Todays happenings...

Hi all

So today I got up, took my sisters to school, took my grandmother to the Milpark hospital, where my grandfather has had his operation, and came to Wits. At the enterance to the Wits gate, there were a whole bunch of very cold-looking people holding pieces of cardboard that said things like 'Free Lab Animals' and 'Animal testing is evil'. Being a zoologist I frequently do animal tests, but not the drip-acid-into-the-eyes-of-bunnies-to-see-what-happens kind. We do experiments more along the lines of see-if-placing-a-ball-into-the-bear-enclosure-at-the-zoo-helps-to-relieve-stress-of-the-bear.

Thus I was very tempted to drive past shouting 'I do experiments on animals and I love every second!' at them just to really piss them off :)

So I came in and milled around for the first part of the day. I tried to organise so that everyone knew that the lecture for animal behaviour would be held at the zoo. I then went off to the zoo and to my relief, everyone knew to come. I have a nagging feeling that I did considerably more yesterday morning but cannot for the life of me remember what it was that I did...

At the zoo we had our lecture under the bandstand in the middle of the zoo. It was really cool. That is until a large herd of children arrived and decided that the best option that they had as far as entertainment goes was to stomp accross the bandstand. The floor was made of wood and thus they derived great pleasure from generating so much noise that you couldn't here yourself think! So we moved to outside the zoo's resaurant. This resulted in my face being sunburned only on the one side. It was apparently so bad that you could see a perfect line down the middle of my face separating the charred from the not so charred...What made the situation much worse was the fact that I had to go and TA for 3 hours that afternoon, directly after returning from the zoo!

Both Helen and Vanessa had gotten unilaterally burned too and so the three of us laughed a lot during that TA session.

Upon arrival at home I discovered that my sisters were home alone because my uncle and my grandmother had gone off to the hospital. It turns out that the situation with my grandfather is very serious! Apparently when they opened him up to operate, he was already bleeding internally because the anurism had burst. In order to close it up they first had to see the full extent of the damage, and discovered that the vessel had ripped all the way from the stomach through to the kidneys! Hectic! So they tried to do their best in closing him up but he lost a lot of blood in the process.

Then, the second part of the whole situation is that he has high blood pressure. So post-operation his blood pressure was very low. Now because he usually has high blood pressure, his kidneys don't function on low blood pressure. Thus arrises a dilemma: Raise the blood pressure and risk haemorrhaging the now closed up anurism, or keep the blood pressure low enough to keep the vessel close but risk kidney failure.

My grandmother and uncle arrived home to tell us all this. It was terrible. My grandmother is so upset and worried! I saw my uncle cry for the first time which was an akward experience and deeply moving at the same time.

I must admit that I am shocked at the nonchalance that I am displaying toward the whole thing! I should be worried and upset but I'm not. Maybe I'm one of those people that keeps it all inside and then at inopportune moments has an emotional breakdown...this should be fun!

So, today I came in to Wits rather late and just got stuck into the admin. I worryingly didn't get all that far in terms of how much I achieved today. I got all my marking done for the 1st years. Man, some of them are stuupid! It is actually rather entertaining to read some of their answers.

The marking started at around 11:00 am and continued interspaced with random half-hour toilet breaks or I'll-just-die-if-I-don't-get-a-pie breaks until about 15:00. I then had a pre-lab tutorial with one of the lecturers about stuff for a prac that I am TA'ing tomorrow.

I have such a hectic scedule tomorrow! I TA from 8:00 am to 12:30 pm and then may be required to TA for an hour at 13:00! I then have stats at 15:00...which totally ruins Wednesdays...

Anyway, I'm off home to the wailing and gnashing of teeth. I'll let you all know what's happening tomorrow.

Like I've said before, appreciate things while they are still there. You don't know when they will be taken away...

Adios (Translated means 'to God', as in, I place you into the hands of God)