Migraine Misery

Disgruntled Julie is very disgruntled this morning, indeed. You see, at some absurdly early hour, Disgruntled Julie was awoken from her nice cozy, rare state of hibernation with a searing, blinding headache -- a migraine. This is disgruntling enough on a normal day, but particularly so as Disgruntled Julie has just recently become aware of the effects of which her daily migraine medications are taking on her daily life -- AND THEN SHE GOES AND GETS A DAMN MIGRAINE. Fine, the constant tingling in the feet range from mildly annoying to "OMGIAMGOINGTOCUTMYFEETOFF" and the fact that my vision has gone from perfect and never needed glasses to squinting to try to see anything is a wee bit frustrating, but the memory loss, depression, somnolence, and ability to ONLY spell words phonetically (which I had always been able to spell perfectly fine up until a few months ago) seem to be a rather steep price to pay to STILL BE GETTING MIGRAINES. Yes, yes, I know, the point is that I now get them every other month or so, rather than every other week, and it is an improvement, but on my prior migraine medication I didn't get them at all! And the only side effect was that I gained 35 pounds in 3 months! I still stand by the fact that I'd rather wind up 400 pounds and migraine and other side-effect free, but alas, my doctor begs to differ that it is best for my overall health to not resemble a small whale.

And thus, this morning, I dragged myself out of bed, blindly tripped my way into the bathroom (have I mentioned that I get vision loss with my migraines? awesome!), found my Midrin, and begin the one-an-hour pill-popping procedure. By 8:30, I acknowledged that I was not going to be functional enough to make it to lab meeting, so I sent an e-mail off to my PI telling him as such, and crawled back to bed. With the pain, of course, I couldn't sleep, but laying there in the dark sure beat sitting through a lab meeting and having to pretend to be a human. But next thing I know (admittedly, a few hours later, but before the pain relief had kicked in and before I'm ready to face the day) -- the fire alarm for the entire condo building goes off. Because that is JUST WHAT YOU NEED during a migraine -- nice, loud bells and some super bright flashing lights, to boot. Can't a girl get a break around here? A nice, dark sanctuary to wait out her misery in peace? I mean, seriously. DAMN YOU ALL! And thus, not knowing if it was some kind of test or an actual fire, after contemplating burning to a crisp but deciding I couldn't handle the 20 minutes until they turned off the alarms, I speed dressed and worked my way down to the lab, where I can sit in misery slumped over my desk, and wait in an upright position with all the lights on for the Midrin to kick in. And the first person to ask with any sort of assistance with an experiment is getting a nice middle finger aimed in their direction, and some words to match. But please forgive me.... after all, it's not me.... it's the bitchiness from my fantastically working preventative migraine medication talking.

I Bet You Never Guessed....

I was tagged (a few weeks ago, I’ll admit) by the fabulously, amazingly witty Ellie over at The Lucky Nest in the “6 Random Things About Me” meme. On account of having to wait for the appropriate sized path-length cells to arrive for all the upcoming circular dichroism I will be doing, and the upcoming Jewish holidays (meaning I will be spending a few days out of the lab, so there’s no point in purifying the proteins that immediately begin to degrade roughly 0.2 seconds after coming off the column, if I won’t be in the lab every single day next week to use them), I’ve shockingly found myself with a few extra minutes to actually sit at my desk. Meme time!

The Rules:

1) I am allergic to mosquito bites. Seriously, seriously allergic. As in, each mosquito bite turns into a giant, rock hard, fiery hot welt that itches non-stop for the first day, and then becomes extraordinarily painful and swells to giant proportions and hurts like a bitch. I also attract mosquitoes better than anyone I know, which is apparently because I am extremely efficient at processing cholesterol, and the cholesterol by-product residues remain on my skin and attract said mosquitoes. It’s a lose-lose situation. Case in point, last Saturday, as in 10 days ago, I was outside on a deck with some friends enjoying a live band at a bar. My ankles are still so swollen from the mosquito bites I am still having difficulty walking and it is still painful, but at least after 6 days my resulting fever from the allergy went down.

2) I hate flip flips. Hate hate hate hate with a passion. Flip flips are appropriate attire at a beach or a pool, and nowhere else. I am well aware that 98% of the American population disagrees with me on this one, but there are so many footwear options that are far less hideous, and do not make the cringe-worthy thwack-thwack sound of flip flops. Loathe them.

3) I don’t drive. I mean, I can – I’m a legal licensed driver – I just very, very rarely do. When I was in high school, I drove on daily basis. But then I graduated from high school, and moved to D.C. for undergrad, and left behind my car. And at my undergraduate institution, next to nobody had a car, because a) you didn’t need one, and b) parking fees were astronomical. I think in all four years there, I knew precisely two people who had cars. And then I stayed in D.C. for graduate school, and continued my car-free existence. My husband has a car, but he is very distinct that it is HIS car, not OUR car. A big part of why I don’t drive is because I get carsick, even while driving, and I dread the day when my husband makes me pack up and move out of the city and into the suburbs where I’ll have to drive. I plan on retaliating by frequently vomiting in his nice new luxury car he will purchase for himself following the completion of his residency.

