The Cold and Fever Within

Last Thursday, all the kids woke up with a sore throat.  I was delighted.

Not that sickness was good news, but that they all were getting it at the same time.

Let me tell you a story:

Waaaaaay back before I had kids, I was an immunology research lab technician. I had a particular talent for cell culture.  I had excellent aseptic technique.

My technique was good enough that I was able to do intracellular culture in human cells in a bacteria lab without a laminar flow hood and my cultures were never contaminated. All of which just means that I know what it takes to protect something from viruses and bacteria.

Back when I had all little kids, my worst nightmare was a stomach bug.  So when a kid got sick, even though I knew it was likely a highly contagious, super tiny norovirus that would be impossible to contain without a hospital's isolation unit, I had to try.

Using absolute best possible practices, maintaining strict isolation and using copious quantities of bleach, I achieved the following: I delayed the spread of the stomach bug so that, 12-24 hours after one child stopped vomiting, the next one started. And we were sick for a solid month. To add insult to injury, the severity tended to increase with each child.

I don't regret trying, because I had to know if it was humanly possible.  It isn't.  The only way to have only one young child get a stomach bug is to have only one young child.

After that, as soon as one kid got started, I encouraged them all to group hug, and give the sick one lots of kisses.  When they're sick, faster is better.

Back to the present day, I was delighted that they were all getting the cold at the same time, and that they were likely to be all over it by Thanksgiving (we can't visit my folks if we have a respiratory infection).  Alas, this took a turn for the feverish, and on Saturday, 6 of 8 had high fevers.  Today, 7 of 8 have low fevers (I got the fever early and am over it - a brilliant move on my part, since I need to make large quantities of tea right now).

I'm not sure what will happen for Thanksgiving, but, on the bright side, no one feels awful, just feverish, stuffy, and sneezy, so we've been having a nice time relaxing together!

The Simian Crease Vs. The Hand of Power

There's an even funnier addendum to the story of my birth!

Remember how I got diagnosed with Down's Syndrome because of my simian crease?  This picture of my hands shows this crease.

If you look at the top crease, on my left hand it curves up before it hits my index finger.  That's a normal crease.  On the right hand, it goes straight across.

It's called the simian crease because that's the way monkeys' hands crease (I know, very flattering!).  People with Down's really do have this crease on both hands, so it is sometimes used as an early possible identifier.

When I was working at JHU, everyone in the lab spent long hours running experiments.  It was a favorite past time to chat with your lab mates while you pipetted hundreds (or thousands) of tiny wells, hoping that one would be the clone/antibody/T cell/tumor that would make your experiment a success. These meandering conversations with lab mates from all over the world were one of my favorite parts of the job!

One day, I was pipetting away, chatting with my friend Leon, whose family was from China, and I told him the story about the Down's diagnosis and the simian crease.

Leon: WHAT?!  Let me see your hand!!

Me: Ummmm.... Okay (I take off my gloves and show him).

Leon (shaking his head in shocked disbelief): Don't you dare EVER call that a "simian crease!"  That's the Hand of Power!

Me (totally sure he was joking): The Hand of Power?!

Leon: Yes! The Dowager Empress had that exact pattern on her hand, and it was called the Hand of Power.  It was believed that if she slapped a man with that hand, he would fall dead at her feet. She was the most powerful woman in Chinese history... "Simian crease!"  I can NOT believe you were calling it that!


This didn't occur to me until now: Leon was a double doctor (an MD, PhD), so really he didn't just give me a different perspective, technically, he gave me a different diagnosis.

Which makes the moral of the story: always get a second opinion!

Or, possibly: don't make me slap you!

Chemistry: Forces and Attraction

This class focused on molecular interactions, but we also talked about gradients and chromatography.  With kindergarteners?  Sure, they loved it! 

First up, it was the first warm day of early spring, and the kids came in with a ton of energy!  I had them hold their arms down by their sides and run around in the relatively small space of the kitchen.  Amazingly, no one bumped into anyone.

Then I had them repeat that trick with their arms held away from them.  Of course, they were bumping and tangling all over!

I explained that some molecules were smooth, and some had "arms" sticking out.  The smooth ones tended to glide past each other without interacting, and the more branched molecules tended to get stuck on each other.  I used the example of alcohol (which is "thinner" than water) and oil (which seems "thicker," but is actually less dense than water).

We also talked about the speed the molecules are going (with more heat, the molecules are moving faster and are more likely to interact). Lastly, I told them that some molecules have a small electric charge, positive on one end and negative on the other (polar molecules).  These charges attract each other, and cause the molecules to stick together a little.

The most common of the polar molecules is water, and the easiest way to observe it is to look at surface tension!  I had intended to show them a cup with water brimming over the walls of the glass, but I missed that some how.


