Stitches, Smash, Science and the Red Skins!

Last week I had a number of stitches removed from a small wound on my back. It was a relief, both to have them removed, but also to be able to have a proper shower. What amazed me was that the stitches were a delightful pastel blue colour and so thin. Things had clearly changed since my day, when all that was available was the ubiquitous black suture.

The company Johnson & Johnson was founded more than 120 years ago on the then unique idea that Doctors and Nurses should be able to use sterile sutures, dressings and bandages to treat peoples’ wounds. At the time, J&J employed nine glassblowers whose major role was in the manufacture of sterile sutures and ligatures for surgery. They were the largest producer of sterile surgical dressings in the world, and were the largest manufacturer of catgut ligatures in the world, producing an astounding 10 million feet per year. In 1917, these ligatures were stored ready to use in glass containers.

It was J&J who also Your Future in Nursing, a training programme that combines the interactivity of video computer gaming with real-life nursing scenarios. This programme allows both new and future nurses to practice their skills as nurses in a risk-free virtual environment in order to develop the communication skills required in making the transition from classroom to bedside.

It was my colleague Sue Bernhauser who noted that such programmes are important as over the next 15 years and beyond, nurses will need to respond to the challenges arising from changes in demography, disease patterns, lifestyle, public expectations and new technologies. Cleary the changes planned for pre-registration nurse education must equip nurses to lead and deliver both compassionate care and ensure that the practitioners of the future have the skills and knowledge to work in a modern healthcare system. Sue is the Dean of the School of Human and Health Sciences, University of Huddersfield, and Chair of the Council of Deans for Health.

It was said that Huddersfield was the place that the Smash aliens landed. For younger readers, Smash was a rather disgusting idea where one poured hot water onto a powder to get instant mash potato. In the 1970 advertisements, the aliens arrived to make fun of people who still used the old fashioned potato to cook with. And such discussion continues. A three year trial has just begun at the Sainsbury Laboratory to field test a genetically modified variety of potato that would be resistant to ‘late blight’ The global annual cost of crops lost to the disease is estimated to be £3.5bn.

The Sainsbury Laboratory is part of the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, established in 1967 by David Sainsbury (now Lord Sainsbury of Turville), from whom all of Gatsby’s funds have come. Gatsby acts as an enabler for projects across a small number of selected fields. These include: Plant Science; Neuroscience; Science and Engineering Education; Africa; Mental Health; Arts.

The Sainsbury Laboratory Project is aimed at testing the potato plants' resistance to naturally occurring pathogens which cause blight. The genes, taken from inedible wild plants that grow in South America, were used to produce a genetically modified Desiree variety. For me a better overall potato than the Desiree, is the Rooster. The Rooster is a red-skinned but slightly duller colour than the Desiree with floury yellow flesh. It has become Ireland's number one variety of potato; in 2002, it accounted for 33% of Irish potato production. The Rooster is extremely versatile, and can be used for chipping, mashing, boiling, baking, and roasting. A Rooster can also be a Chicken of course!

Whilst I am not sure where I stand on the wider GM debate, I do acknowledge that human beings have constantly striven to improve and change that which is provided by nature. I am very glad that it was the modern synthetic sutures that had been used on my wound and not those hard old fashioned cat gut varieties!

Another Friday Flip Offs

Welcome reader type persons - its time again for Friday Flip Offs, the brain child of Gigi at KludgyMom, and the bestest way to release the weeks stresses!

To teeth - hurry up and grow into my sons mouth already! He's been drooling and rosy-cheeked for almost 2 months now and Monday i discovered a small slit in his gum. Wednesday there was a second slit. Today there is two tiny white caps showing in those slits. All week my son has been wailing, crying his poor little lungs out. So, for God's sake, hurry up and pop all the way up so he can get smiley again - only this time with teeth. Otherwise, why dont you just FLIP OFF!

To cold mornings - you suck. It has been well noted that i very much dislike winter and cold weather in general, therefore i was not impressed with it being -3 degrees celsius when i had to get up this morning. -3 degrees? Yea .... FLIP OFF!

