Picking up the pace

Life's getting back to normal, although I'm still following the news with more vigor than usual. I've also been unusually tired. I thought I was coming down with some kind of bug, but now I'm wondering if it was just accumulated stress.

It's a good time for me to be getting back to full alertness and concentration, because things are heating up at work. Lydia and Lauren (the new intern, who is also my new meatspace friend) came up with the idea of studying HIV+ patients' stress and coping in response to the disaster, and seeing whether stress was correlated at all with changes in immune function. So Lauren's trying to get the proposal together, and she's never done anything like that before so I'm shepherding her through the process. I'm dubious about whether she'll come up with anything - I think by the time the study gets approved and off the ground, too much time will have passed since the bombing and our patients won't be stressed about it anymore. Oh well, doesn't cost anything to try, I suppose. And - we're all stepping sort of hesitantly around this, not wanting to say it - if something else happens, we'll already have the study approved.

*shudder* Ick. Ugly things can happen to the minds of people who study stress.

At any rate, that's not the only new project. ( Read more... )