I had a large bowl filled with water and ten toothpicks floating in a group on the surface.  I dipped the tip of another toothpick into dish soap, and the kids took turns touching the water between  the toothpicks with it.  The soap breaks the molecular bonds of the water (that's how soap works, it breaks the bonds of the dirt) and the toothpicks fly apart as the water draws away from the broken bonds.

Then I gave each kid a square of wax paper and dropped drops of colored water on the paper.  They each took a wet toothpick and poked and played with the water droplets.  I think, if I had let them, they could have spent the entire half hour playing with the drops!  It's quite fascinating to see the little spheres connect up and roll around the paper.

Next we set up a chromatography experiment to demonstrate capillary action.  I had cut strips of paper towel marked with a pencil line 2 inches from the end.  I gave each kid 3 strips, and they traced each line with a different colored (water based) marker.   Then the put the ends of the strips into jars with a little bit of water.  The idea is that the water level is below the colored strip.  The water rises by cappilary action, and separates the dyes from the markers (and looks super cool!).

After that, I set out squares of foil, each with a small pool of colored water.  Unlike the wax paper where the water balled up, the water on the foil spread out into a thin layer.  Then I went around and dropped (with an eye dropper) alcohol into the center of the water.  The water drew back and shimmered along the edge of the alcohol!  It's an amazing effect!

To show a little more about the differences and significance of surface tension, I plugged two straws with clay (on one end).  One I filled partly with colored water (you can't see the level if you don't color it), and one with colored alcohol.  Then I turned them both upside down in the sink.  The alcohol ran out immediately, but the water (which has much greater surface tension) stayed put in the straw no matter how long we held it upside down!


 Lastly, I took a tall thin jar and filled it partly with colored water.  Then I tilted the jar and slowly poured in alcohol.  The less dense alcohol forms a layer on top of the water. Then I dropped small drops of cooking oil into the jar.  They formed tiny perfect spheres in the interface between the water and alcohol. 

If you wanted to, you could make an impressive stack of density gradients.  You could use a layer of dark corn syrup, then dish soap, then water (maybe color the water?), then oil, then alcohol.  The trick to getting a smooth gradient is to tilt the jar and pour slowly.

We used to make continuous concentration gradients in the lab by layering different concentrations of sugar solutions and letting them meld over night.  You couldn't see any layers! What good is that?  You use it to sort messy combinations of proteins.

You would layer your proteins on top of the "stack" of gradients and then spin the whole deal in a centrifuge.  The different proteins would "find their level" in the different densities, and you could remove just the one you needed.

Meating the Budget Part 2

I know what you're thinking: Didn't you ever take microbiology? What are you thinking handling spice jars and raw chicken!

You're right, no job is complete without clean up! I like to use those disinfecting wipes, but a 10% bleach/90% water solution works just as well. This time I had neither on hand, so I wiped everything down with alcohol (must be at least 90%!). Don't forget the counter, the sink and the faucet!!

And I dumped the apron directly into the wash.

If you always presume that all chicken is covered with salmonella, it will keep you honest with your clean up and you'll never get sick. Just clean everything the chicken touched and everything that touched anything that the chicken touched, and well, you get the idea!

I often think of a lab mate at JHU. He was a 3rd year MD/PHD student and he was tapped to teach first year med students basic laboratory safety. He taught them all abut the importance of wearing gloves and aseptic technique... and after they left, he cleaned up from the lab without gloves.

He ended up in the hospital with a bad infection from the s. aureus he had been using in his demonstration.

Oops.

But it taught me a lesson: clean up is not about looking good; be careful every time!

Let It Go

There was this guy who worked in the lab across the hall. One day I happened to be over there running some lengthy assays on their equipment and we started talking. This happens a lot in a lab. Experiments often take great gobs of time where you are either standing around watching or doing some brainless work that takes forever. So you talk a lot and you get to know your colleagues really well. One of my favorite things about the job.

Anyway, this is what the guy told me: His elementary school gave out awards at the end of the year, you know the type: most improved, perfect attendance, most trips to the nurse, whatever. He decided, at the end of second grade, to go for perfect attendance the next year.

The boy had a goal and he never wavered. No matter how sick he was, no matter what vacation his family wanted to take, no matter how nice the day, he was bound and determined to have Perfect Attendance. His eye was on the prize and he made it! Perfect Attendance! That fateful Last Day of School he sat on the edge of his seat as they handed out the prizes... he waited... he waited... They forgot the Perfect Attendance prize. They just forgot. No one had noticed his Perfect Attendance.

Unbelievable! Outrageous! It's a rotten, stupid, unfair thing to have happen... when you are 8. This guy was an MD and a PhD at one of the most prestigious institutions in the world. He was happily married to a lovely woman and they had two beautiful children. He was young and healthy. He had everything going right in his life and he was still genuinely mad about not getting that Perfect Attendance certificate when he was 8!

That's when it hit me: those rotten, stupid, unfair things that I was mad about from my childhood, I was never going to stop being mad about them until I made the decision to forgive the people and LET IT GO.