Yeah, so I know I haven’t blogged in a while, so here’s a mini life update.
On Monday my brother had surgery on his back. This is the second time he has reinjured his back (that’s 3 injuries in total.) That’s 3 surgeries in 5 years. This one appears to have been the most painful. It was also a different procedure. They fused two of his vertebrae together. Here is a link that discusses the basics of spinal fusion. His spinal fusion was for a disk problem. I could go on a tirade about the importance of taking care of one’s body and letting oneself heal properly after injury, but I’ll save that for another day.
Well, yesterday my brother sent me an angry text because I didn’t go visit him in the hospital. Instead, I opted to take time to dine and converse with some fellow entomologists and a visiting professor from Ohio. He has done some work with Belgica antarctica. (Remember this blog post?) Well, I’m pretty sure he was the Lee et al. from the papers I read for that prelim exam. Rick Lee has been to Antarctica several times and done several studies on this organism. He also talked about aquaporins. I started to get really excited when he brought those up, because the individual who discovered aquaporins (Peter Agre) also went to Augsburg for his undergrad, just like me! (This was several years before me, but it’s still kinda cool.) I also must mention that Agre got a Nobel Prize for his work with aquaporins? Aquaporins are the channels by which water passes through cell membranes. In his seminar talk yesterday (which was amazing), Lee talked a bit about cold hardiness and how insects respond to changes in temperature. Well, actually, he doesn’t just study insects, he studies other animals–even vertebrates!
Despite my brother trying to guilt me into coming to visit him, I stayed with my fellow academics and had some wonderful food, drinks, and conversations.
This evening I went to the hospital to visit my brother. Within minutes he was yelling at me and telling me to shut up. Any residual guilt I may have had about not visiting him yesterday disappeared. I was in his hospital room less than ten minutes, and it was just like living with him last year, just like he snapped at me at our brother’s wedding last month, and just like he’s treated me many times over the years.
(I could go onto another discussion about the prevalence of subtle misogyny in my paternal family and misogyny in general, but I’ll save that for another day, as well.)
Long story short: I belong in academia.
