Long day, with babbling.
Sep. 9th, 2002 11:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI spent most of today scrambling to get our poster presentations together for the 2002 International Meeting of the Institute of Human Virology. Two trips to art supply shops, four 26x44" pieces of medium-green posterboard, one horrified discovery that it would not be possible to cut the posterboard, three frantic adhesive searches, twelve informative and carefully color-coordinated graphs (because if beige is associated with lower risk on graph 1, it should still be associated with lower risk on graph 11, or people will get confused), twenty-nine powerpoint slides nicely coordinated with the graphs and the posterboard, four trips to the color laser printer on the fifth floor, three fingers stuck together with a borrowed gluestick because I left the spray fixative at home, forty copies of a handout for each poster in case anyone wants to take my deathless prose home, ten p-values, eight of them under .05, and innumerable petty wording arguments with my boss. (I can't believe that I'm not allowed to say "unsafe" or "unprotected" in a presentation about condom use.)
I wrote this post on the back of a NIAID announcement for a "Fellows and New Investigators" workshop in Banff (No, I can't go. It's not for the likes of me.), sitting in the back of a hotel ballroom listening to a lecture on HIV-fighting vaginal microbicides, waiting for the general sessions to end so it would be time to go stand by my poster and be ignored by microbiologists. Ordinarily, at these things, very few people have any interest at all in behavioral research. Most of them are basic scientists - they work with HIV at the test-tube level, not at the level of whole patients - and so what we do doesn't usually get their attention. But we go anyway, because we think that everyone who does HIV research should be interested in behavior, whether they know it or not. And because the food is usually good.
So when I scribbled this post down I wasn't expecting much. But during the hour and a half that I stood by my poster, eight or nine people stopped and wanted to talk about it. That's a damned respectable number for something like this - it's certainly as well as I did at my last psychology conference poster session. And one of the people who stopped by was about to enter medical school, so I got to get my Words Of Wisdom in right at the outset of her career. ("Talk to patients about behavior. The patient's behavior sets an upper bound for the effectiveness of medical interventions - because it doesn't matter how good your treatment is if the patient won't take it, and it doesn't matter how good your advice is if the patient can't follow it.")
I was so frazzled by the time I finally got to the hotel for the conference, after running around desperately all day. I was driving my 12-year-old Toyota Rustbucket, tastefully accessorized with a cracked windshield. I pulled up to the front entrance of the lovely and elegant Marriott Waterfront, and the doorman was instantly there opening my back door for me and loading my posters onto a luggage cart. He never gave the slightest hint that he was really more accustomed to the Lexus crowd - he just said, "Ah, a poster presentation! You're with the virology people," wheeled my things inside, and passed them off to the bellman. At that point I had the mortified realization that all I had in my purse was a $20 bill - no change for a tip. I said so, apologetically, and tried to take my poster back from the bellman. But they were having none of it. "That's okay, don't even think about it," said the doorman. "No, please, it would be my pleasure," said the bellman. And he carried my poster up two long escalators to the conference registration desk, and made sure I noticed the view, and smiled at me later when I came back down. And on my way out of the hotel four hours later, the doorman asked me how my presentation had gone. Those guys made my day.
And they also made me realize that I've been driving this rattletrap car to fancy hotels and restaurants in Baltimore for a couple of years now, for conventions and drug company-sponsored dinners, and I've never had a doorman or valet parking attendant bat an eyelash at what I was driving or at my harried, down-at-heel appearance. They're always exquisitely polite and helpful. They never appear to notice that I don't look like I belong. It's not what I would have expected, but I find it utterly charming.
Tomorrow I'm in the clinic, as usual, after an early morning doctor's appointment. The thing on my breast is starting to look barely perceptibly better. It's still large and red, but the edges and the color are fading a bit, and it's stopped throbbing. Hopefully in the morning it will look even better, and she'll tell me I don't need to have a mammogram after all.
