Closing Pandora's Box

On Monday, I have immunity and infection lectures in the afternoon from 13.30-16.30 / 17.00. This week’s lectures were 2; mucosal immunology and the second one was on something to do with bacterial infections and investigating them. Half way through the first lecture I was overcome by sleep and it required an elbowing from Furbeed to wake me up. The second lecture was actually pretty useless so I took out The Times 2 crossword and for the first time ever (in recent days), the great minds of Furbeed and I solved the whole thing:

We started approximately 10 minutes into the second lecture and finished about 10 minutes before the end. The lecture was just over an hour long, so do the maths and work out how much time we spent on it. We started doing the code word on the right, but stopped when the lecture ended.

Because of my sleeping and doing crosswords in lectures I have a mountain of work to do. I have 2 essays to write for the end of the month (still need to read the original research articles and do some background work too), finish my dissertation for next month, and revise for exams. My first exam is in early May, and looking at the amount of work I have left myself, it makes me want to cry. Well not really. I’ve made myself a revision timetable and if I stick to that, I should hopefully be able to get everything done well in time.

In terms of blogging, I have started 3 posts, but haven’t got round to finishing any of them. As for blog reading, I read nearly every single blob blog people write, but don’t always comment due to the hectic rush that I seem to always be in now-a-days. Forgive me!

It’s about time I read my posts on the value of time, my new years resolutions and actually acted on them. Anyway, back to dissertation writing. *Yawn*

[This is a scheduled post]

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Title: Survivor – Destiny’s Child
Picture 1, showing completed crossword from personal photography.

Last semester, I had one taught module i.e. one module for which we were lectured. It was the Therapeutics: Protein to patient module, and dealt with drugs^*, their discovery, making, action and other bits and bobs of pharmacology as well concentrating on 5 specific diseases; learning about their discovery, how diagnosis, prognosis and treatment or management has developed over time and what the future holds. An integral part of the module was, in the words of the module organiser, "’Bullshit Detection”. In today’s exponentially expanding technological world, we are constantly bombarded by drug adverts from every direction; creams that will make your wrinkles disappear, pills to make you smile from sunrise to sunset, lotions that’ll make your your hair so thick, you could be mistaken for a yeti, or if you’ve ever taken a peek at your spam / junk mail, pills that’ll grow your third leg by a good 7 and a half inches¹. There are so-called doctors, who have graduated from universities with names that are vaguely familiar to names in Lord of the Rings, handing out leaflets on the street claiming to cure erectile dysfunction, cancer², and anything that’d make even grown men blush. Coupled with the fact many people are just so busy and don’t have the time to investigate the claims made by the multi-million pound advertising companies that are shoving ‘magical-cures’, quoting long words from non-existent research that are nonsense. But we still buy them. We still pay that extra couple of pounds to buy the carrot that contains beta-amyloids³ to combat hair reduction. The bullshit detection part of the course was to enable us to recognise and analyse ‘quacks’, their treatments and bogus forms of health information we are exposed to. One lecture in particular which focused on complimentary medicine was so funny, that each and every student in the lecture theatre was LMAO-ing so hard at the sheer stupidity of how some of these forms of treatments are carried out.⁴ All in all, a lot of the scams mentioned above are ways of stealing money from the uneducated general public, though it is amazing to see how those people who are educated, still make use of such things, but that’s not the point of this post. Below is a slide from a lecture we had on the history of asthma, and I think it puts the point across quite nicely:

While revising some of lectures from that module a few days ago, I got distracted as I always do, and started thinking about something completely unrelated. It all started with homeopathy. Homeopathy⁵ is an alternative treatment, known by many as the sweet little white balls. The lecturer who taught us, was extremely anti-any-type-of-complimentary-medicine and therefore he gave us one side of the argument. To balance the whole thing, we also received a lecture supporting homeopathy. Medicine is an evidence based field in which all drugs are vigorously tested, undergoing clinical trials to determine whether, if any, of the potential benefits are due to the drug itself or placebo⁶. Many sceptics of alternative medicines such as homeopathy argue they work, if they do, by a placebo effect as the ‘active’ constituents are so dilute they could not possibly induce any effects themselves. So while sitting there pretending to revise, I thought to myself about those people / patients who claim to have been cured or gotten better after taking such alternative medicines.

