It's been a long time. . .

• I shouldn’t have left you. . . I have been working (GASP!). So far, I really enjoy it as well. I not only get to play with stem cells and try to make them into components of the brain, but I also get to learn about the birds and the bees. I spent a whole day in the embryology department watching them catch sperm and inseminate eggs. I have to say that I am fantastically curious about what my eggs look like, but I hear the extraction process isn’t much fun. Hopefully, I will get to see someone else go through that next week. There are some downsides to the job. Everyday I am reminded that fertility is very much dependant on the age of both sexes and as it is a real clinic with patients you do see people going through some very difficult times. The office next to mine is “Miscarriage Management.” All in all I am very grateful for being able to work in a field where there is much progress to be made and where I believe a big impact can be made on human health. Perhaps Obama will lift the ban on stem cell research so that the US can put its resources into a technology capable of curing muscular dystrophy, Parkinson’s, and spinal cord injury, just to name a few.
  In other news, I have been diagnosed with skin cancer. It sounds much worse than it actually is. . .I had this bump on my nose that would bleed every time I got out of the shower. I went to the dermatologist (after about 9 months) and she decided to biopsy it. The biopsy came back as a superficial malignant fibrous histiocytoma. I am told that it is a rare cancer to be found on your face. It basically is the same severity level as a carcinoma and simply requires excision. By the time I had received the biopsy results I had been an Australian permanent resident for about 2 weeks (yeah!), but I hadn’t bother to go and get Medicare because I didn’t think it was important (oops!). I have spent the last 2 weeks getting Medicare and then a referral from a GP so that I can go to a doctor who will perform the MOHS surgery on my face. MOHS is a special surgery, of which only 12 doctors in Australia are qualified to do, where they take a sliver of your skin off then do some staining and look at it under a microscope to determine if there are any cancerous cells in that layer. If there are cancerous cells, then they keep going and take the next layer. If there are no cancerous cells then they stop. The bad news is that the surgery is considered partly cosmetic since it would be way cheaper to just cut a huge chunk out of my nose. Medicare will cover my consultation fees but not the actual surgery which will cost me anywhere from $1,500-$3,000. It looks like my first paycheck as a big girl will be going to skin cancer. Kind of a bummer, but since the Aussie dollar is down to about 70c US, if I pay with my US credit card it will be like the surgery is 30% off! Cancer cloud silver lining!