Wednesday I'll go back to the meeting - that's the day they talk about treatments, so I may even understand most of it. I'm glad the meeting's at a different hotel this year - I hadn't realized it would be, and I was really dreading being in the exact same place and doing the exact same thing as when the World Trade Center was attacked. After the meeting, I'll have dinner with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
curiousangel, and we'll go to church, and I'll light a candle for the people I know who are still feeling the effects. Including myself. I won't be reading the news or watching TV. And then hopefully after that I'll settle down again.
I wrote this post on the back of a NIAID announcement for a "Fellows and New Investigators" workshop in Banff (No, I can't go. It's not for the likes of me.), sitting in the back of a hotel ballroom listening to a lecture on HIV-fighting vaginal microbicides, waiting for the general sessions to end so it would be time to go stand by my poster and be ignored by microbiologists. Ordinarily, at these things, very few people have any interest at all in behavioral research. Most of them are basic scientists - they work with HIV at the test-tube level, not at the level of whole patients - and so what we do doesn't usually get their attention. But we go anyway, because we think that everyone who does HIV research should be interested in behavior, whether they know it or not. And because the food is usually good.
So when I scribbled this post down I wasn't expecting much. But during the hour and a half that I stood by my poster, eight or nine people stopped and wanted to talk about it. That's a damned respectable number for something like this - it's certainly as well as I did at my last psychology conference poster session. And one of the people who stopped by was about to enter medical school, so I got to get my Words Of Wisdom in right at the outset of her career. ("Talk to patients about behavior. The patient's behavior sets an upper bound for the effectiveness of medical interventions - because it doesn't matter how good your treatment is if the patient won't take it, and it doesn't matter how good your advice is if the patient can't follow it.")
I was so frazzled by the time I finally got to the hotel for the conference, after running around desperately all day. I was driving my 12-year-old Toyota Rustbucket, tastefully accessorized with a cracked windshield. I pulled up to the front entrance of the lovely and elegant Marriott Waterfront, and the doorman was instantly there opening my back door for me and loading my posters onto a luggage cart. He never gave the slightest hint that he was really more accustomed to the Lexus crowd - he just said, "Ah, a poster presentation! You're with the virology people," wheeled my things inside, and passed them off to the bellman. At that point I had the mortified realization that all I had in my purse was a $20 bill - no change for a tip. I said so, apologetically, and tried to take my poster back from the bellman. But they were having none of it. "That's okay, don't even think about it," said the doorman. "No, please, it would be my pleasure," said the bellman. And he carried my poster up two long escalators to the conference registration desk, and made sure I noticed the view, and smiled at me later when I came back down. And on my way out of the hotel four hours later, the doorman asked me how my presentation had gone. Those guys made my day.
And they also made me realize that I've been driving this rattletrap car to fancy hotels and restaurants in Baltimore for a couple of years now, for conventions and drug company-sponsored dinners, and I've never had a doorman or valet parking attendant bat an eyelash at what I was driving or at my harried, down-at-heel appearance. They're always exquisitely polite and helpful. They never appear to notice that I don't look like I belong. It's not what I would have expected, but I find it utterly charming.
Tomorrow I'm in the clinic, as usual, after an early morning doctor's appointment. The thing on my breast is starting to look barely perceptibly better. It's still large and red, but the edges and the color are fading a bit, and it's stopped throbbing. Hopefully in the morning it will look even better, and she'll tell me I don't need to have a mammogram after all.
Wednesday I'll go back to the meeting - that's the day they talk about treatments, so I may even understand most of it. I'm glad the meeting's at a different hotel this year - I hadn't realized it would be, and I was really dreading being in the exact same place and doing the exact same thing as when the World Trade Center was attacked. After the meeting, I'll have dinner with
curiousangel, and we'll go to church, and I'll light a candle for the people I know who are still feeling the effects. Including myself. I won't be reading the news or watching TV. And then hopefully after that I'll settle down again.
