Don’t hate me for my freedom

I spent most of Wednesday night and all day Thursday (literally…like 8 am-10 pm) proofreading the hell out of my proposal. While lying in bed, I read every single word, sentence, and paragraph out loud, and if I didn’t like something, I changed it. I got rid of a lot of superfluous phrasing, and even a few unnecessary sentences, chopping about a page and a half total over three chapters. I caught a few (surprisingly few) typos and some grammatical awkwardness, but overall, it was a good draft. Now it’s in the hands of my advisor, waiting to be ripped to shreds. Maybe I should be nervous about that, but I genuinely want to know what he thinks. I did my best, and that has to count for something, right? This weekend I am going to relax, recover, and do anything but work on my dissertation. It’s a nice feeling!

Every year my university hosts an on-campus conference for grad students to present their research in order to get some dry runs before presenting at a conference. I signed up to give a 30 minute presentation based on what I’ll be presenting this summer. Now I find out that I have to consolidate my presentation into 15 minutes, which includes time for Q&A. Um, right. I guess I’m just going to make this more of a theoretical presentation and to hell with trying to scrape together a prelimnary analysis for a discussion of results. My advisor said he’d come listen to the presentation, but I’m going to tell him not to bother. For 15 minutes, I’d almost consider not doing it at all, but I signed up to do it, and I feel like I need practice talking in front of people in an academic setting, so I’m going through with it. Sigh.

Dancing like James Brown up in here

I just finished writing all three chapters of my dissertation proposal. All 66+ pages of it. A little proofreading tonight, after my tired eyes have had a bit of a break, and then I’m sending that baby off to my advisor. Maybe I should buy him a bottle of wine to make the experience a little more pleasant? I’m not saying it’s bad, but reading a 66 page first draft can not be anyone’s idea of a good time, even if it’s good.

Man, I feel like I just had a kid or something. I’m in this weird no-man’s land between ecstasy and exhaustion, which means I am definitely going to bed early tonight. I’m going to sleep the sleep of the just and hard-working, that’s for sure.

Next up, conference paper!

Bad luck…I has it!

I described my symptoms from Thurs.-Sun. to the NP today, and she said, “Sounds like you had the flu.” I then explained to her that I thought I’d had the flu last month, and mentioned that I’d had very similar symptoms. She said it was possible that I could have had it twice, albeit different strains. Then she added, “That would be pretty unlucky, but it’s possible.”

When your doctor tells you you’re unlucky, then you’re unlucky.

Shaking my fist

It’s definitely bronchitis now. As in, diagnosed by a real medical professional and everything. I started having some scary coughing fits that triggered an asthma attack early this afternoon, and off to the clinic I went. The NP said she heard some wheezing and tightness in the middle of my lungs and hooked me up to a nebulizer for a while to get my passages open in hopes that I could cough up this junk that’s blocking up my lungs. I get to puff on some albuterol every few hours until this clears up and take some high-octane decongestants to shake this stuff loose once and for all.

With the exception of the time I actually spent seeing the NP, I have been working all day, and I finished a significant portion of my lit review (another 5 pages) and I hope to at least start one more section tonight. If I can figure out a way to get to my office soon, I will grab the remainder of the articles I need to finish this shit and hopefully get it all done by Thursday morning.

Being sick is never fun, but I can’t let it stand in the way of what I need to do. There’s a lot I’d like to do, but for now, I feel lucky that this illness hasn’t disrupted my most pressing concern. It’s been a blessing in disguise, in some ways.

Lacin’ up the gloves

This plague is keeping me down, but I’m not out. Far from it. I’ve been working constantly since Saturday morning trying to finish my lit review so I can get everything turned in by Thursday morning. It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve always enjoyed a challenge. My flu has now migrated south to try to become bronchitis or some such, but I’m doing my best to fight it. There really is never a good time to get sick, but I can tell you that this is a really bad time for me to be sick. I have way too much going on over the next couple of weeks, and I can’t let myelf get derailed by illness.

My lit review is coming along pretty well. So far I’m at 26 pages, and I anticipate that there will be at least another 12-15 pages to go, although it’s hard to say. I’ll work until about 9 or so tonight, then put in another few hours tomorrow and Wednesday, and then hopefully I’ll be done.

Back to work…all I need is someone beside me playing “Eye of the Tiger” and the scene would be complete.

Hit me with your best shot

Kill me now, please.

My nose is swollen and red, my face is puffy…hell, my brain is puffy. I am still sick. Like, really sick. I have had a fever for nearly 3 days now, I’m coughing and sneezing constantly, my nose runs like a leaky faucet, and I feel like the truck that ran over me put it in reverse and came back for more.

I’m trying to finish my damn proposal by Wednesday, but I can barely string together two coherent sentences. Not to mention that my drugs kept me up the better part of last night, so I’m drugged, sick, and sleep-deprived. I write so well like that.

I haven’t really been eating because 1) that would entail hauling my sick ass out of bed and 2) very few things sound good. I want either a baked potato or a sandwich from Jimmy John’s, but neither of those things are in my house now, so I’m eating graham crackers and listening to my stomach make weird noises instead.

Happy fucking blogiversary

One year ago today, I started this little blog (then named “Always High, and Sometimes Deep”…that never rolled off the tongue, so I switched it to its current moniker, which I like quite a lot). I felt that chronicling my experience in graduate school might be at times helpful, and maybe even occasionally funny. Some days I feel like, to quote Juno, the cautionary whale. But it’s been helpful for me so far, and I hope that at least one other person has gained something from my writing.

