Saskia is fascinated that C1q->C1qr2s2->C4bC2->C4b2b->C4b2b3b->C4b2b3b5b67->C5b6789n leads to lysis of a bacterial cell.

So simple it's almost retarded.

As scared as I was at the beginning of the semester, I am very much in love with immunology. This semester is really telling me that my future could very well lie with infectious diseases, public health, etc. Stay tuned.


As to the above heading, that is the classical complement system that works in conjunction with your antibodies to head off invasion of pathogens. It's really quite neat, in a totally "micromanager" kind of way. Here is a fun little video that shows the process with neat little 3D models:





You can really give yourself a major headache if you stop to think about how minute of an action it really is for these silly little plasma proteins to swim around in our blood and chance running into each other to build these slightly larger complexes that can then find their way (again by chance) to some nefarious microbe that they will bind themselves to and proceed to burrow a fun little hole into it's side. But not just one hole, oh no. These nasty microbes can deal with one eensy weensy little hole. No, these complement proteins have a system for making many many holes all in a relatively short period of time. Once their main protein complex is built, they can just continue to make the same "tail" portion over and over, which breaks off and re-attaches to the microbe's cell wall to build the little hole. The official term for the hole-building portion is the Membrane Attack Complex. Don't know why I love that. The Membrane Attack Complex (MAC) inserts Over and Over and Over until the cell essentially fills with extracellular fluid and lyses (breaks open and dies)!

The other mind-blowing portion to all of this is the simple (or not so) ability of the complement system to recognize pathogenic cells. Could you imagine if your body couldn't recognize what cells were it's own versus invaders?! (I smell an autoimmune disease in our midst!) Your body would essentially attack it's own cells and you would die. Crazyass stuff.

Alright, that's all I've got for you tonight. I'm busy fighting off an infectious agent of my own...a nice doozy of a head cold. Nothing that a little NyQuil can't fix. Sometimes you just can't wait for your body to get into gear.

Note to self: Do not get sick enough to be "admitted" to island hospital.

As an avid reader about infectious diseases in third world countries, I am familiar with the concept of sub-par medical facilities. My experience last night made a concept into reality.

A very close friend called me last night, asking for a ride to the hospital because he had been feeling ill for the last couple of days and had recently begun vomiting blood. I rushed over to pick him up and thus began our 5 hour tour of the St. Kitts hospital system (and I use the term "system" rather loosely).

Upon arriving at the hospital, we were greeted by...nothing. No reception area, no signage, just a door to the left marked emergency. Inside there was the remnant of a reception desk that I am sure at one time was used as such, but not for some time. People filled all of the chairs in the large reception room, perhaps about 40 people total. No AC, no open windows for ventilation, no air exchange whatsoever. I tried my best to limit touching anything - including people - to a minimum.

After waiting around 45 minutes - asking for help twice - our other friends finally arrived who took it upon themselves to turn the hospital upside down for a doctor. By this time our school nurse, previously unavailable for "personal reasons", had contacted the hospital and made sure to inform the doctor that we were there and needed to be seen ASAP. A nurse ushered my friend into a back room, whereupon the entire waiting room erupted into a riot about the stupid white kid getting helped before them. Never mind the fact that I had already mentally triaged them all, and I promise you he was the worst of the bunch. But we were white, and therefore devils. It was a rather tense hour.

My friend had a 103 fever, and was admitted to the hospital for tests and fluids. What can I say about his quality of care? Let's just say, I won't be running to the hospital any time soon. And sterile does not seem to be in their vocabulary. And nasal gastric tubes don't require any anesthetic agent to insert. Wow.

Long story short, my friend recovered after two nights of fun on the St. Kitts hospital's private ward. The nurses were quite amused at the sheer number of students that came to visit him. He was released Saturday, and is doing very well now.

For those of you who are curious about what caused the hematemesis? The best answer we could get is irritation/erosion of the lining of the esophagus or stomach. I was shooting for Dengue fever, especially after he broke out in a rash while waiting for his IV to be put in...but alas it is merely GI upset. Guess we'll just have to keep waiting to see who breaks first with a tropical disease!

The Unveiling.

All it took was a night at home alone and 4 Caribs....but the room is clean, neat, and tidy. Well, except for the bathroom. What?! I can't reinvent the wheel overnight.

