This Cave Woman Writes

Have I mentioned how much I love 23andMe? Of course I have. I've written about my DNA tests so many times that people in cyberspace know intimate details about my body like that fact that I have an innie belly button and my eyes are brown. Having 'brown eyes' isn't exactly an intimate detail but not having a second toe longer than my big toe is and that's one of the useless facts that was revealed to me by me spitting in a little tube and sending it off for testing. I did this several years ago and they keep sending me new discoveries as the science keeps unlocking the mysteries of our genes. It's mind boggling to think about the improvements in our healthcare system when they are able to isolate the genes responsible for certain diseases. They'll be able to target and/or totally eradicate some major heartbreaking conditions. Of course, I might not live long enough to see it happen but my nieces and nephew will. It's not that far off.

This week 23andMe sent me new information about my Neanderthal gene variants. I have 32% more of them than their other customers. There are 7,462 Neanderthal traits in genome and I have 228 of them in my DNA. I've written before that on their website is a forum for customers and I found a thread about having a lot of Neanderthal genes where people were joking around about how they have to trim the hair on their toes or put Band-Aids on their knuckles from dragging them around. One woman confessed that once a month she wants to tear her husband’s arms off and suck the marrow out of his bones and now she knows why. All jokes aside, Neanderthal variants supposedly come into play with allergies and infertility issues which has my name written all over them.

How does one get Neanderthal markers in their genes? This is what 23andMe says about that: "Genetic variant that evolved in Neanderthals and came back into the human lineage when the two groups interbred. Because you inherit variants from both of your parents, you can have 0, 1, or 2 copies of the Neanderthal variant at each marker. We report your total number of Neanderthal variant copies, which is therefore a number between 0 and 7,462. However, nobody has all 7,462 — the most we've ever seen in a 23andMe customer is less than 500."

One of the newest things 23andMe reported about my Neanderthal genes is that I have one copy of the marker rs7169404 which is associated with not feeling 'hangry' when I'm hungry. I so must have gotten that one from my dad's genes because my mom definitely changed dispositions when she went without food. I also got two copies of rs3807714 regarding a preference for sweet vs salty foods. Thanks Mom and Dad. I get to blame you both for passing on our ancient ancestors lack of will power when it comes to sugary and gooey deserts. And the fact that I look at eating salads like as punishment for overeating sugary and gooey deserts? I get to blame my Neanderthal genes for not liking leafy greens. Picture me beating my fists on my chest and shouting out that I love a medium rare T-bone steak almost better than I used to love sex back in the days when I was having both. I love meat!

(At least I think I used the word "Sex" far enough into this post that the internet crawlers won't find it and spam me with advertisements. One that used to spam before I learned not to use the 'S' word in the title of my posts flooded my comment section for a cream to "enhance my sex life.)

Okay, time to change topics. What else did I do this week? I've been busy. Twice I took part in a letter writing campaign to get out the vote for Kamala Harris and our group of 12 (known) democrats here in the CCC are going keep doing two sessions a week through mid-October. I also went over to our sister campus to play Mahjong and to nail down details on a Mahjong tournament that was my brainchild to do. What a lot of work involved! More on that in a future post.

Also on the calendar this week was an infusion for my bones. That was different this time because I was the only woman there out of the 15 stations aka La-Z-Boys where we sit while hooked up with the IVs. The guy next to me was so young, cute and buff that my curiosity was peaked as to why he was there but he never woke up the entire time. First time in the ten years that I've been getting infusions that I've ever seen anyone sleeping. My younger self wanted to crawl up in his chair and spoon him. I usually pretend to read while people watching at the infusion center, looking for blog fodder but this time the book I grabbed at the last minute kept me reading. I take a book based on its weight rather than its content and I had picked a 140 page book off my shelf titled, A Guide for the Perplexed. Copyright 1977. It's filled with yellow highlighter and my handwritten notes in the margins but for the life of me I can't remember this philosophical book. But by the time my infusion was finished I concluded that I must have been a lot smarter back in the 1970s than I am now.©

Until Next Wednesday...

