To the Dentist!

I'm about to embark on a new first here in Saudi Arabia; I'm going to Jeddah to go to the dentist. It'll be at the International Medical Center so don't worry about it being some backwards dentals shop on the side streets of where ever. While going to the dentist is rarely fun, it will be nice to (hopefully) be done with the dentist for while as this is the result of almost a year's worth of dental problems for me.

Here's a little background for those who might not know. Back in March of last year, I went to the dentist and found out I had the dreaded cavities. This was my first set of cavities in my entire life so I was quite disappointed. I got them filled while I was living in Merrillville and sadly had to pay for it out of pocket because I didn't have insurance after graduating.

After several weeks, one of the fillings was still painful, enough to warrant another trip to the dentist. He attempted to relieve the pressure under the filling, but also gave me bad news that the filling was probably too close to the tooth nerve and that was causing the irritation and pain. The dentist, or rather his nurses, gave me two options: a root canal now or a root canal later.

There was still a chance that the whole area would calm down and provide no further problems, but there was a chance it would get infected and cause me even higher levels of pain. Staring into the face of $1000 worth of root canal or a few more months of cautious chewing and avoiding cold drinks, I decided to wait it out.

I knew when I got to campus I would be covered by insurance so I figured trying to stick it out might be worth saving $1000.

This is my tooth after the root canal. How cool is that!

I did end up getting a root canal here on campus back in November and honestly it was practically pleasant. The amount of time the dentist actually spent in the room with me was so much larger than back in Merrillville. Back in Indiana, it felt like conveyor belt dentistry. He was only in the room absolutely as long as necessary before rushing off to someone else. I even spent most of the time in the room alone. It never seemed like the dentist even cared who was in the seat as long as it was filled.

It was totally the opposite here at the clinic. The dentist was very chatty, talked about what he was doing and what he saw, and he even let me see pictures of my tooth as he did the root canal! He actually made going to the dentist kind of fun!

Updated: I didn't get a crown on my tooth tonight. Apparently crowning a tooth when it still hurts is a bad idea, so we'll try again next month! We did get some awesome stuff in Jeddah though, so tune in tomorrow to see what we got.

One Pint, Three Lives?

We had our first blood drive on campus on Monday and as an avid proponent of blood donation, I wanted to seriously consider donating blood here, since obviously I can't do it back home.  So I did what makes sense in this day and age, I talked about it on Facebook.  This turned out well because one of my friends pointed me to this study that was done on blood donations here in Saudi Arabia.

While 55% of men had donated blood in the past, a mere 6% of women had done the same.  The two main reasons cited for the low donation levels among women included lack of information and difficulty in obtaining transportation.  Since women can't drive here, they must rely on a male relative for both permission and transportation, which from my understanding can be difficult to obtain.

This puts a huge amount of control outside the hands of traditional medicine. Regardless of the medical advancements made, insufficient blood supply seems like a major roadblock.

I would say the most surprising statistic I encountered was that only 15% of men and 25% of women would even accept a blood transfusion if they needed one.  Considering that 44% of those surveyed thought that blood in the blood bank was unsafe, the low acceptance of blood transfusions might not be that surprising.  I wonder how much of this distrust is a result of a bad experience, or simply a lack of accurate information about blood donations and transfusions.

Another statistic that surprised me was that 37% of men and 63% of women would only accept a blood transfusion if the donor was a relative.  This doesn't inherently surprise me, since there is a strong reliance on one’s own family here, however, I don’t see this as being truly feasible in emergency situations.  If an emergency blood transfusion is needed, I don’t think that waiting for a relative to supply it makes much medical sense.

One last statistic, this one completely unsurprising, was the gender preference for blood donations.  64% of men and 58% of women would prefer to receive blood from a donor of their same gender.  Not surprising in the least, but I feel this points to a huge gaping hole in the system.

What if for example, a woman needs an emergency transfusion, but because so few women donate blood, the only available blood is from a male donor?  (This assumes that blood donations are distinguishable by gender, and I’m not sure if this is true or not.)  Would a women or her family deny medical treatment if the preferred donor gender wasn’t available?  I hope not, but I have no earthly idea what the answer might be.  Perhaps not knowing the answer helps me sleep at night.

In the end, the clinic never got back to me about an appointment time, but perhaps another opportunity will arise in the future.