Here are some pics for those of you sitting at home dying to see where I now live. The sheets are a St. Kitts specialty, since my bed is conveniently a queen size and I was expecting a double. A nice surprise despite the need to spend terrible amounts of money on very low thread-count sheets. With flowers on them. Almost too chipper for my mornings.

The bed of a 12 year old girl.

Door to the bathroom and to the right of it is the closet.

Desk/chair at left, typical St. Kitts dresser on right. And by typical, I mean made with such quality that the two bottom drawers fall straight off their glides if I open them farther than 4 inches.

Bathroom ceiling, super fun. I tell you it's everywhere!

Tried to get a good shot of my shower. It's not very easy in such a tight space. Essentially, I could fit my entire lab group in there....should I be so inclined. Ha ha.

Walk-in closet.

Shelving on the other side of the closet, lots and lots of storage space!

Week 2 and still alive.

So I've already broken my promise and went three days over my proposed blog-writing schedule. Sorry.

A few updates...


The White Coat Ceremony was held the first day of school, and my precious little vet preppers from last semester were officially inducted into The Welcome-to-the-Rest-of-Your-Life-HA! Club. Little do they know what is in store for them....

Kristen (#3), Chris, and Nicole. Triple Dose of Trouble.

I finally took a few minutes and snapped some shots of the apartment. I have a STOVE!! Yay for baking! So far we've had very few problems (knock on wood)....the plumbing is a bit noisy (I can hear the kitchen water gurgling in my shower) but otherwise all is good. I especially like the ceilings, which are like that throughout the apartment (even in the bathrooms!). I haven't taken any shots of my room yet; as most of you who know me know, I take my time getting sorted in new environments. Translation: my room is a mess.

Not a great environment for anyone on LSD probably, but it works for us!

Living room. Spacious enough for us not to tumble over each other. The TV is just a prop, no cable and we can't get the DVD player to work. The couches all fold down to flat pillow-top beds. And under those horrendous covers they are really quite nice-looking. Maybe we'll bother to take the covers off one of these days.

View of living room/kitchen from the K/Cristin's wing. You can see my room's door just to the right of the kitchen. I have putrid hospital green curtains.

Our fabulous ceiling!

In keeping with my attempt to be more open and get to know more people in life, I have met a number of nice nubes (short for newbies) through Jen. The firsties are an interesting bunch; most are seriously young (fresh out of undergrad) and act like they've never had to work hard a day in their life (in school, that is). They already have one prof ready to fly away (quite literally). Normally this semester is typically the largest due to May/June being when people normally graduate, however this group of firsties is abnormally large at 137 people. They are literally falling over one another. It will be interesting to see how their semester pans out.

Also through Jen I've met another current vet prepper in her class named Mark. Mark's birthday (23, what a young'n) was this past weekend, and we celebrated by attending Mr. RUSVM on Saturday night. Mr. RUSVM is a pageant of sorts held each semester. One male is nominated from each semester of students and they compete pagent-style. The judges are made up of professors from Ross. Things can get quite interesting, and as always in life...sex sells. Mothers, you might want to sheild your children from the following pics.

This is James, our semester's contribution to Mr. RUSVM. Here he is displaying his goods for the Swim Suit competition.

Apperantly he wasn't being entirely honest with his "goods". And yes, he threw that sock into the cheering crowd. Mmmmm.

It's getting hot in there. Gotta grab someone's beer.

This was a 'member' from one of the upper classes. His mother should be proud.

James in the talent portion of the night. He sang Total Eclipse of the Heart with gusto.

One of the upperclassmen, who had to be carried on-stage. He sang Under the Sea.

Evening Wear and final interview. I think the bowtie really spruces up the speedo.

Some final group entertainment.

Sadly, our James did not win (his title was certainly stolen from him). The guy in pink above won (3rd semester, I believe).

Back to Mark's birthday. Since I have a nice gas stove to work with now, I attempted to make Mark as birthday cake. As always, to make things hard on myself, I chose to make something from scratch. And even more difficult, to make Angel Food Cake from scratch. I call it "Ghetto Food Stamps Cake". I had to make a number of substitutions due to living on a rock in the middle of the sea AND choosing to bake a cake on a Sunday afternoon when NOTHING is open.

