I have a confession to make.
I am a Luddite.
I can finally admit it.
I probably should have realized earlier, but it didn't occur to me that I had a problem until last summer. That was when I was first accused of being a Luddite. I think the exact context of the exchange went something like this. I was in the passenger's seat of a friend's car, and his phone started talking.
"In one mile, turn left."
"Wow! Your phone's talking to you!" That was me.
"Yes. It's got a GPS."
"Wow! That's amazing! Look, it's telling you everywhere you need to go!"
"..."
My friend gave me a look that seemed to say, "Do you live in a box?" I was too impressed with the fact that a phone could be a GPS as well as a phone to care.
Later that day, we were watching TV, and in the middle of a program, he picked up the remote, and rewound. He rewound. On TV!
"Wow! You're rewinding TV! That's crazy! How do you do that?!"
"It's tevo."
"That's awesome!"
It was around this time that I got that look again, which I previously thought reserved only for conversations referencing pop culture. My buddy proceeded to inform me that I was indeed a Luddite. I had to ask what he was referring to, which is when I learned that a Luddite is someone with a lack of affinity for technological advancement, more precisely someone "opposed to technological change."
I scoffed. I'm not a Luddite! I know all about the internets!
If you're anything like me, you might seem like it's a bit of a stretch that my inexperience and amazement with technologies like talking GPSs and rewinding TV truly puts me in the Luddite category. After all, it's not that unheard of to still keep paper maps in your car, right? And own a VHS player?
According to my friend, these things are not just a little arcane, but possibly unheard of in this century, and I am seriously lagging behind the technological curve.
Sadly, I have slowly come to realize that perhaps this is true, and my condition is worse than I originally feared. My second inkling, after my original accuser planted the idea in my mind, came at work, some weeks later.
I was relatively new to my job, and for some bureaucratic reason, I had to fill out some forms and get certain people important information, like a copy of my social security card.
After delaying the inevitable for quite some time, I finally decided to suck it up and face The Fax Machine. Since I don't work on the main campus of NIH, the easiest way to get people important forms you perhaps shouldn't e-mail (like your social security card), is to fax them. Up until this point in my life (22 proud years), I had never used a fax machine. But how hard could it be? It's like a phone, only with a copier, right?
Wrong.
I made my way to the third floor of our building, where I found the fax machine in a deserted corner. It is small and black and unassuming. It has about five buttons, and a tiny screen with enough room for two lines of text.
I stared it down for a while.
Finally, I pushed some buttons. The machine seemed to be responding, so I pushed a couple of other buttons. Good. I could read the screen, and the green light was on, and everything seemed to be going okay.
I took my social security card and put in the place where it seemed paper should go. So far, so good. I hit the FAX button. Still good. Then, the machine swallowed my card. The briefest flicker of a doubt crossed my mind, but I ignored it. Fax machines are supposed to swallow paper, right? And then they give it back again, along with a nice confirmation of my fax, right?
As you can perhaps guess, this did not happen.
What did happen was that the fax machine made several angry beeps and clicks, then proceeded to show me a big glowing error message. My card was nowhere to be seen.
Uh oh.
I tried pushing some buttons. I tried prying the lid open. I tried faxing another sheet of paper. I failed to receive any positive feedback from the fax machine, short of several desultory beeps and clicks. Finally, I tried panicking.
Unfortunately, I was in the middle of a series of experiments and quickly needed to get back to the lab. I hastily made the science happen, all the while hoping no one else needed to use the fax machine.
I was in luck. Not only did I manage to not royally screw up all my experiments in my distracted state, but our building's all-knowing and all-helpful secretary was at her desk when I returned upstairs. I proceeded to explain my predicament in a halting and red-faced manner.
Somehow, and this is why she is the best possible secretary, she managed to make me not feel like a complete idiot for failing to use a fax machine (did I mention that it has four buttons?). Additionally, she had experience dismantling the fax machine and proceeded to do so in an orderly fashion, retrieving my social security card and then copying and faxing it for me, without once mentioning that perhaps I could have asked for help using such an advanced piece of equipment (she has since retired, and I believe achieved the secretarial equivalent of sainthood).