4) My favorite food in the whole wide world is eggplant. That’s pretty random, right? I mean, when you can pick from all sorts of delicious things like ice cream and goat cheese, who picks eggplant?

5) I am superbly tidy/organized. Our lab once tried to do a weekly “neatest bench” competition to try to encourage everyone to keep their personal bench space organized, but our PI gave up after a few weeks, because everyone realized that I would just win every single week, and I wasn’t even trying. It’s just how I am. Everything has a place, and that’s where it belongs. I secretly dread having children someday, because they are not going to keep everything where it belongs, and I don’t think I will be able to function.

6) I have foul fingers, but rarely a foul mouth. When I’m typing, generally because I am pissed about something and am venting to my best friend on GChat, I swear like a sailor. But in real life? Only when I have asked my husband three times to move the suitcase he left in the middle of the bedroom floor, and three times in a row I painfully stubbed my toe on the suitcase in the middle of the night (and the swearing was not so much at my husband, but the natural reaction to kicking the suitcase with my swollen, infected, mosquito-bitten toe).

Now, we get to learn 6 random facts about the following:

1) Amanda, over at A Lady Scientist, a fellow slave of the laboratory.

2) The Science Girl, at She Blinded Me with Science, kicking off the science aspect of her training.

3) Julie (with the Greatest Name Ever), at One Day At A Time, owner of the adorable Smartest Cat Ever! (and Meanest Boyfriend Ever, who is makes Smartest Cat Ever stay off the counters, couch, and all the exact places where a cat belongs!)

4) Southern Grad Girl, at The Grad Life, who should really think about weaning herself off caffeine!

5) physics*chick, at Mad Scientist, who I am convinced really must not do any work during the day, because I am amazed with the number of completed knitting projects she has on her Ravelry page!

6) You!

The Protein Nazi

Remember way back to May, when I had to drag my tired, though amazingly not hungover (but extremely exhausted) self out of bed at pre-dawn hours to be in the lab by 5am the morning after my bachelorette party to start an experiment? It sucked. After not getting home until after 3am, I knew how absolutely crucial this experiment was (as in, without the data from this experiment there was no point in applying for the grant), so I willed myself into the lab to set up the experiment. Since there is a long incubation time in the middle, I went back home where I found all my friend still asleep, crawled back in bed for a short nap, had brunch with my friends, and returned to the lab and was there until after midnight scrambling to finish all the data.

The data turned out to be gorgeous, and I emailed it off to my PI by 1am that night. He happened to still be up, working on grant for which the data was intended, and was so excited that he sent an email off with my data included to all the collaborators entitled “Amazing Grad Student Produces Novel Data!” and singing my praises in the body of the email. My PI expects very hard work, but he does pay compliments when they are due, and I did appreciate his recognition of the long hours I had just logged and the giant kink they had put in the weekend I was supposed to spend enjoying my bachelorette party with friends who had traveled in to D.C. specifically to spend the weekend with me.

Fast-forward several months, and my PI finds out that the grant was indeed funded. As such, he decided to take the lab out for a celebratory lunch. And so, right now, everyone from my lab is taking off part of the afternoon to enjoy a delightful sushi lunch in celebration of a collaborative grant with a lab at another institution. Note, however, that I am currently typing a blog post... indicating that I, sadly, would not be at the celebratory lunch. Because we’ve had a bit of turnover, and we’re a joint lab, over half the people at said lunch have had nothing whatsoever to do with acquiring the grant, while the person who dragged her tired, sorry ass into the lab and did the important experiment is still stuck in the damned lab purifying proteins which have to be done ASAP for an experiment for a paper which we are trying to push out rapidly. Yes indeed, my reward is that I get to babysit the purification system, pushing the #*%@&*! button every time the "electrical error! call for service!" message pops up.

Seriously, this happens all. the. time. around here. ALL THE TIME. On a whim, something will come up – a lab picnic, a trip to go berry picking, one of the PIs will decide to have everyone over to watch Turkey play soccer in the EuroCup tournament, and everyone else drops their experiments and runs, and all I hear is “Oh, Julie can’t go, she’s purifying her proteins.” WHY AM I THE ONLY RESPONSIBLE PERSON AROUND HERE?!?!

All I’m saying is that if my PI doesn’t bring me back some lunch, my freshly purified, crucial proteins are being held hostage. NO PROTEINS FOR YOU!

Time Is(n't) On My Side

Today, my PI introduced me to someone as a first year graduate student.

"Wait," I asked. "Do you mean to tell me that the past several years have actually all just been a horrendous nightmare?"

Oh, right. He re-introduced me as a third year graduate student.

"Try again." When he still looked confused, I pointed out that since July, I have been a fourth year. (I'm in one of those evil programs that starts in July, thereby sucking away the last possible summer of freedom you have until retirement.)

He buried his face in his hands, amazed at how quickly time flies and astounded that he could possibly be so old. I obviously know the feeling, as I haven't been able to bring myself to update my blog header to reflect my new fourth year status (that, and working 120+ hour weeks doesn't leave a lot of free time).

But between you and me, I was kind of hoping it was all one big nightmare -- because it sure would be easier to back out and find a new career path if I was only a few months into this program, rather than four years!