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Friday, September 18, 2009

Day 22: September 18th, 2009

Quote of the Day: "Don't waste your life in doubts and fears: spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.-Ralph Waldo Emerson"

Today was a good day, for the most part. I tried to get up and walk, but found that I was too tired and sore to go very far today, so I only went a mile and a half. I don't know why I'm so sore, unless it has something to do with not sleeping well. I know it can have an affect on your body, but still.... maybe tomorrow will be better. Because I have been GAINING weight instead of losing it! GRR!!! I think I am going in the WRONG DIRECTION!!! And it really TICKS ME OFF!!!


Cody has a dance tonight at his school that he is attending. It's the first dance of the season. Evidently, though, dances have changed since I was in middle school, because he just threw on an old shirt and shorts. Remember when these things were like a fashion show? Or maybe it was just the girls that were like that, I don't know. And Ron's not here, so I can't even ask him. But I can remember that he didn't really dress up in middle school, soooo... yeah, I guess it was a girl thing. Either way, he supposedly had fun. I asked him how it went, and he said "I don't know,.... dancey?" Sigh. I really should have tried for that girl!

Cody getting ready to go to the middle school "back to school dance" tonight.







Yet another Mocha picture. No outfit tonight, just a little red bandana. She wasn't feeling particularly dressy tonight. Must have been Cody rubbing off on her.

Today I have spent a good 90 percent of my day sitting at this laptop and transcribing my lecture notes from class on Wednesday onto my laptop. I have been finding the subject matter somewhat tedious in comparison to my interest I found in all things cardiac, but then something really strange happened. One of the components of this particular module is the various types of anemias that can be found, and one of them in particular caught my attention. It is called Sickle Cell Anemia, and it is found primarily in African and Black Americans. It is a inherited blood disorder. It causes many various problems, one of which is malformation of bone. Why, you may ask, does this particular information catch my attention? Briefly put, because of an old XRay I recently found of my mother's left hand.

Her whole life my mother had this problem with her left hand... her left ring finger was EXACTLY as long as her pinky finger on the same hand. She was born that way. I used to notice how self-conscious it made her, and how she was always wearing big rings to distract people from the fact. But what really got me thinking was how, in this particular XRay, it shows why her hand was "deformed" as she called it. In the XRay, pictured below, you can clearly see that one of the bones in her hand is shorter than all the others. And it really made me wonder, is it possible for a caucasian female to have hereditary Sickle Cell Anemia? Was she ever told WHY her finger was shorter? What made it shorter? And if not, then what did cause it?

This is an XRay of my mother's left hand... notice the shortened metacarpal bone of her ring finger? (you are looking at it palm-up)




This picture was found embedded in an article at http://www.nku.edu/~rad350/sicklecellhr.html, showing the same shortening of the same metacarpal bone on a patient who suffers with Sickle Cell Anemia. What do you think?

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