I feel the need right now to mention the vague irony here. A fax machine is what, fifty bucks? Maybe? On a daily basis in my lab I work with equipment worth several orders of magnitude more than that, advanced robotic equipment on par with what the pharmaceutical industry uses. I am the local "expert" on the FDSS (Functional Drug Screening System), and can competently use luminescent and fluorescent readers, flow cytometers, and a number of other specialized instruments. And yet, I can't figure out a bloody fax machine.
This second experience with "advanced" technology left me befuddled and, yes, averse to certain new technologies. However, I did my best to cope and forget about it.
Recently, however, the complete extent of my technological ineptitude has revealed itself.
I went to Best Buy with Brian a few weeks ago and didn't recognize half of anything in the store. I asked Brian where the regular TVs were and he gave me a funny look. "What regular TVs?"
"You know, the not flat ones."
Again with that look.
On a recent road trip, I was reacquainted with the possible technologies available in cars, like automatic windows and locks, trunk-opening buttons, CD players (not to mention USB ports for your ipod) and seats that can be adjusted in directions other than forward and back. Although I love Charlie (my car), he has nothing other than AC and a tape deck.
Last week, I managed to successfully use the fax machine at work on the first try. And just today, I finally uploaded pictures from the last eight months onto facebook.
And so, I am finally ready to accept the truth. Maybe I do live in a box...
May 16, 2011
May 8, 2011
Mel Earns a Nickname
For the past several months I have been frequently (but lovingly) irritated with Brian's inability to handle seasonal changes. You see, he has allergies. Our conversations are continuously interrupted by sniffles and randomly punctuated by sneezes. Tissues must be brought everywhere. He is always rubbing his eyes to a veiny shade of marijuana-high red.
Unfortunately for Brian, my initial sympathy and care-giving phase wore out around week three, and now mockery is the only remedy he gets from me. It's just too easy to make fun when someone's body reacts continuously to the "dangers" of fairly ubiquitous substances like grass, trees, and air.
Unfortunately for me, fate has seen fit to punish me for my callousness and ability to cope with vegetation's reproductive cycles. Karma has once again evened the score.
It started like this.
Tuesday night I was at home watching NCIS. My mom and I were curled up on the couch, me on the left, her on the right, and my dad occupied his usual chair. We were very peacefully enjoying a new episode and the last crumbs of dessert.
My mom was quite surprised then when the calm evening was suddenly shattered by my piercing scream.
Moments prior, I had felt something on my neck and thinking it was a stray hair, I raised my hand to brush it away. That was when I touched the hard chitinous casing of an insect, heard the flutter and click of wings, and then felt a vicious and painful sting. So I screamed.
A hasty jump followed as I quickly vacated my side of the couch to huddle and tremble on my mom's side. It took only a few more moments to flee the living room entirely, convinced that several feet wasn't far enough away to ensure my well-being. From the relative safety of the dining room, I frantically swatted at my whole body in case the perpetrator was still on my person, while my parents looked on, bemused.
"It stung me!" I cried, as explanation.
"What did?"
"I don't know! It hurt! Ow! It really hurts!"
I was very surprised by how much it hurt. And how it didn't really stop hurting. Meanwhile I hopped from foot to foot, gazing with teary eyes into the living room trying to locate the offender, shaking my hand vigorously and occasionally re-checking my body.
After what seemed like a long time, my repeated pleas and piteous state aroused in my mom and dad some form of protective parental instinct, so they got up, turned on the lights, and tried to find the perpetrator. I peered suspiciously in every corner from my vantage point ten feet away.
It didn't take but five minutes for the guilty party to show itself once more, this time buzzing ferociously onto my dad and with it's remaining strength stabbing it's inch-long stinger into his flesh (at least, it seemed like an inch long).
"Ow!"
I felt pretty badly, but also a little vindicated. See, I wanted to tell my parents, I wasn't making it up!
