there's a bathroom on the right

If you can sing the title of the blog post out loud and automatically know which song lyric Katie's brother rewrote, you win!! I don't know what you'll win. I'll be impressed?

It was a weird past week in the house because I was alone for most of it. I decided since nobody was around that it would be a good time to get Ellie spayed.

Poor Ellie! On the "operating table"

 I called a vet that Beth knew and who had previously neutered her cats and done a good job....the Tororo vet has this odd way of showing up out of nowhere in a pickup truck, running in and doing whatever you want him to do, and running out. I didn't really want this to be a rush job so I called Bernard instead.

He was still 2 hours late, but when he finally came he did a good job. Agnes and I both helped assist. After watching this surgery I'm pretty sure I could have done it myself - if I could have found the ovaries. That was the hardest part for Bernard too. But seriously, after doing the pig lab during my surgery rotation at Hopkins, I think I have enough skills to successfully spay a small dog. Take that as you will.

Don't worry. It's a pig, not a human.

Pig lab was really the only part of my surgery rotation I enjoyed (that's only a slight exaggeration). But it was the only time when you got to make decisions and actually do some of the things surgeons do, and because of that it was the only time surgery was even mildly appealing to me. It's a pretty awesome experience...so much better than just standing around and retracting during a 7 hour pancreatic surgery.

Anyway, Ellie had a rough couple of days....it reminded me of when she was a small small puppy and I had to baby her all of the time. Poor Ellie! But then she totally recovered like a boss. She never even vomited after the anesthesia and generally was totally better by Tuesday, when Katie's family came. It was amazing.

Most interesting comments by Bernard the vet:
"You could never operate like this on a human. They'd get sick immediately. Dogs are tough." - on operating outside in the backyard, as aseptically as we could make it

"Um, well once a dog pulled the stitches out in the night and all of her intestines came out and she died. But that was only once." - after I asked what to do if Ellie messed with the surgery site. I was like REALLY?? Thanks for that anecdote. Thank God that didn't happen.

Anyway then Katie's family arrived on Tuesday! (After a very long, very arduous journey from the Masai Mara.) They decided to hang out in Tororo an extra day instead of heading to Sipi because of said arduous journey. That means we finally got to meet for more than 5 minutes! It was fun to meet everyone and hear about their trip experiences. It made me really excited for Dad and Amanda to come! Get ready to have adventures!!

We ended their last night in town by googling some guitar tabs and lyrics so Katie's dad could play the guitar while we all sang. It was like a Briggs get together but without the Return to Pooh Corner song...which both of Katie's parents knew but none of the kids did. Haha!

I'm heading to Jinja next weekend to raft the Nile! I'm sure I'll get some pictures of that magic.

But for now, pictures of the two hammiest hams I know. They do love them some Christmas hats. 

on transforming a work-related crisis into funtimes and increased productivity!

Most of my readers probably don’t know this (because I didn’t write about it) but my lab project changed oooh, about a month ago. I just wrote a couple of sentences to explain why and then I deleted them. So if you want deets about why my cultured Elispots weren’t working, leave me a comment? Lolz

But anyway my new project involves intracellular cytokine staining so that I can check and see if any of these kiddos have T cells that secrete cytokines (specifically IFNy and IL-10) specifically in response to being stimulated in vitro with malaria peptides. Sound fun? It totes is. It’s also objectively more work (the assay takes much longer, and I have to chase down specific samples) so these past couple of weeks have been, as we would say in this household, “cray cray.”

I’m trying to capture  samples from 20 HIV-exposed kids who were on Bactrim until 4 years of age and 20 who were on it through breastfeeding (standard of care) to try to see if there are any differences in their responses to these malaria antigens. I’m also freezing down parallel tubes of these samples so I can do more complicated flow cytometry assays back in SF to look at more/different cell markers and cytokines. Once again, if you want more info, leave a comment! (bet you $5 I get negative comments. Is that possible?)

And I’m also trying to capture samples from 10 HIV-unexposed kids who fall in the lowest quartile of malaria incidence and 10 who fall in the highest, to see what their responses are like (hopefully they’re different) without the confusing context of chemoprevention.

So I flagged all these charts, and made all these lists, and got everyone in the “okay, we’re doing this, we can draw TCC PBMCs in green top tubes,” etc, and then I ran out of one of my reagents! FAIL

So Ann (our immunology coordinator) and I pulled off some sort of massively heroic (in my opinion) switcheroo and moved all of that week’s appointments to the next week (this week). And it worked (that’s the really amazing part). But for it to be worth it, I had to get my hands on some costimulatory molecules.