Photo credit: On the 3rd of August 1908, the 3 Bouyssonie brothers discovered the first complete skeleton of a Neanderthal man and the first burial site.  The remains were first studied by Marcellin Boule from the National Museum of Natural History; he described this man as the missing link between man and ape.

Rain Storms, Infusions and Kissing Frogs

Okay, I’m bored again. Nothing new here so you might as well move along, find another blog to read or go sit in the sunshine or dodge some rain drops if that’s what’s happening on the other side of your window pane. Speaking of dodging rain drops, I tried to do that last week when I came home from the infusion center and the monsoons hit while I was on the road. It was so bad I could hardly see past the window-shield wipers that were going at full-bore. So I pulled off into the driveway to a condo community to wait it out and as I did a huge tree fell across the road I’d just pulled off from. Did I mention the wind? Had I stayed on the road, I would have been smacked flatter than a pancake. By the time got back to my own neighborhood I was so happy to be alive I decided to wait out a second wave of rain in the parking lot of a Tai Infusion take-out food place that I hadn’t been to since before the pandemic. Their front door was standing open and calling my name. 

I grabbed my umbrella but it wouldn’t open. Damn umbrella! It went in the trash when I got home. But sitting there I thought, what’s a few rain drops after my near-miss with the tree? Turns out it was more than a few rain drops. I got drenched but as stood under their store-front canopy waiting for my drunken noodles I’d never felt better. All around me was a fleet of lawn care trucks waiting out the rain but I had the canopy space all to myself. It seemed fitting that I should have ‘infusion food’---whatever that mean---after spending the afternoon with an IV line in my arm getting an infusion of a drug that should keep my bones glued together for another year. Now all I have to do it follow the post-infusion diet for the next two weeks. Lots of calcium rich foods, only one cup of coffee a day and for me that translates to eating a can of spinach every day like it was a bowl of ice cream after a bad break up with a boyfriend. I'll eat other calcium rich foods including tins of sardines as well but I really, REALLY love Pop-eye’s spinach. Fresh spinach, not so much but Levi loves it. I get two bites and he gets one leaf. Eating a spinach salad at my house is painfully slow because with each piece for Levi, I have to break off the stem and make sure each leaf gets some dressing and cheese on it. 

And water: With these yearly infusions you have to drink at least eight full glasses of water for several days on each side of the treatment. Beforehand to make your veins plump up so the needle goes in easier and your veins can better carry the meds to where they need to go. Afterward to protect your kidneys and decrease any side effects.

Speaking of Levi, that dog keeps me on my toes. I thought he’d left his habit of bringing frogs into the house back in his puppyhood when I had to check mouth to make sure he wasn’t smuggling them inside after every trip outside. There was a point when at night I couldn’t even let him into his dog pen without first checking the place with a flashlight and relocating the frogs who wandered in from the cattail bog close by. I had a see-through Starbucks plastic cup staged by the back door to catch them. Fast forward to his adult years. Now when I let him outside before bedtime I put him on his retractable leash and when he finds a frog I hold him back to just short of kissing distance, but he can't pick them up. At least I didn’t think he could until today. I was sitting at my computer when a movement off to the side caught my attention. Yup, you guessed it. A frog goes hopping by. 

My Starbucks catching cup was thrown out a long time ago so I called on my inner child and caught the thing with my bare hands. I didn’t think I could move that fast. I’m just glad that in my haste I didn’t fall and require a trip to ER. Imagine trying to explain that I broke a bone trying to catch a grown-ass frog in my kitchen. While I was holding it I did think about testing the kiss-a-frog tale to see if it would bring forth a prince but: 1) I didn’t know if fairy tales age-shifted like shape-shifters and I’d bring forth a warty old man instead of a young prince, and 2) what if I did get a prince, what would I do with him? Since I have no desire to be a cougar, finding him a princess would seem like the best solution but that would just add another job to my To-Do List. So no kissing amphibians took place in my life. I can’t vouch for Levi, though. He seems to be a dog-slut who will kiss anyone and anything. ©