Prescription Posture

It's been awhile since I've talked about my ability to sit, so I thought an update was in order.  After end of semester projects and finals, I was certainly having much more trouble sitting for extended periods.  Winter break was much better because we didn't really spend much time sitting while we traveled in Athens.

However, when WEP started, I ended up having up to 6-7 hours of courses to sit through especially at the beginning of the program.  After about 2 or 3 days of this, I just couldn't stand it and ended up going back to the doctor.

Now, after muscle relaxants, anti-inflammatory, and a few weeks of physical therapy, my best hope for improvement is better posture.  I have ridiculously terrible posture, which is exacerbated during class and when I'm on the computer, so there is definitely significant room for improvement.  Most days, improving my posture does seem to help, so that's reassuring.  I still get sore some days when I'm in class a lot or on the computer working for extended periods, but hopefully it'll get better soon, or it's back to the doctor again.

Have I mentioned how awesome our health insurance is here?

(photo source)

Fame above Science

Needless to say, ethics in science is a big deal.  When scientists claim a conclusion has been reached, there is a lot of power of persuasion behind that claim.  So when it was reported that vaccines and autism were somehow linked, the number of people who took that science and made it part of their beliefs was quite large.  There have been entire movements that try to persuade against infant vaccines.  Only now, we find out that the data was altered to support the desired finding, and the primary author was paid by an accident attorney looking to make some money.

It's turned out that the peer review process, despite it's reputation, doesn't always cut the muster.  Bad science ends up published and even worse, ends up in the mainstream media, which may or may not take findings out of context.  It seems like the only thing more prevalent on late night news than local crime is all of the new medical findings that should be a huge concern to the general population.

Having already been sternly lectured about the importance of ethics in scientific research when I started grad school, and then to still have face the ethics/plagiarism issue when working with other students, I really don't know how this can be fixed.  If you can't convey to a twenty-something the importance of ethics, how do you do it for a grown adult?

The obvious solution, which involves everyone acting in a way they know to be ethical, really isn't practical, but I feel any other possible solution is incredibly pessimistic and displays a feeling of mistrust to fellow scientists.  So for now, man up I say.  Do better science, not for fame or tenure, but for the fact that people listen and take to heart the conclusions we reach.

Coccyxitis or How I Broke My Bottom

Ok, so first off, my bottom is NOT actually broken.  Inflamed, yes, broken probably not.  Starting last night I had really strong pain in my tail bone (coccyx).  Apparently it's the last bone of your spinal column and back when we were creatures with tails, if that ever was, this is the bone that would make up the end of the tail.  Oh, and when this little bone is in pain, you cannot sit at all.  I'm not joking, it is incredibly painful to put a lot of pressure on my tush.  After large doses of Excedrin, which taken late at night do nothing for your ability to sleep (each pill contains as much caffeine as a cup of coffee) and a cute little homemade rice heating pad, I could finally lie in bed and fall asleep.  Unfortunately, I have class at 10:30 on Tuesday mornings so going to Emergency wasn't going to be a realistic option unless I was willing to ditch class, and frankly I wasn't.  I was pretty glad I stuck it out, we toured the NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) Lab for my Polymer class, and it was so cool.  Yes, this makes me ridiculously nerdy, but wow it was impressive.  After my last class ended around 2 I darted over to the medical clinic here on campus.  That was also pretty darn impressive.  I'm really grateful to have good medical insurance here.  Even though I went to emergency because I didn't have an appointment and honestly wasn't going to go through the trouble of scheduling one, it was still quick, relatively efficient, and free.  I've heard horror stories about how people wait all day in emergency rooms in the US and I'm so glad that wasn't the case here.  Unfortunately, since it's my tail bone that is the problem, there is very little they can do to help me.  So after a couple of prescriptions for pain and anti-inflammatorys, we were done.  Since sitting down is a major issue, most people with tail bone problems use a doughnut  pillow to sit.  But, they don't have any here.  So I'm going to be doing a lot of standing in the next week or so because the only other option is lying down and it is really quite hard to get anything done when lying down (big surprise).

Since I'll be working standing up for awhile, Steve improvised me a workstation!  It's pretty clever, just one of the small end tables stacked on top of the coffee table and it's the right height for working and computing!  Thank goodness for small wins.