“So, Freckles, whatcha doin’ to celebrate? Going out to dinner? Opening a bottle of fine pinot noir?”

Mmmm…try lying in bed with a 103 fever wearing a hoodie sweatshirt, pj pants, socks, two down comforters, a thermal blanket, and a sheet with the heat jacked up. I don’t know what in the everlasting hell has attacked me, but damn it puts up a good fight. Unfortunately, it’s currently winning. I had fever, chills, aches, and gut-wrenching sinus pain for much of today, and accomplished jack shit. I was moaning in pain for most of this evening, and I’m just now feeling like I can move.

So, let’s raise a glass of seltzer water to many more years of blogging and fewer illnesses. Cheers, y’all.

True confessions

So, the OHW. I’ve alluded to it a few times over the past few months, in a most vague and sketchy fashion. Part of the reason this is just because I didn’t feel like talking about it. Most of it is because the OHW involves something pretty personal, and as much as I like to blog and talk things out, I do feel like there should be some boundaries. However, I also believe that talking about serious issues can be helpful, because it gives voice to problems that aren’t always commonly discussed. Maybe someone will stumble upon this and find it helpful. Or something.

In that spirit…my OHW is endometriosis. In a nutshell, I have uterine lining growing like crazy in places other than my uterus. It swells, it bleeds, and it hurts like hell, a lot of the time. I started having some trouble when I was in high school, and by the time I got to college, I was in agony on a semi-regular basis. Some days I would have cramps that were so bad I vomited. It got to the point that I would struggle to get up out of a chair during my period because the pain was just so crippling. I took birth control pills for about 6 years, and they only kind of controlled the issues. In 2003 I had laparoscopic surgery and then six month of Lupron injections (more on those later) to get rid of the growths. I noticed the pains returning in around 2005, but they weren’t intolerable. In 2007, I got a hormonal IUD to basically keep me from having a cycle, which would then presumably control the endometriosis.

It didn’t. Within a few months of the IUD insertion, I feared something was terribly wrong. At first I attributed the pains to my IUD, but after some consultation with my doctor, we eliminated that as a possibility and concluded that my endo was coming back with a vengance. I started another round of Lupron in October 2008, with one 3.75 mg shot, and then two more 11.25 shots three months apart. This makes 7 months, and most people get 6 months of shots, usually with the 3.75 mg shot each month rather than a wallop of hormones flooding in at once (hence, fewer and less severe side effects).

Oh, so the Lupron. It’s a drug that basically inhibits the production of estrogen. Upon injecting the Lupron, I go into menopause immediately and violently. You know all those stereotypes of the menopausal woman? That’s me, but to the extreme. The first few days after the shots are always rough. I get unbelievable hot flashes, night sweats, severe cramping, and serious fatigue. The other night I went to sleep before 10 and didn’t wake up until 7:40 the next morning. I’m absolutely exhausted, and it’s frustrating. I have so much to do, yet I can’t seem to pick up my tired bones to do anything. I can’t concentrate. My moods swing in really weird ways, and sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy. As you can imagine, these conditions are not conducive to good academic writing.

I’m having surgery in May (complete with frickin’ laser beams) to get rid of the growths that are left after this round of shots. After that, I’m not doing this again. The first twinges of endo will lead me to either 1) procreate or 2) get a full hysterectomy. I’m a bigger fan of option 1, but depending on how things are going for me, I may have to keep an open mind. These shots suck, they have bad long-term side effects (like bone loss), and one possible cure for endo is having a kid. Ironically, it’s also one of the biggest causes of infertility, so we’ll cross that bridge when we reach it.

Kicking ass and taking names

I just finished writing up my Methods chapter. While I am behind my initial timeline, I do console myself with the fact that I’ve written two chapters in about a month’s time, all while working on other projects, working, and intermittently feeling like shit. My current (and arguably more realistic) timeline has me writing my lit review between today and the 25th, and turning it in to my advisor on the 26th or 27th. I realize this is probably excessively ambitious on my part, but I really feel like it’s possible. This very well may involve me shutting out the world and doing very little in the way of socializing, but so be it.

After finally scanning the conference program for a roundtable that I’m doing in April, I discovered that I’m not expected to upload my paper before the conference, although I’m “encouraged to do so.” Meh. Right now I’m more concerned about finding a hotel room that isn’t an arm and a fucking leg. It’s all well and good for fully tenured profs whose departments reimburse their professional travel, but for us broke grad students, this is always bad news. Why can’t professional organizations have conferences in places that don’t have hotels that ordinarily charge $200+ per night?! A rundown of the locations of the last few conferences for this organization is nothing short of ridiculous: New York, Chicago, San Francisco…et cetera. When you account for flights, hotel, registration, food, and other travel expenses, you’re looking at spending around $1000, most likely more.

I’ll stop complaining, because at least my half-rate paper got accepted, and it’s another line on my vita. As I gear up for the job hunt, I really can’t underestimate how important this kind of exposure can be. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.

Resolution

I walked into my advisor’s office on Thursday for our weekly meeting and said, “You’re going to kill me.” I then proceeded to explain that I’d been using one scale while thinking I was using another. After laying out what I’d read so far, and the correlations between the two scales, we concluded that maybe it wasn’t that big of a deal. Certainly not the fatal flaw I feared it was.

How lucky am I to have an advisor who doesn’t make me feel like a complete moron, even when I make a stupid mistake like this?