magic mountains

The mountains I see here are stacked with shantytowns. Incubators for resistant tuberculosis.


I'm listening to:
PJ Harvey- Live at the Royal Court Theater

esta muy

Truth is, I don't really know how to make a blog that's relevant or fixed in time or interesting. Maybe that's Mrs. Smith's final curse: not only am I petrified of showing others my writing and permanently self-conscious regarding word choice and syntax, but now I can't even put together the means to document my year abroad.

So it's quite an honor to be in South America visiting this solid public health infrastructure system about which I've read so much over the last few years. An honor and also scary as I prepare to move to Africa in the hopes of paralleling the work of 8 people over 2 years mostly by myself over 10 months.

Yesterday found me stretching my Spanish to heretofore unheard of limits as we combed through all the various databases and spreadsheets through which they track the 300 patients enrolled in my study. After lunch we went to two clinics to comb through patient charts and clarify the precise dates for TB episodes, medication starts and switches, sputa collections, oh my!


I'm listening to:
M.I.A.- Arular

I read Into the Wild this week after hearing this thoughtful piece on NPR Wednesday. I do wonder whether it qualifies as chicklit for boys? I plowed through the book with the same angst to have finished reading it as I did reading Devil Wears Prada. I had a nice time, but I can't help but think that there's too much selection bias in all the case studies Krakauer includes in his analysis of Chris McCandless' personality, something about how people wandering off and being swallowed by the wild happens more than once a generation? I would make a more personal statement about entering the wild myself, but that would be too easy. And also, false.


I'm listening to:
The National- Boxer
trying, but failing, to enjoy.

Stephin Merritt - The Wheels On The Car

I recently road-tripped it to Austin. I am both happy and sad that I didn't have an MP3 of this lovely Stephin Merritt ditty:

Sad because it would have made a more appropriate theme song than Golden Skans by the Klaxons, but happy because I might have gone batshitinsane singing the wheels on the bus for an entire week.

Immunodeficiency Cheater

Maybe it could just be all about age of presentation. For instance, common variable immunodeficiency (CVID) and Bruton's x-linked agammaglobulinemia are both B cell imunodeficiencies associated with recurrent bacterial infections by encapsulated organisms. Whatever the pathophysiology, Bruton's presents after 6 months when maternal antibodies disappear, whereas CVID presents in the teens/20s.

More to follow.


I'm listening to:
MSTRRKRFT- The Looks

In other news, CGD is a deficiency in NADPH oxidase diagnosed with a negative NBT and is prophylaxed with continuous TMP-SMX to prevent SNAS infections. It's all coming back, it's all coming back to me now. Celine, where are you to serenade me?