To bragging mums - either those who like to brag about what their children can do, or those who brag about what their children have. I'm all for being proud of your children but you can do that without making other children, or mothers, feel/look bad. It should be more " Look what my child can do! " not " Look what your child CANT do! ". You know? And for those of you who like to think that buying an $80 piece of plastic to help your child learn to sit up makes you awesome.... it doesnt. If you want to spend money on things like that ( and yes, if you havent guessed, i'm talking about a Bumbo ) then thats great, but just because i dont, or cant afford to, doesnt make me a bad mother. For the record, we dont have a Bumbo and my son can already sit on his own - because i sit on the floor with him and practice. So there - FLIP OFF!

To the old man who pulled out of his parking space without looking and almost hit me - i have a baby on board; you have mirrors. Use them, dude, use them. Lucky you didnt hit me or you know what you would have got? A great big FLIP OFF!

What Is Wrong With Some Women?

So - there has been a report in my local media this past week that 30% of women think its okay to drink alcohol whilst pregnant, despit knowing the risks. What the?

Where were these women during physical education classes at high school? And for those of them who have children, where were they when their doctors and midwives were explaining the do's and dont's of pregnancy to them ? Its absolutely mental to me to think that some women can't put two and two together - alcohol is not entirely good for adults, let alone tiny, growing baby-type persons. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy may induce fetal alcohol syndrome, which can result in deformities, low birth weights or even brain damage. Why take the risk?

And what i cant believe is the amount of women who DO take the risk. For example, i have an aunt who is due to give birth in the next two weeks. I'm not going to mention her age but suffice to say she falls into the " older " mother category - this, of course, brings its own complications. However this, coupled with blood clots in previous pregnancies, hasnt stopped her having a tipple or two at functions during her pregnancy. I wanted to scream at her that she has so much to lose and so many risks with her pregnancy already, why was she pushing the envelope? But its hardly my place to tell a women who already has children whats best for her and her pregnancy, me being a first time mum and all. And i have a Facebook friend ( who isnt actually a real life friend, just a girl i went to school with and was scared of... ) who is pregnant with her 3rd child and every second Facebook statu update is " Blah Blah is having a smoke " or " Blah Blah is getting her drink on ". Why?????

Admittedly, i run a few risks while i was pregnant - i ate deli meat and soft serve ice cream because i hadnt been told not to. But when i did find out, i stopped. It didnt hurt me to go without, even with cravings. But more importantly, it didnt hurt my baby. And is that the important thing?

Jews Will Not Go Meekly To Slaughter Again

While I was in Israel three years ago, Hamas took over control of the Gaza Strip. Israel had pulled out two years earlier, and the fight was between two Palestinian terrorist groups: Fatah and Hamas. Our Palestinian guides advised us to call home and tell relatives we were okay because there was widespread media coverage of the fighting and they would be worried about us. We were about thirty miles from the fighting at the time and safe enough. Every since, Hamas has been shooting rockets into Israel from Gaza daily. Israel sends fuel and electricity into Gaza, yet Israel is the villain and Hamas the victim in the eyes of the world. It’s Theatre of the Absurd in the mainstream media.

There are 1.5 million Arab citizens of Israel and 5.5 million Jews and I was struck by contrasts. Jewish towns and cities are orderly, blooming and booming. Arab towns and cities are strewn with trash, graffiti and idleness.Palestinian Town in Israel

The contrast is even sharper in the mostly-Muslim West Bank. It’s a microcosm for the entire Arab Middle East. With huge deposits of oil and the trillions of petrodollars for Arab countries, they remain primitive. Yet, with no oil, industrious Jews from around world have made the desert bloom in Israel. They’ve built a thriving economy, and fought off three invasions by much larger, fanatic, Arab-Muslim neighbors. It’s the ultimate humiliation to have tiny Israel existing in their midst and providing a constant contrast to their backwardness. Rather than taking lessons for their own improvement, they hate Israel with a passion and rabidly plot its destruction.Arab East Jerusalem

When I’m teaching about the Arab Muslim invasions of 1948, 1967 and 1973 to my US History classes, I tell students to imagine a kindergarten kid waiting alone at a bus stop and being jumped three times by several large, high-school boys. Imagine how the big boys feel after the kindergarten kid thrashes them single-handedly all three times. Their humiliation is unbearable and it’s their own fault.