Regardless of your personal belief^**, let us take sides with the sceptics and assume for argument’s sake, that complimentary medicines don’t work. If they don’t work for whatever reason, and people are still getting ‘cured’, without having taken any conventional medication, one can conclude the alternative medicines had a placebo effect. The positive effects must therefore have all been psychological. It was the person’s belief which cured them, the pills were just something to instil that belief. As my train of thought continued to choo-chooo along, I was reminded of a quote from a lovely film a friend of mine forced me to watch (forced because it was a chick flick, and I was sceptical about how good it would be):

Happiness is a state of mind – Love happens.

Come to think of it, I totally agree with the quote. Like the patients above who had such strong faith in the amazing-ness of the sugary white balls that they got better, I think each and everyone’s mental state of mind can play a great impact on the healing of wounds; physical and or emotional. It has been observed by many that those people who are optimistic tend to heal faster, whereas those with a negative state of mind, heal a lot slower and may even get worse spiralling downwards. Patients in wards that have a good support structure as well being full of life, quickly overcome their problems and reclaim their life that they lost to injury and or illness.

Everyone comes across instances in life when they feel hope is lost, life changing events that open the inviting door of depression such trauma and loss. In these situations it can be difficult being positive, because it hurts so much. The injustice of the incident leads to anger and we become trapped thinking, “Why? Why did it have to be this way?”. I’ve been there, so I know what it feels like sitting in the darkness searching desperately for even a speck of light. But I made my way out of the darkness. It all starts with you. The hardest part about the fall is picking yourself up. After that, once you’re on your feet it becomes easier and easier and easier. Believe tomorrow will be a better day, believe you will find happiness and love and laughter and life, and maybe if you believe hard enough, your beliefs will turn to reality.

For the Muslim readers among you, I would like to share a hadith from Muslim in which the Holy Prophet (sa) said that whoever was guilty of spreading pessimism among the people was leading towards their downfall as pessimistic ideas tend to discourage one and halt progress.⁷ So find the butterfly of happiness and share it with everyone around you.

*NB: In the healthcare profession, when someone uses the word drugs it encompasses all medicines and not just those ‘street drugs’ such as cocaine and heroin. Normal medications such as paracetamol and aspirin etc are also drugs.

** I am personally undecided about homeopathy, as I like to conduct my own research before making up my mind, and haven’t really got round to it.

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Title: The storm is over now – R Kelly 
¹If you didn’t understand this, then don’t worry. If you’re a guy, you probably got exactly what I meant
²Claiming to be able to cure cancer is against the British law and a punishable act: Click here to read the Cancer Act
³Beta-amyloids are found in plaques in the brain’s of those with Alzheimer’s Disease. If I hadn’t mentioned this, you’d have thought they were good for your hair.
⁴There is a website dedicated to historical remedies used for the treatment of many illnesses. It is good for laughs: http://thequackdoctor.com/
⁵A brief introduction to homeopathy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy
⁶An introduction to placebo-controlled-studies used to test drugs can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo-controlled_study
⁷Muslim, Part II, vol. 2
Picture 1 of a lecture slide take from my university given notes.
Picture 2 of homeopathic medicine showing container and balls taken from this website: http://www.drallanapolo.com/images/general/homeopathy.jpg

Today was a meh day. Just one of those days. My mind was all over the place, wanting to visit places I didn’t want it to go, worrying about people; those who I hadn’t heard from in weeks, and those that were ill. People tell me to worry less and I just roll my eyes because worrying is what I do.  It was in this confuddlidified state of mind I got on the bus and made my way to university this morning. You know when you just want to get from A to B, do what you have to do at B, and just come home without drama or anything out of the ordinary? Yeah I wanted today to be like that. But what a day it was going to be.

“Stop looking at me bruv,” an annoyed voice said at the back of the bus. I was sitting on the top deck, in my seat (the one I always sit in) reading Where does it hurt¹ that Pink recommended to me. I realised I had read the same sentence about Molly twice.

“I said stop looking at me! And don’t you dare lift your hands up at me.”

No reply.