Bones, Bacteria and Boogers

Hungarian Puli

Monday we had our first school closings of the season due to the weather. I didn’t have to go anywhere that day so being snowed in didn’t ruin any of my plans but I was keeping a close eye on the storm all same because I needed good roads the following day to get to an appointment at the infusion center and my niece was stuck at the Chicago airport, sleeping on a cot while all the planes were grounded---she was on her way home from spending the holiday in Texas. My other niece who had been up north at her favorite vacation destination in Traverse City was also keeping an eye on the storm and was able to leave in time to beat it before it hit southeastern Michigan and it’s a good thing she did. The storm brought them 6-7 inches of wet, heavy snow where she lives causing electrical outrages and backup generators were put into service.

Trust me, I won’t be getting my yearly bone infusion treatment in 2019 because I’m skipping next fall’s scheduling and picking it up again the following spring of 2020. This 2018 appointment was booked early last September at my biannual with my internist and this was the first opening the infusion center had available, and scheduling wait times are only going to get longer and longer as more baby boomers start getting Reclast for their bones. I’ve had super good results with the Reclast and hate the idea of letting a 5-6 month lapse without it but I hate the stress even more of worrying about winter storms colliding with important appointments you can’t cancel without it costing you a lot of money, more wait time and a repeat of your pre-infusion blood tests.

The day of my appointment I had allotted an hour to get across town. The side roads were wickedly icy but the biggest problem I had was all the street signs were covered with snow and unreadable otherwise the main roads were good plus I got all the green lights and I got there in twenty minutes. I always have my trusty notebook and pen with me so the extra time was put to good use while I waited out in my car. I also had my Kindle with a new book loaded on it. The infusion itself (an IV line in your arm) took an hour this time when the same infusion last year took half that time. It seems I’ve reached that “magic age,” the nurse said, when IV drips get slowed down because our veins are old and might spring a leak like an old garden hose. Right or wrong, that’s my translation for the medical explanation I was given for the change. I was lucky to get through the infusion without having to pee. The more water you drink in the two days before the procedure the better it goes and I was hydrated so much my veins were plumped up and eager to carry the Reclast where it needed to go.

The room I was in had sixteen white La-Z-Boys full of patients covered in white warming blankets and 6-7 nurses tending to our needs, checking our lines and beeping machines and working at desks inside a glass cage. Two chairs away the only black person in the place, a bored girl in her late twenties, sat down shortly after I got there. They handed her a bag that at first I thought was a barf bag that she breathed in for a good 15 minutes but it turned out to be a collection bag for bacteria. She had the IV portal in her arm but there was no line of liquids hooked up the entire time I was there. They were waiting for whatever it is they do with bags full of bacteria in the lab before starting her IV. I was glad she wasn’t right next to me because: 1) I didn’t want Bacteria Girl to breathe her bacteria in my direction, and 2) I was fascinated with her dreadlocks and I was afraid I’d be one of those rude white people who’d ask if I could touch it. It reached down past the middle of her back and she was constantly petting it as if she had one of those Hungarian Puli dogs attached to her head.

In between me and Bacteria Girl was a woman who’d been there with an IV in her arm for five hours and when I expressed shock at that the nurse told me they have a few patients who spend eight hours parked in their La-Z-Boys. Aside from that, there was very little conversation going on between patients this time or the other times I’ve been there. Most people, I assume, are there for far more serious treatments than I was and conversations seems intrusive---lots of bald-headed women, a few bloated up men and a surprising number of young women who obviously come there often enough to be well known to the nurses.

Most of my hour was spent pretending to read on my Kindle while surreptitiously people watching. I was afraid to use my notebook to write about what I was seeing out of fear I’d drop the book on the floor where I couldn’t reach it and someone else would pick it up and see the sentences I wrote about a guy with a booger hanging from his nose. I don’t know why a nurse didn’t hand him a tissue. I'm guessing they’re so focused on looking at IV lines that they don’t look at faces as they cruise around the room. Whatever the reason, Booger Man strengthen my resolve not to use the bathroom while I was hooked up to the IV. You have to drag the IV pole with you and all I could think about is how many germs were on those poles. Places like that always bring out the germaphobic me. ©