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no subject
Date: 2002-09-09 08:53 pm (UTC)That's quite good for a 90 minute poster session... I was pleased when I had seven serious discussions in 2+ hours at the last Lunar and Planetary Sciences meeting. One-on-one takes about 5-10 minutes per visitor, so you must have been nearly continually busy.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-09 09:20 pm (UTC)I think only one of them was a 10-minute conversation - most of them were a couple of minutes long. I've really only ever had extended "serious discussions" at psychology meetings, where people are knowledgeable enough about the field to want to discuss my methods or tell me about similar research they're doing. But yeah, I thought it was pretty good!
I guess that even microbiologists can have their interest caught by sex. (Well, some microbiologists. There were still plenty of people who glanced and passed by.)
no subject
Date: 2002-09-09 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-09-09 09:26 pm (UTC)-J
no subject
Date: 2002-09-09 09:28 pm (UTC)This is really relevant for me this week:
Date: 2002-09-09 10:33 pm (UTC)I'm in the last week of rehearsals for Wit, Margarent Edson's brilliant play about an intellectual dying of ovarian cancer, and one of its critical dramatic points is about the barriers that sometimes separate the sharp, dazzling life of the mind and the messy, human life - and death - of the body. The play expresses this in several ways, not the least of which is the behavior of a supporting character, a young research fellow who expresses impatience with the need to work with real, live (dying) patients when what he's really interested in is cancer itself, on a cellular level.
Edson is a school teacher who spent some time volunteering with hospice; the play emerged from that experience, won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for drama - and she's said she doubts she'll ever write another play.
The actor who's playing the research fellow in our production is, in real life, an extreme empath (he works as a roving "behavior management consultant" - school counselor - for all the rural schools in our county, since none of them have on-staff counselors any more). That colors his performance in interesting ways, and keeps the character from coming off as utterly heartless ... but we've had lots of long, post-rehearsal discussions of the issues Edson raises.
Thanks for a reminder that life does imitate art, and vice versa.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-10 01:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-09-10 04:28 am (UTC)Re: This is really relevant for me this week:
Date: 2002-09-10 06:17 am (UTC)Re: This is really relevant for me this week:
Date: 2002-09-10 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2002-09-10 08:06 am (UTC)earlier in the year, i had what turned out to be an infected cyst, so i'm familiar with the red and throbbing and antibiotics and scary talks with scary doctors cycle that you seem to be in the middle of. i have had more fun in my life, let me tell you. but the mammogram really wasn't so bad (i was expecting it to be painful, and it was just uncomfortable) and before i had the mammogram i had oodles of ultrasounds, which were cold and slimy and dark, but no problem other than that.
this is all to say: wow that sounds familiar and feel free to talk at me about it.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-10 08:18 am (UTC)Ultrasound was cold? Huh. I've had it for my arthritic hip and for my post-car-accident back, and it was warm and slimy, but maybe diagnostic ultrasounds are different from therapeutic ultrasounds.
It's good to hear that the mammogram wasn't so bad, especially from someone who shares my, um, generosity of chest size. Because even though it's definitely getting better now (much less swollen this morning), she wants a mammogram anyway to make sure that there's no infection in a milk duct or anything like that. In fact, apparently she wanted a mammogram when I saw her last week, but didn't want to make me get one while it was so incredibly inflamed and painful. "It's going to be so much easier for you now!" she said cheerfully, crushing my hopes that I wouldn't have to have one at all.
Would you - or anyone else - mind describing a little bit more what it's like? E-mail would be fine if you'd rather not get into minutiae in public.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-10 09:09 am (UTC)you have to stand up. there are two largeish (cookie sheet size?) metal plates, and you heft the breast in question onto the bottom one, and then they lower the top one until the breast is as flat as it'll get. i think this is a case where being larger breasted is good-- they actually do get flat, as opposed to flat chested people where that would involve a lot of pulling and twisting. (ow.) the flattening part was not something i'd sign up to have done all day, but wasn't bad for the few minutes (and i think that's an over estimate) that it was in there. with me, they did two flat ones because when my breast was flat, it was too wide to get in all at once! [rolls eyes] anyhow. then, when you're not currently engaged with the machine, they tip the plates to an angle (i'm remembering 45 degrees) and then there's some dancing around trying to flatten the breast from that angle while getting it properly between the plates while fighting gravity and its tendency to make your breasts fall right out of the machine. it's just a little more complicated, but the tech should know how to deal with it. then, the smooshing and the picture taking, and then i was done!
