet tall and two feet wide, with eight square-foot openings. And I found a lamp on the street. The lamp does have Ikea-syndrome, and doesn't exactly stand straight. And I just found a bed for free on craigslist. Super. So I have three furnitures in my room.

Today, I just got my Harvard ID, so I was down with my graduate group in Harvard Square..

SIDESTORY: So, my group of 20 future PhD students walk into the Harvard building and ask to be admitted into the elevators so we can go to the ID office. The two "bouncers" in front of the elevators deny us entrance, and request to see each one of our ids. The kid in charge of us says there should be a list, and that we are registered to come at this time. The bouncers tell us that he suspects that we might be trying to "pull something" and makes us individually register. After about 10 minutes of standing in line, someone runs a list down, and we can finally go in. The bouncer awards our group leader one point. When we arrive at the id office, a lady tells us that our appointment was for 5:00, not 4:50, and requests that we go back down to the lobby or at least to the stairwell. We don't dare go down to the stairwell. It was pretty crazy. But at least now I can go into the library and other secret Harvard places.

Anyway, after we got our ids, they took us to this Vietnamese restaurant in The Garage at Harvard Square. I think it was called Le's or something. At any rate, I was somehow convinced to order a xl-portion of Phở. In the future, I'll refer to Phở as "Fu". Anyway, I order this xl poriton of Fu, but right after I had ordered, the girl who had recommended it was like "Did you see what it had in it? Tripe and Tendons!" Thanks for telling me too late. Confidently, I assured her that I had eaten many crazy things. And that if the Vietnamese can eat it, I could probably eat it too.



I was wrong. They brought out this bowl about the size of my head. There was no way it was going to fit in my stomach. I started in on it bravely, and was able to manage eating the Fu noodles. But then I caught some tripe in my noodles, and it tasted like I was eating a cross between farm and octopus. Gross. And the tendon tasted exactly like I expected it to.. like a part of a cow you should throw away.

So, after a valiant effort, I picked up a chipstick and a napkin and fashioned a flag of surrender.

Bleh. This was the worst thing that has happened to me in Boston.

I only have on word to say:

Fu.