Luckily my dad has quicker reflexes than I do, and promptly brushed the wasp (since that's what it was, we discovered) off his arm and onto the floor, where he immediately stepped on it, ending it's miserable existence. Usually I don't condone the killing of anything, despicable or not, but this time I had a hard time being sorry.
Appeased, I washed my hand where I was stung (on the inside of my left index finger) and got some ice. We settled back down to watch the last quarter of NCIS, and I tried not to twitch too much at every stray breeze.
I began to understand why people flee so reflexively from stinging insects.
You see, this was only the second time I'd ever been stung by anything. My first experience was with a bee a few summers ago. I was out climbing and stumbled upon a nest at the base of a cliff. I skirted it, but not before a bee managed to wriggle under the flap of my left sneaker and sting me on the ankle. I screamed then too, and spent the next week with my ankle the size of a grapefruit, and about the same color as a pomegranate.
You might wonder why after such a reaction to a bee's sting I didn't consider getting tested for allergies. Truth be told, I didn't think it was that atypical of a response, and so far my record was one bee sting in 20 years, so I assumed I would be relatively safe for the foreseeable future. I didn't take into account the possibility of stings from other species of venomous insects, or the fact that fate is out to get me.
Upon finishing NCIS I started to load up my car. That was when I noticed my hand. My ring and pinky fingers had started to swell up nicely, as well as my knuckles. Uh oh. I showed my mom, who thought I should stay home for a while, but I insisted that with a bag of ice I would be fine to drive the half hour to Brian's. It had already been twenty minutes after all, and I wasn't going into shock. Reluctantly, she let me go.
Unfortunately, by the time I got back to Brian's, most of my hand had swollen, turned bright red, and was hot to the touch. I covered it ice and took some benadryl. Brian got home just in time to witness the effects.
"Look at my haannnddd!"
"Oh my god. I am taking you to the hospital."
"Nooooo it's fiiiine hun. I put ice on! Can I have a hug?" I then proceeded to fall over on the couch, nearly spilling the giant bowl of ice water in which I'd been bathing my hand.
Brian, with an admirable sense of priorities, proceeded to first document my predicament, so you can thank him for Exhibit A, sting post one hour.
Exhibit A
(This image really doesn't do the experience justice. In the light it's hard to tell how bright red my hand really was, and without the comparison of my other hand, you can't tell that it is indeed about the twice the size it should be. However, I do finally believe I earned my nickname Man Hands.)
Next, Brian and I proceeded to debate lovingly over whether I needed immediate medical attention. I will spare you the details, but I eventually convinced Brian that if I was going to die from this sting, I probably would've succumbed by now, and wasting three hours in the middle of the night in the ER for an extra dose of benedryl would do little to ease my suffering.
So we went to bed.
The next morning, I had difficulty using my swollen and painful hand, but luckily I wouldn't have to use it for much. For one, I'm right handed, and for two, I was leaving soon for a work retreat in Cambridge MD for two days, where my greatest concern would be lemon or chocolate cake for dessert (definitely chocolate). I was fairly confident that by the time I returned to real work pipetting and typing, I would have recovered.
That said, you try washing your hair and putting your socks on one-handed.
So I left for my work retreat that morning, and though it was fairly eventful, I will save it for a later post. I did, however, during the next day and a half, have the opportunity to discover even more challenges presented to the appendage-impaired.
Without my left hand (which became swollen beyond any possible use), I took an extra several minutes using the bathroom, getting dressed, and eating. I had to ask my roommate's help putting my hair up and getting my jacket on, and I had to pass on the chemists vs. biologists soccer game (yes, I know, you don't use your hands in soccer. However, my hand was swollen enough that any increase in blood pressure from things like exercise or lowering my arm below chest-level caused incredible pain).
Despite my attempts to ignore it, my engorged hand elicited many concerned looks and cooing from the older ladies in our party. At first I tried some cortizone cream for the itchy pain and a swath of bandages for the terrified looks of strangers. Unfortunately, contrary to my expectations, my hand continued to worsen during the course of the retreat until my wrist and my arm up the elbow were incredibly swollen, bright red, itchy, and painful to lower beneath chest-level.
