why we write...

I think that anyone who has gone into a major bookstore over the past decade has probably noticed the flood of books on all sorts of topics, ranging from fiction, to autobiography to completely random thoughts on life (hmm...sort of like a blog?).

There have been several articles written about the increase in the number of published books recently. This article is from the NY Times.

So, the question is why? Why so many more books? Why blogs? An obvious answer for the books is that they make money, and wouldn't be published if they didn't. But that still doesn't answer the question of blogs. What's the attraction?

A possible reason for this occurred to me awhile ago (and I doubt I'm the only one who has thought of this).

Each of us has a story to tell, and that story is always unique, but also connected to the rest of world sufficiently that we feel others might get something out of hearing that story. We want to share our lives with others. We want our lives validated by knowing that others care about us and what has happened in our lives.

I suppose that this is a part of the reason behind my starting a blog. I do truly want to keep in touch with all my of friends and family, but an integral part of that is knowing that my life and my experiences matter to someone else.

Is this perhaps part of the reason why so many people want children? Who would care more about your life (aside from you yourself) than your children, who wouldn't even exist if it hadn't been for the events that shaped you? So, do we reproduce in order to satisfy our desire to have the importance of our lives acknowledged and cherished? As someone who is still wrestling with the decision of whether to have children or not, I think that this motivation is a significant one. (But the discussion of reasons to reproduce or not is a long one and will be saved for future blogs.)

So these are my final thoughts on this...

Perhaps the greatest gift that we can give those around us is to listen to their story and tell them that it means something to us. Ultimately, saying words of caring to someone means little, if we are unwilling to listen to them tell us about their lives. I hope that I listen to each of you, and if I don't, please tell me. I want to hear your story as much as I want you to hear mine.

Love,
J

my job, part II

-or- Epidemiology (no it's not about skin)

My daily life: basically I work on a computer most of the time. (And I wonder why I've developed carpel tunnel. Well, actually that was from scraping wall paper. :)

But what do I actually do on the computer, you ask?

Epidemiology (def): the study of the distribution of diseases and their determinants in populations and the use of the information for the control of disease.

Diseases in populations are very different from diseases in individuals. In both cases, you're examining the work of complex systems and trying to figure out ways to prevent or cure disease. However, the actual systems you're working with are very different. Clinicians study the immune system, drug responses, physiology and so on. Epidemiologists study disease transmission between individuals, vaccination and the impact of vaccination on populations, politics, sociology and culture and how they impact disease, and so on.

For example, these are some of the projects I've done this week:

Develop an hour long presentation on pertussis vaccination, diagnosis and treatment for providers which I'm going to give give at the local health department, and several times up at the medical school to attendings, residents, and students. (We're having major problems getting providers to handle pertussis the way they're supposed to; that makes our job of controlling transmission more difficult.)

Went to a company which has had a pertussis cluster, educated the employees, collected samples for testing and interviewed everyone on their symptoms. Next we will follow up on their test results and do appropriate interventions on persons who are positive.

Worked on a cancer cluster investigation report, which is examining cancer rates in a small town which has had various environmental exposures. When the report is finished, I get to present it to the town and discuss their concerns about their exposures.

Started doing chart reviews of gonorrhea cases to look at trends in symptoms over the past six years. I'm working with several other states on figuring out why gonorrhea rates in most of the country are going down, but are going up in western states.

And next week I'll also start working on survey data that was collected to examine the relationship between depression and chronic disease.


Overall, it's all amazingly cool and fun stuff. I get excited about epi in a way I never did about medicine. (Although, it's not quite as exciting as Outbreak or The Hot Zone would have you think. For those of you who have the Outbreak (with Dustin Hoffman), no it really does not work like that! Hot Zone is a little closer to the truth.).

And now I need to be good and go work on my presentations and reports. As much as I love my job, I don't enjoy putting in 12 hour days.

Love,
J