Cue a trip to Kampala! What a great excuse to do a little R&R (except we didn’t rest…at all). We stayed with Mara and did all sorts of awesome things, including but not limited to: Korean bibambap & karaoke bday party, Congolese clubbing, made tasty meals, went salsa dancing, shopped, and went boxing. 

 

Devan "proves" he can subtly wink. Haha.

Nothing brings a bunch of people our age together like "mmmbop." Apparently.

Shoot, I forgot about the goth/valentine’s day party. That too. 

So goth.

And then Sunday night I went down to Entebbe with Katie so she could meet up with her family and I could get my hands on my precious reagents! Yes, we resorted to using Katie’s parents as lab supply mules. Yes, we are verrrry thankful (thanks so much!!). 

Buuuuut the weekend wasn't over. I got back into Kampala at about 1am and Mara's like "omg we have to go watch the end of the Africa Cup!" It was a shootout and it was awesome. 

That awful moment where Arul thought Zambia had lost.

But Cote D'Ivore missed too! Then a few shots later ZAMBIA wins! Total craziness.

After a 5:30am mad dash back to Tororo....I am back in business and I have been slammed this week because it’s basically 2 weeks worth of kids in one. But no complaining – it’s awesome to be working again! And I got my first response EVAR and I was so proud it was like I had birthed a baby. Except not really but you know what I mean.

Anyway, JBloome is in Turkey now and I’m all alone in the house until Tuesday when Katie does a drive-by with her fams. It’ll be fun to meet them for more than 5 minutes finally!

Things I have done since being alone (and I feel super productive having done these things):

1)   Made a ridiculously tasty egg sandwich

2)   Discovered I can’t hack into Katie’s computer (weh), so I can’t use the projector

3)   Made coffee ice cubes

4)   Put a bottle of wine in the fridge

5)   Made a mental note to eat those mangos/make smoothie

6)   Discovered more gluten-free baked good recipes I’m gonna make

7)   Failed to watch any of the movies I was planning to watch.  But I will work on that this weekend! 

8) BLOGGED

Also, say a little prayer for Ellie, as she is going to get neutered on Sunday. As Agnes says, “Ellie needs family planning.” Don’t we all.

Tororo rock & Sipi Falls

Sooo I've been here for 4+ months and I had not climbed the rock until last week. Since there's literally nothing else to do in Tororo - the rock is the only attraction, and the natural wonder after which every single thing in town is named (Rock Classic Hotel, Rock View High School, etc etc..) - it's strange that I made it this long without climbing it. 

(Let's not mention the time Jess Bloome and I tried to go and couldn't find the trail. Let's just not talk about it).

We went bright and early.

 Mara and Devan had come on Friday to visit us (hooray!) and we ambitiously decided to wake up on Saturday and "do this thing." And we did it. I think we got up the rock in about 30 minutes, only stopping to take photos!

Sunrise from the middle of the rock!

Katie and Mara

 Pras brought with him a new point and shoot camera I had ordered after having my old one stolen in Zanzibar, so I got to play around with all of its creative functions when we reached the top.

I like this watercolor feel.

 We reached the top! Hooray!! But the hiking was not going to stop there.

VICTORY

 

This is what the rock looks like from the bottom! And we climbed all the way to the top. It does require the use of some ladders. And good shoes.

So then we managed to shower/eat breakfast in time to make the study transport to Mbale, where we (Mara/Devan/Katie/Pras/me) picked up Radha who came by bus from Kampala. Then we took a private hire to Sipi Falls! At first I was a little disappointed because in my memory (and, looking back on fb, in my pictures) Sipi was so much greener. But then I figured out that that's because it's dry season now, and it's been super dry. So... just not as green as it will be in a few months!

Gazing out over the valley

 It's hard to see, but in the picture below there is a rainbow at the bottom of the waterfall (!!) and a person dangling from a rope on the left side of the waterfall (!!!!!!). No, parents, I did not rappel off a cliff next to a waterfall. I'm probs too chicken to do it anyway (see: my bungie jumping non-history.)

I discovered that the "vivid colors" function makes it look like it does in my memory/rainy season!

Middle waterfall!

The crew gets soaked. That's the waterfall, not rain.

Beautiful! From a cave underneath the waterfall.

Apparently tasty berries which I did not try.