Note: When I say incredibly swollen, I really do mean incredibly. You couldn't distinguish my knuckles, and the first joints of all my fingers touched while I held my hand relaxed. My palm was no longer concave but convex. I had to take my watch off and my forearm had a noticeable bump just by the elbow to where the swelling extended.
It was thus that I spent the majority of the retreat with my hand cuddled to my chest, my red swollen fingers grossly sticking out of a mass of bandage that covered my arm. There was nowhere I could rest my arm without the pressure of contact causing throbbing pain, so my shoulder and elbow became sore from holding my arm up, and I became incredibly self-conscious as I posed awkwardly every time I sat down around my coworkers.
By Thursday afternoon, after myriad concerned expressions and exclamations from passersby, I finally thought it prudent to contact my doctor. You may once again wonder why it took me so long, but due to an ignorance of allergic reactions, I presumed if I didn't die immediately, I was probably fine, and it's good for the character to just suck it up.
Luckily my doctor was available and immediately wrote me a couple of prescriptions.
Despite my earlier unconcern, my mother's, boyfriend's, and doctor's worries (not to mention the host of alarmed expressions that followed me everywhere) left me with a feeling of vague unease. The occasional sore throats and fevers weren't helping with that. I left the work retreat a little early.
Driving manual proved to be yet another challenging activity with one hand. Luckily my passenger spent much of the drive in the blissful ignorance of sleep, missing my terrifying attempts to steer with my knees while shifting with my one good hand.
Luckily, shortly after getting home Thursday evening, my hand started to feel marginally better. By that I mean I could once again wriggle the very tips of some of my fingers. Lowering my arm was still too painful. I got hold of my meds, namely prednisone, a strong immunosuppressant and anti-inflammatory drug. I took six.
By Friday, my hand was slightly less inflamed and I could type once again (not to mention almost make a fist). My first task: a hasty appointment with an allergist. I was, however, not in any position to pipette or handle my regular workload that sometimes consists of opening containers, so my boss helped me out and I left work early.
Now it is Sunday, nearly a week after my fateful sting, and while the swelling has gone down entirely, my hand remains rather painful, and complicated tasks like opening jars and tying my shoes remain rather challenging.
Despite the week's excitement, my near brush with possible death, and karma's attempt to teach me a lesson, I would still rather have allergies to wasps than trees.
UPDATE: I got allergy tested this past week to find out how badly I am allergic to wasps, and if this happens to be true for other stinging insects. It turns out that I am indeed allergic to wasps, yellow hornets, jellow jackets, white-faced hornets, and honeybees. That is also the entirety of the list of things they tested me for. I now can look forward to weekly and then monthly injections of venom into my body for the next three to five years. Fantastic.
This is arguably still better than tree allergies.
Unfortunately for Brian, my initial sympathy and care-giving phase wore out around week three, and now mockery is the only remedy he gets from me. It's just too easy to make fun when someone's body reacts continuously to the "dangers" of fairly ubiquitous substances like grass, trees, and air.
Unfortunately for me, fate has seen fit to punish me for my callousness and ability to cope with vegetation's reproductive cycles. Karma has once again evened the score.
It started like this.
Tuesday night I was at home watching NCIS. My mom and I were curled up on the couch, me on the left, her on the right, and my dad occupied his usual chair. We were very peacefully enjoying a new episode and the last crumbs of dessert.
My mom was quite surprised then when the calm evening was suddenly shattered by my piercing scream.
Moments prior, I had felt something on my neck and thinking it was a stray hair, I raised my hand to brush it away. That was when I touched the hard chitinous casing of an insect, heard the flutter and click of wings, and then felt a vicious and painful sting. So I screamed.