For those of you who bake (Tanya and Karola especially!), here are a few substitutions I made:

Recipe called for......................My substitution
Cream of Tartar.................................White vinegar
Vanilla Extract....................................Vanilla Rum
Sift dry ingredients with sifter.........Sift dry ingredients with a collander
Bake in a round bundt pan................Bake in a square cake pan with coffee mug in the middle

Initially the cake seemed to be coming around nicely. It didn't rise as high as expected, but the crust on the top seemed promising for success.

Action shot of cake cooking. The cup kept migrating up as the cake expanded. Hope there wasn't any lead paint present.

Post-bake shot of cake with cup.

Dissection of cup successful.

Mark at the ice cream shop with his cake and balloons (the people running the shop gave them to him...I love the color, goes great with his eyes).

Action shot of Mark cutting his cake. It was pretty spongy and resistant to cutting. Not a good sign.

Lateral view of cut piece showing completely NOT cooked well insides of cake. Despite this, these three hungry vet students ate every bite. Mark even had seconds, though I can't be sure that wasn't just an attempt to make me happy.

Myself, Mark, and Jen. Overall a successful birthday.

Just as another example of the twisted island I live on....

"A friend" went to the ATM the other night and got quite the surprise. Having just deposited his financial aid check, he was expecting a nice wad of cash available at his fingertips...somewhere in the ballpark of $15,000 EC. It seems the bank had another number in mind:

Yes, that is ONE MILLION THREE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY NINE THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY TWO DOLLARS. And twenty cents. Converted to US, that's $510,871.18. Unfortunately for my friend, the next day his account was back to normal. But for that few hours, he was a millionaire!

And with that, I sign off. Hope all of you have a wonderful week! Until next time, I leave you with my view at lunch this afternoon:

Don't hate me. I only get to enjoy this less than one hour a day. If I'm lucky.

Rainbows, parasites, and candy. Mmmmm.

Woke up to my first day of second semester around 7am...rolled over and glanced out of my window to a GORGEOUS rainbow stretching from the mountains to the sea. It was absolutely perfect, really well defined, and full of colors. There is seriously no other way to start out a super scary semester than with an omen full of happiness and color.

School has started off with a bang, three exams already coming in week #3. That's our hell week. From there they will come about once per week. Just happy we aren't scheduled to walk the clinic dogs that week!

Made friends with my parasitology prof today, discussed some of my parasite books with her. She mentioned an interesting one I'd like to find, Jewish Grandmothers and New Guinea Worms. Seems Jewish grandmothers used to make some crazy fish dish and sample it without checking the temp. Then they'd become infected with a parasite from the fish. Kinda makes me think twice about sampling raw hamburger before cooking it. Relax, I used to do that when I was a kid...before I became obsessed with parasites.

Physiology is everything I thought it would be and more. I cannot tell you how much I love that class. The prof is fantastic, a total ham, and the subject matter is surprisingly interesting. Who knew urine and kidneys could be so fun?

Gross Anatomy is basically same as last semester, thought with donkeys. Unfortunately we had to inherit donkeys from last semseter's group, so we will be dissecting the other side of the head, neck, and thoracic limb this week. They smell and squirt yucky liquid out at us frequently. Thank heavens I have my fancy schmancy new bright red coveralls that actually fit!

Haven't had the pleasure of Immunology yet, we start that class tomorrow. But I'm sure it will be a barrel full of laughs. (can you hear the sarcasm across the ocean?)

For those who care (and there are surprisingly a lot of you!), the car is all good now. Started up fine from the mechanic's, but the battery wouldn't hold a charge due to the 4 weeks of no use. So we spent the morning before our first day of school getting Kristin's car from the police station (I think most of you know THAT story!) and having a new battery installed in our "communal" car. We are now a 2 car household!

The apartment is super nice but could use some AC. We keep the doors/windows open when we're home, but now we have a major mosquito problem that quite often interrupts my sleep. I've taken to spraying myself down with OFF at night. Super attractive, but not nearly as bad as walking around looking like I have chicken pox because of all of the bites. And yes, I've fully investigated all of the wonderful parasites I can get from those bites. You don't want to know.

Lastly, but certainly NOT least....we found a secret treasure trove in the midst of dirty Basterre. A nice little shop that sells all of the candy from home, including my all time favorites:

Haribo Gummy Bears

Sour Patch Kids

Toblerone

Life is Good!

I will try to update the blog every Sunday night, and stay on top of it with the news of the week. But I can't make any promises, especially with hell week looming over my head. I enjoyed seeing everyone over break, and hope all of you are doing well!