This is so fascinating:
This article is about the research being done in to how the human body interacts with the trillions of bacteria living in and on it.
Some snips:

Irritable bowel syndrome is not the only example of an illness that seems to have a bacteria-immune system component. Consider Crohn’s disease, which leads to perpetual gut ( Read more... )

If you already have an underlying medical condition that means you have to take medicine on a precise schedule and eat on a precise schedule, you do NOT get to forgo that schedule while you have the mother of all head-colds ( Read more... )

Being sick is bad enough. Getting a cold at a conference sucks. :(

Running!!!
Somewhat more than a year ago, I wrote about the last time I ran deliberately. Since then, I've run for the bus on occasion, and run to cross the street before the light changed, all of which are progress, but I've done no deliberate running. In January after I hurt my knee, I got new sneakers (Brooks), which are almost wide enough not ( Read more... )

From A Brief History of Time:

A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got ( Read more... )

Because several people have asked (thank you, I appreciate it), my mom is now doing "great", according to her. My current working theory is that she had some sort of extreme anxiety attack due to my dad being in town. To complicate it further, I think she's so far in denial about this that if I suggested this theory to her she'd get angry ( Read more... )

None of the doctors have expressed with any confidence any possible diagnosis of what might be wrong with my mom. I'm currently betting on lung problems - some tests are inconclusive but slightly indicative of pulmonary embolism, but there's nothing definite. She got oxygen last night, and that made such a difference to her that I think there ( Read more... )

This morning, we all (Mom, me, Nate, A. and his mom) met up for bagels, and we were all sitting around chatting and playing with Nate when my mom started coughing and acting like she was in some distress. She took a nitroglycerin pill, which is of course for heart problems, and appeared to get better. So we kept playing and chatting, and after a ( Read more... )

Happy spring, easter, oestre, narwaz, equinox, dameroxanne's birthday, etc. and so on ( Read more... )

Over the weekend last weekend, I got Nate's cold. I started getting better on Monday, but on Tuesday I was very obviously starting to get the bronchitis back. Today I'm coughing enough that it's making my head swimmy again. Yuck and double yuck. I coughed so much in our Tuesday staff meeting that my boss asked me if I had whooping cough. That' ( Read more... )