A hasty jump followed as I quickly vacated my side of the couch to huddle and tremble on my mom's side. It took only a few more moments to flee the living room entirely, convinced that several feet wasn't far enough away to ensure my well-being. From the relative safety of the dining room, I frantically swatted at my whole body in case the perpetrator was still on my person, while my parents looked on, bemused.
"It stung me!" I cried, as explanation.
"What did?"
"I don't know! It hurt! Ow! It really hurts!"
I was very surprised by how much it hurt. And how it didn't really stop hurting. Meanwhile I hopped from foot to foot, gazing with teary eyes into the living room trying to locate the offender, shaking my hand vigorously and occasionally re-checking my body.
After what seemed like a long time, my repeated pleas and piteous state aroused in my mom and dad some form of protective parental instinct, so they got up, turned on the lights, and tried to find the perpetrator. I peered suspiciously in every corner from my vantage point ten feet away.
It didn't take but five minutes for the guilty party to show itself once more, this time buzzing ferociously onto my dad and with it's remaining strength stabbing it's inch-long stinger into his flesh (at least, it seemed like an inch long).
"Ow!"
I felt pretty badly, but also a little vindicated. See, I wanted to tell my parents, I wasn't making it up!
Luckily my dad has quicker reflexes than I do, and promptly brushed the wasp (since that's what it was, we discovered) off his arm and onto the floor, where he immediately stepped on it, ending it's miserable existence. Usually I don't condone the killing of anything, despicable or not, but this time I had a hard time being sorry.
Appeased, I washed my hand where I was stung (on the inside of my left index finger) and got some ice. We settled back down to watch the last quarter of NCIS, and I tried not to twitch too much at every stray breeze.
I began to understand why people flee so reflexively from stinging insects.
You see, this was only the second time I'd ever been stung by anything. My first experience was with a bee a few summers ago. I was out climbing and stumbled upon a nest at the base of a cliff. I skirted it, but not before a bee managed to wriggle under the flap of my left sneaker and sting me on the ankle. I screamed then too, and spent the next week with my ankle the size of a grapefruit, and about the same color as a pomegranate.
You might wonder why after such a reaction to a bee's sting I didn't consider getting tested for allergies. Truth be told, I didn't think it was that atypical of a response, and so far my record was one bee sting in 20 years, so I assumed I would be relatively safe for the foreseeable future. I didn't take into account the possibility of stings from other species of venomous insects, or the fact that fate is out to get me.
Upon finishing NCIS I started to load up my car. That was when I noticed my hand. My ring and pinky fingers had started to swell up nicely, as well as my knuckles. Uh oh. I showed my mom, who thought I should stay home for a while, but I insisted that with a bag of ice I would be fine to drive the half hour to Brian's. It had already been twenty minutes after all, and I wasn't going into shock. Reluctantly, she let me go.
Unfortunately, by the time I got back to Brian's, most of my hand had swollen, turned bright red, and was hot to the touch. I covered it ice and took some benadryl. Brian got home just in time to witness the effects.
"Look at my haannnddd!"
"Oh my god. I am taking you to the hospital."
"Nooooo it's fiiiine hun. I put ice on! Can I have a hug?" I then proceeded to fall over on the couch, nearly spilling the giant bowl of ice water in which I'd been bathing my hand.
Brian, with an admirable sense of priorities, proceeded to first document my predicament, so you can thank him for Exhibit A, sting post one hour.
Exhibit A
(This image really doesn't do the experience justice. In the light it's hard to tell how bright red my hand really was, and without the comparison of my other hand, you can't tell that it is indeed about the twice the size it should be. However, I do finally believe I earned my nickname Man Hands.)
Next, Brian and I proceeded to debate lovingly over whether I needed immediate medical attention. I will spare you the details, but I eventually convinced Brian that if I was going to die from this sting, I probably would've succumbed by now, and wasting three hours in the middle of the night in the ER for an extra dose of benedryl would do little to ease my suffering.
So we went to bed.