as a note, my gp sent me over to a hospital to get the ultrasound/mammogram done, and i ended up having to go twice and explain to the radiologist in no uncertain terms that my gp damn well wanted me to have a mammogram and while i respected their opinion that women under 35 hardly ever get breast cancer, if they thought i shouldn't have a mammogram, they were going to have to explain it to my gp who would then get to tell me not to bother. (i explained that the second time. the first time i just went home and told my gp, who said "nononono. you should go back.")
no subject
Date: 2002-09-10 09:24 am (UTC)I can't believe you're not either. But then, I'm careful about how I use "unsafe" when I talk about behavior; it somehow seems judgemental to me, and I need to avoid judgement, or the appearance of judgement when I'm out working with young people. Unprotected seems more "clinical" and less judgemental and that's my preferred term when I'm doing workthings...
I'm glad your poster went well.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-10 09:38 am (UTC)I can't believe you're not either. But then, I'm careful about how I use "unsafe" when I talk about behavior; it somehow seems judgemental to me, and I need to avoid judgement, or the appearance of judgement when I'm out working with young people. Unprotected seems more "clinical" and less judgemental and that's my preferred term when I'm doing workthings...
Ah. My problem is in the other direction. My boss said that I can't say "unprotected sex" to mean "not using condoms" because it implies that condoms are adequate protection against HIV. She admitted that it's a "stupid political thing," but she made me change the wording anyway.
I suppose that I shouldn't complain, given that I do actually believe that it's risky to have intercourse with an HIV+ partner even if condoms are used. It's much less risky than not using condoms, obviously, but I guess saying "protected" without modification may imply complete protection. It's the same as changing the wording from "safe sex" to "safer sex," I guess.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-10 10:29 am (UTC)How would you answer if someone asked you if you thought it was safe to have sex with an HIV+ partner? I was asked that a few months back, and was very much on the spot and didn't have a good answer. I came up with one, I think, but I'm still not sure I'm sastisfied.
It's a tough question to answer.
no subject
Date: 2002-09-10 10:58 am (UTC)It's a tough question to answer.
Oh jeez, yeah. Huh.
I think I would probably say something like: "If you mean, is there a way that you can have sex with an HIV+ partner and be 100% sure that you won't get HIV, then no. It's not 100% safe. But nothing is 100% safe, and every person needs to decide on their own how much risk they're willing to accept.
"If I were trying to make that decision, I would want to think about a lot of things. I'd think about whether I really loved this person and was sure that we were ready for a serious relationship, because I wouldn't want to take on extra risk for a casual relationship. I'd think about whether I could trust myself and the other person to use condoms every single time. If I'd had trouble with that in the past, I might think that maybe I shouldn't get started in a relationship where messing up would be so dangerous. I'd think about whether we were able to communicate about sex. I'd think about how well their virus was under control. I'd think about whether I wanted to get pregnant, because it's not safe to do that with someone who's HIV positive. And I'd keep in mind that there are a lot of ways that people can love each other and be sexual with each other that don't involve intercourse, so I might want us to move in that direction instead.
"So I guess you can tell that I think your question is pretty complicated. I don't think there's one answer that's right for everyone, so it can be a good idea for someone who's trying to make that decision to speak privately with a person who knows a lot about HIV and can help them sort out the specific details of their situation."
no subject
Date: 2002-09-10 12:14 pm (UTC)If your breasts get tender premenstrually, you'll want to schedule the appointment well away from that, but otherwise, you should be fine.
Don't wear deodorant or talc to the mammography, either - both can cause suspicious shadows on the film (most radiologists will tell you this in advance, but friends tell me that not all do).