“Bruv, I’m telling you, if you don’t put your hand down, I’m gonna f*** you up proper.” What is wrong with kids? I thought to myself, why can’t you just shut up and let me read about Molly and her addiction?

“Are you deaf or something? This is the last time I’m telling ya. Put  your hand down, and don’t look at me.” The other person who was looking and had his hand up didn’t reply. I got a weird mental image of a little child with no face sitting there at the back, with his hand up waiting to be granted permission to speak so they could reply back to the other angry voice. Put your hand down and stop looking at him you dumbass, I thought.

That’s when we heard it, an extremely loud thud of something hitting against the window. The something in question was a head. Everyone turned around. The fight had begun. Obscene words mixed with punches  were thrown to and fro, some hitting their targets while others missing. A man got up and tried to restrain the two boys as another ran down the stairs to call the driver. The bus suddenly pulled up on the side of the road and the driver signalled to a passing by police car. Next thing I know is, police are taking my details as a ‘potential witness’. What am I going to tell them? I was too busy engrossed in the lesson Molly, an elderly lady addicted to heroin was giving to a doctor. The driver told us the  bus wasn’t going to be going anywhere soon and so we should all change. Great. I couldn’t be bothered to wait for another bus so enjoyed a wet, rain-filled half hour walk to university.

University today was boring. I spent it alone on level 6 AKA the psychiatric level, in a teaching room reading journals. NSS² as one of my friends calls it, had finally begun. Reading journals, research papers and reviews is extremely boring, time consuming, and mong-out-ing³. If you don’t know what one looks like or what it contains, you can download a couple by clicking here, here, and here. The 3 I have linked to are of 9 I read today relating to my research project titled, ‘Lysophospholipid induced reactive oxygen species production in microglia’. It took me a good few days to decipher what that meant, let alone start investigating it. No wonder this semester is called NSS. Anyway, by 4pm I had had enough. My brain couldn’t take any more torture so I decided to call it a day and get back home. That’s when incident number 2 happened.

It had been raining pretty much all day and now it was raining heavily. I was standing at the bus stop, hoodless, waiting for the bus to come. The bus shelter was packed with people trying to get away from the rain. A pregnant Asian lady walked up to the middle-aged white guy who was sitting on the seat smoking a cigarette and drinking beer, and asked if she could sit down. “Don’t tell me what to do in MY own country,” he replied giving her a disgusting look. He didn’t stop there but went on and on and on about tax-payers money being stolen by 'Pakis who do nothing but sit at home and live off benefits’. I wonder how long he had been waiting to let it out his frustration and hate regarding ‘Pakis’?

My bus came so I gave the man one last look, prayed for a safe and quiet journey home and got on. On reaching the bus station I had an ‘inviting fly moment’ when I discovered Mr Racist was there. How the hell did he get here so quickly? He was sitting on the floor surrounded by a few community support officers and on closer observation I noticed he was hurt. There was blood all over his face coming from a cut on his left cheek. Why is it all the racist guys I have met have an injury on their face, usually a scar and this time a cut? In my bag I always keep a first aid kit, consisting of a few sterile wipes, some plasters and paracetamol. Was it worth me wasting my stuff on a guy who probably had nothing nice to say to me? I walked over, gave him some water to drink, cleaned his blood smeared face with a moist wipe and put a plaster on his cut. Then I finally walked home.

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I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge an award given to me by the ever so lovely Kamila who is the amazing owner of Basket of Dreams. Though there are rules attached to this award, I wish to sincerely apologise that I am in a bit of a rush and due to a lack of time, cannot therefore fulfil them. =( *hangs head in shame* Forgive me Kamila!

With that, I wish you all have a restful and enjoyable weekend! :)

PS
I wrote this is a bit of a hurry so please excuse any spelling and or grammatical mistakes.

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Title: Bad Day – Daniel Powter
¹Where does it hurt? – Max Pemberton
²NSS – abbreviation for ‘No social semester’ referring to the lack of social life I will have this semester due to the amount of work.
³Monged – adjective, normally used to describe one that is stoned. I use it to define a feeling, that is abnormal such as feeling ill, tired, bored etc etc.
Photograph of a random London bus was taken from here
Photograph of moist wipe taken from here