The next morning, I had difficulty using my swollen and painful hand, but luckily I wouldn't have to use it for much. For one, I'm right handed, and for two, I was leaving soon for a work retreat in Cambridge MD for two days, where my greatest concern would be lemon or chocolate cake for dessert (definitely chocolate). I was fairly confident that by the time I returned to real work pipetting and typing, I would have recovered.
That said, you try washing your hair and putting your socks on one-handed.
So I left for my work retreat that morning, and though it was fairly eventful, I will save it for a later post. I did, however, during the next day and a half, have the opportunity to discover even more challenges presented to the appendage-impaired.
Without my left hand (which became swollen beyond any possible use), I took an extra several minutes using the bathroom, getting dressed, and eating. I had to ask my roommate's help putting my hair up and getting my jacket on, and I had to pass on the chemists vs. biologists soccer game (yes, I know, you don't use your hands in soccer. However, my hand was swollen enough that any increase in blood pressure from things like exercise or lowering my arm below chest-level caused incredible pain).
Despite my attempts to ignore it, my engorged hand elicited many concerned looks and cooing from the older ladies in our party. At first I tried some cortizone cream for the itchy pain and a swath of bandages for the terrified looks of strangers. Unfortunately, contrary to my expectations, my hand continued to worsen during the course of the retreat until my wrist and my arm up the elbow were incredibly swollen, bright red, itchy, and painful to lower beneath chest-level.
Note: When I say incredibly swollen, I really do mean incredibly. You couldn't distinguish my knuckles, and the first joints of all my fingers touched while I held my hand relaxed. My palm was no longer concave but convex. I had to take my watch off and my forearm had a noticeable bump just by the elbow to where the swelling extended.
It was thus that I spent the majority of the retreat with my hand cuddled to my chest, my red swollen fingers grossly sticking out of a mass of bandage that covered my arm. There was nowhere I could rest my arm without the pressure of contact causing throbbing pain, so my shoulder and elbow became sore from holding my arm up, and I became incredibly self-conscious as I posed awkwardly every time I sat down around my coworkers.
By Thursday afternoon, after myriad concerned expressions and exclamations from passersby, I finally thought it prudent to contact my doctor. You may once again wonder why it took me so long, but due to an ignorance of allergic reactions, I presumed if I didn't die immediately, I was probably fine, and it's good for the character to just suck it up.
Luckily my doctor was available and immediately wrote me a couple of prescriptions.
Despite my earlier unconcern, my mother's, boyfriend's, and doctor's worries (not to mention the host of alarmed expressions that followed me everywhere) left me with a feeling of vague unease. The occasional sore throats and fevers weren't helping with that. I left the work retreat a little early.
Driving manual proved to be yet another challenging activity with one hand. Luckily my passenger spent much of the drive in the blissful ignorance of sleep, missing my terrifying attempts to steer with my knees while shifting with my one good hand.
Luckily, shortly after getting home Thursday evening, my hand started to feel marginally better. By that I mean I could once again wriggle the very tips of some of my fingers. Lowering my arm was still too painful. I got hold of my meds, namely prednisone, a strong immunosuppressant and anti-inflammatory drug. I took six.
By Friday, my hand was slightly less inflamed and I could type once again (not to mention almost make a fist). My first task: a hasty appointment with an allergist. I was, however, not in any position to pipette or handle my regular workload that sometimes consists of opening containers, so my boss helped me out and I left work early.
Now it is Sunday, nearly a week after my fateful sting, and while the swelling has gone down entirely, my hand remains rather painful, and complicated tasks like opening jars and tying my shoes remain rather challenging.
Despite the week's excitement, my near brush with possible death, and karma's attempt to teach me a lesson, I would still rather have allergies to wasps than trees.
UPDATE: I got allergy tested this past week to find out how badly I am allergic to wasps, and if this happens to be true for other stinging insects. It turns out that I am indeed allergic to wasps, yellow hornets, jellow jackets, white-faced hornets, and honeybees. That is also the entirety of the list of things they tested me for. I now can look forward to weekly and then monthly injections of venom into my body for the next three to five years. Fantastic.
This is arguably still better than tree allergies.
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