Not dead yet!

So it’s been a while.  I don’t really have a good excuse, other than…well, we’ve been busy, here in the Abbot Lab.  Eusociality is off in Costa Rica doing something with ants, IDEK. soldiermorph and gallfungus are second-semester seniors and are solely interested in graduating. doctorlouse is her usual awesome self, but we’re not giving her much support here with the blog.

And I’m writing a manuscript, and I’m almost done, no really, ALMOST.

I’ve been almost done for two weeks, so it’s clear how the last little bit is going.

I also have almost wrapped up my medical drama of the last year. I don’t think I wrote about it much, but I was visiting the ER about once a month for syncope episodes of some severity, including two ambulance-worthy events, two experiences with trauma teams cutting off my clothes (something to avoid, if you have the opportunity), and three admissions, the last one for two days (of utter boredom). BUT I have a real diagnosis of Mast Cell Activation Disorder, lots of antihistamines for management and an epi pen, so it’s nice to be on the treatment side of things now and not the waiting-for-shit-to-happen side.

As a result, though, it hasn’t been my most productive year. But with my Zantac/Zyrtec/Cingulair cocktail and a tapering off of doctors’ appointments (two more outpatient procedures and I’m done), I can hopefully turn that around soon.  There’s been one odd side effect, though: my circadian clock seems to have…shifted.  I’ve always been a morning person, most productive before about 10am, happy on five or six hours sleep. As this disease has progressed, I’ve been sleeping through three alarms a morning, late for anything that happens before 9am, and generally looking like a slacker. But, aside from mast cell flare-ups (which knock me out for like 12 hours after), I also can’t fall asleep most of the time til like 2. So I think I’m going to have to give up on the 9am thing and shift my lab schedule accordingly. Frustrating.

Anyway, this post is just to say that we’re on semi-hiatus, but I haven’t given up, at least. Hopefully eusociality and I will keep things going strong in the summer — and maybe doctorlouse will even give us a couple updates on her summer research at Michigan!

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