Childhood silliness and my career as a neurologist

Thanks, LT, for the tag. I will now let you all in a little closer by listing a few interesting things about myself. But only because LT insisted.


1. I had an imaginary friend when I was a kid. Her name was Becca. She lived in the woods in front of my house.

2. As a child, and until very recently, I thought the lyrics to the childhood song, Do Your Ears Hang Low were "Can you throw them over your shoulder like a cotton roman soldier?"

3. I let my child eat off of the floor. Saves me from having to clean the floor. Whenever she is done eating, she lets me know by helpfully pushing the rest of her food off of her high chair tray. That way, I don't have to clean that either. And, if she gets hungry later, ta da! She just returns to the scene of the crime and presto! Her cheerios are usually still waiting for her. While I don't encourage this behavior, I really don't like to sweep. So it works out for both of us. Besides, if she doesn't eat them, they are just going to get all crunched up when I step on them.

4. I was in a Rascal Flatts video. Jack is very tired of hearing about this. You would think he would be happy to be married to someone so famous.

5. Spelling and grammatical errors drive me crazy. I realize that no one is perfect, and please do not point out all the mistakes I made in this post. What really grinds my gears is when these mistakes are made in large print, by people who should really consider how many people are going to see them. For example, when Pizza Hut advertised in large letters on their large sign : NOW HIRING DRIVER, someone should have caught that. Were they hiring several driverS or did they only have room for A driver? I was also very disturbed by Wendy's announcement that their renovations had been completed: DINNING ROOM NOW OPEN. So, instead of driving through, you could come in and eat in their dinning room.

This is the same reason why I cannot read the local newspaper. It is so full of errors that it would take an entire edition to print all of the retractions. The last straw for me was when they ran a huge headline after MSU had beaten a big opponent a couple of years ago. The title: one word, huge letters: CONGRADULATIONS. I could have accepted it readily if this was meant for graduating seniors, but it was not. As an editor, how do you not catch that???

6. If I had my college career to live over again, I would go into the medical field. I don't want to be a doctor though. I have absolutely no interest in practicing medicine. Something about jabbing people with needles and digging around in guts just doesn't do it for me. Hearing Jack's uncle's ER stories is enough for me. I am much more interested in the medical research field. Jack made a good point when he said that I could still learn all that stuff, without going back to college (and spending a bazillion dollars). He was right, and I have already started my career as a neuroscience researcher. I'd love to talk to you sometime about microglia, free radicals, cytokines and such.

7. In the midst of my neurolgy, business office manager and motherhood careers, I have also taken on another time consuming task within the last year. I am an organizer of a state wide group currently lobbying our state government to give parents the right to make their children's health decisions for them. If you live in Mississippi, unlike every other state in this country, you don't have a choice regarding your child's vaccinations. You have to get all of them. I'm not one of those fringe people who think vaccines are the devil and nobody should get them. I think the vaccine program has saved lives and protected many from disease.

However, I also think the current schedule is overcrowded, and my inquiries into the processes of the brain confirm my suspicions that overvaccinating children at such a young age can be detrimental to the development of their brains. I also think that there are several vaccines on the schedule that are not necessary, like chicken pox and hepatitis B. I realize that not all kids who are completely vaccinated according to the current schedule have adverse side effects, but a lot of them do. Not all people who smoke get lung cancer, but a lot of them do. I just think I should have a choice in deciding when my kid gets a vaccine and which ones she gets.

So I met with my state representative and talked to my senator by phone last week, and I have another meeting set up for tomorrow. So far, the ones I have talked to have been very supportive of what we are trying to do. We wrote a rough draft of a bill last night, and we already have someone to introduce it in January.

If this issue concerns you in any way, please feel free to talk to me about it. I'd love to hear your opinions on this issue, and I am not afraid of or offended by people who disagree with me. It actually helps to hear your concerns, so fire away.