Tuesday, September 23, 2008
I went to the main campus library last night after having spent appoximately eleven minutes on an elliptical machine at the student recreation center, which took an enormous amount of time to find, situated as it is amid numerous other buildings. I left shortly before nine in the evening, still struck aghast by the result of my inquiry into renting a locker: "There's a waiting-list at least a year long." The blue-eyed pale-face (I have yet to grow accustomed to living in an area where I am darker than most of the other inhabitants) at the towel desk registered the expression of incredulity on my face with due professional sympathy, but I perceived my reaction startled him a little nevertheless. I proceeded downstairs to inspect the locker room, which is indeed smaller than the one adjoining my junior high gym. This scratches plans for daily showers there before school.
One must check out some book to complete the activation process for one's library card; I chose three books by Alexander Woolcott, a figure about whom I have known but never read in detail. This morning I read his words about A. E. Housman, describing the time when Housman was a marginal professor taking a set of his poetry to a publisher. Housman declined the offer by the publisher to accept royalties:
Professor Housman had written some poems because he could not help himself, and an extremely painful experience he had found it. He would no more think of selling these things which had been wrung from his troubled heart than he would have cut off his hand and sent it to market.The thought immediately sprung to my head, illustrative of Housman's nobility and my lack thereof: I would with little forethought cut off my hand and sell it, if I thought it would fetch anything. Nevermind writing anything worthy of publication.
Yesterday I began a sympathy diet with a high school friend, who currently resides in New York. I am not fat, to be sure, but I am just as certainly not slender, either; if only to find clothes that fit, among other reasons, I need to drop weight. Weigh-in: 145.
Labels: A. E. Housman, Alexander Woolcott, diet, elliptical, friends, losing weight, New York, poetry, professionalism, publication, school, student recreation, writing
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 7:05 AM]
Baktierielle Infektion der Haut
Wednesday, April 02, 2008
This afternoon a nice lady with a thick Texas accent filled an antibiotics prescription I am to take for a couple of bacterial infections. Basic description:
Akne inversa (engl. Hydradenitis suppurativa)Over the past two years these inflammations have occurred on the bottom of my right foot, under my armpits, and at my hip. The doctor I visited Monday mentioned they also often appear behind the knees and in the groin area.
Schmerzhafte lokale Entzündung der Talgdrüsen und Haarfollikel bevorzugt der Körperfalten (Achseln, Leistenregion) mit Zerstörung der Drüsenausführungsgänge. Die Erkrankung beginnt mit schmerzhaften rötlich-blauen Knötchen, die wie beginnende Furunkel aussehen, und teilweise unter der Haut verschmelzen, Fistelgänge ausbilden und später ein teilweise übel riechendes Sekret absondern. Die Infektion mit Bakterien ist nicht die Ursache der Erkrankung, spielt aber für die Schwere des Verlaufs eine entscheidende Rolle. Als Erreger sind anfänglich Staphylococcus aureus, später auch andere Erreger (Proteus, Pseudomonas etc.) beteiligt. Die Heilung wird begleitet von starker Narbenbildung, die teilweise überschießend verläuft und dadurch die Bewegungsfreiheit einschränken kann.
Diese Infektionskrankheit hat eine sehr geringe Selbstheilungstendenz. Konservative Behandlungsmaßnahmen bringen keinen dauerhaften Erfolg. Auch chirurgische Eingriffe mit Totalentfernung betroffener Hautabschnitte und Ersatz durch Hauttransplantation haben nur in etwa der Hälfte der Fälle Erfolg.
Durch die Immunisierung mit autogenen Vaccine, gegebenenfalls in Kombination mit chirurgischer Korrektur störender Narbenbildung oder Exzision von Fistelarealen, kann die entzündliche Reaktion deutlich vermindert werden. Bei Erregerwechsel ist eine neue Impfserie erforderlich. Voraussetzung ist eine sorgfältige bakteriologische Diagnostik, die alle beteiligten pathogenen Erreger erfassen sollte.
source
Guess where mine are this time. The Internet community ought to be grateful I am disinclined to post pictures. Other than practicing proper hygiene and perhaps losing a little weight, preventitive treatment consists of nothing. Natürlich.
A few months ago, I read an issue of Cosmo in which some slut wrote an urgent letter to the Cosmo Doctor containing an enquiry as to whether omitting underwear as an article of clothing worn underneath her skirt for the period of one day of working and night-clubbing would be unsanitary. When one lift's one's head out of Plato or Cicero to peruse this sort of literature, it becomes ever the more entertaining than it is for regular people (or "normies", as a friend of mine calls them).
Labels: antibiotics, armpits, Cicero, clothes, Cosmopolitan magazine, doctor, feet, German, groin, hip, hydradenitis suppurativa, inflammation, losing weight, normies, Plato, regular people, underwear
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 3:38 PM]