So many rainbows!! Does it count as a double rainbow if they're in separate places?? Probably not =(.

Everyone all together! At the bottom of the top waterfall.

Top of the top waterfall!

4 hours later...

 So we ended up doing a LOT of hiking on Saturday. Like a ton! 4 hours in Sipi....we were ready for food & drinks by the end of our adventures. Except we could barely make it up the incline from our rooms to the restaurant....haha.

It was super fun to see Mara, Devan and Radha! And I think we set a record for "quickest trip," which is hard to do in this country! On Sunday Katie, Pras and I chilled at the Mount Elgon Hotel in Mbale and had some tasty curry while we waited for study transport back to Tororo. A super busy/fun weekend in a super busy/fun week!

IDRC (infectious disease research collaboration!) party

So maybe you got from my last post that Pras was here these last two weeks as well. He's an ID fellow at UCSF who is pretty much instrumental in me ever accomplishing anything. So it was good to have him here for work, but also because it was super fun! And he came with us to the IDRC work party!

Those responsible for experiments in the Feeney TOLAB!

This was supposed to be the Christmas party, but there was no money before Christmas for the Christmas party. So there was one in December but you had to pay for it, and no one liked that. So then IDRC came up with the money (I'm not supposed to know how!) and we had a second Christmas party. Let's call it a New Years party. And it was free. And it was at the Rock Hotel, which I think qualifies as the biggest venue in Tororo. There was a pool dangerously close to the dance floor.

I have the crazy eyes in this photo, but I'm mostly posting this so dad and Becky can see that I totally got some use out of this awesome hat.

More hat usage.

Our immunology study coordinator, Ann, won for best dressed! Totally deserved, too. She's too cute.

See? Happy to have Pras around.

Katie is stealing the spotlight...haha where my face at?

It was a fun night. The two free drinks were "over" very quickly and then more had to be emergently supplied. Totally worth it. IDRC should definitely make excuses to have more parties. Fo sho.

Immunology + some of parasitology + clinical lab? Really, just friends!

This was Wednesday night of what has to be our "best week evar" in Tororo. Claire et Jeremie Monday-Wednesday, IDRC party mid-week, and then....Mara and Devan show up in Tororo on Friday! I'll be posting about our weekend in Sipi tomorrow. Get excited.

Claire et Jérémie en vadrouille...

We don't get a lot of visitors out here in Tororo. In fact, we usually get exactly zero (unless you count project PIs and residents from UCSF, and actually yes we do count them, because they're still relatively rare and that totally counts when you have exactly zero other visitors.)

However, the last two weeks have been totally crazy in terms of visitors. Tororo "blew up" so to speak. It was super fun! The first to arrive were Claire and Jeremie. They are from Lyon, France, but they have been bicycling across Africa for the last year and a half. Yes - that's right. The last year and a half. They're pretty amazing - so bright and funny, artistic and super talented, and still so down to earth. And of course now they have some pretty amazing stories and experiences to share. And they share them before breaking out the accordion duets, so, you know. Their visit alone pretty much made our month!

Sussing out which duet would be right.

Even for a couple bicycling across Africa, I don't think Tororo is a common stop. But our friend Beth has a profile on couchsurfers, and when Claire and Jeremie aren't staying in their tent, they sometimes use couchsurfing.com as a way to stay somewhere for a little while. Lucky for us, they emailed Beth and Beth invited them to stay a while!

Everyone got in on the accordion action. Everyone now wants to learn to play accordion.

They ended up staying 3 nights instead of 1, so Pras got to meet them when he arrived as well!

Claire also plays the clarinet - started playing it long before the accordion, actually!

Out last night of seeing them (at the IDRC party!) before they took off to cycle to Jinja and Kampala!

Anyway, they have definitely inspired me to join couchsurfers as a way to meet awesome people! Maybe when I get back to Baltimore....

This is their website: http://voyage.jeremiebt.com/  Even if you can't read French, you can get an idea of just how long their journey has been.

One thing that Claire said really stuck with me. When we asked her what the hardest part of the trip had been, she said cycling through Spain was the hardest part (toward the beginning of the trip) because "she had never cycled much before."

So that must be love, to get on a bike when you really haven't done that much before and commit to getting on it every day for the next two years as you bike across >20  countries.

I hope I get to "see them over the seeaaaaa" sometime as Jeremie would say. (Jeremie comes to Denton, TX for artist conventions - now there's a strange connection.)