There can be no such thing as a peace process in Israel without the destruction of Israel’s enemies. Neither Fatah nor Hamas wants a Palestinian State. Palestinians want Israel gone and they’re willing to play victim poster-children for the wider Islamic world’s propaganda against Israel and the United States.After the 1967 invasion, Israel took territory from Egypt, Syria and Jordan as buffers against future invasions - including the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. In the Camp David agreement, Egypt took back the Sinai in return for recognizing Israel’s right to exist, but didn’t really want Gaza. Nobody does. It’s an insane asylum full of Palestinians who have been indoctrinated since infancy with hatred of Jews and groomed to become “shahids”: suicide bombers. Israel pulled out in 2005 but terrorism increased. So much for leftist claims that Israel’s occupation is the cause of Palestinian terrorism.

After years of daily rocket attacks against its civilian population, Israel went back into Gaza to take out launch sites, which Hamas puts in or near schools and hospitals. Palestinian terrorists hide behind children, but the UN ignores this and instead investigates Israel for war crimes if civilians are killed.Hamas is a terrorist proxy for Iran, who supplies the rockets raining on Israel, and who promises to wipe Israel off the map. The United Nations does nothing as Iran builds the nuclear weapons with which to perpetrate a second Holocaust while denying the first ever happened. Under the noses of UN “peacekeeping” forces, Iran supplies Hezbollah with rockets and other weapons in southern Lebanon that are periodically shot at northern Israeli civilians. Why we continue to support an inept and corrupt organization like the United Nations, I cannot fathom.

Israel’s strategy now is to blockade Gaza to prevent Hamas from importing more Iranian rockets but Turkey, which had hitherto been the most supportive of Muslim countries toward Israel, is now leading the effort to break the blockade. There’s been a profound policy shift in Turkey’s relations with Israel. Looks like the Turks have stopped westernizing and, by demonizing Israel, are allying with Syria and Iran. Not good for regional stability.

According to its own charter, Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and killing all Jews, yet Turkey’s President Erdogan insists Hamas is not a terrorist organization. The man has no credibility, but he’s a hero in the eyes of the American and European left and their media sycophants. Meanwhile, President Obama has shined up to Hamas. He’s obsequious with Iran, and he’s distancing himself from Israel.

Israel has faced existential threats since its birth in 1948 and met them head on. It will meet today’s threats and tomorrow’s as well. Israel will do what it must to survive. A preemptive strike against Iran - with nuclear weapons - is a very real possibility. This is a nation founded on the ashes of the Holocaust. Israel’s Jews will not submit meekly to slaughter again.

Poetry - Past or Present?

Erin from Motherhood Y'all commented on this post that i had " writing talent " when it came to poetry. It was a nice compliment to receive and it got me thinking about all the poetry i have written in the past. A select few poems have been published ( but only in those Readers Digest anthologys that no-one actually reads... ) but most of my writing was for my eyes only. Back in high school and early adulthood, when i was all bleak and depressed, and back before my blog, poetry was my way of getting thoughts and feelings off my chest and out of my head. My poetry was borne out of pain, loneliness and a dark, dark place. Even so, after the comment on my so-called talent, i felt the need to go back and read some of what i had written. For example ( and for more examples, try searching " Amy Louise Wells " at http://www.poetry.com/ ):

Sonnet

Like holy Mother Mary meek and mild
I'm but a supporting player in this scene.
Why do you treat me like a lowly child?
As if my hopes are nothing but a dream.
Each night at rest my heavy eyes I close
And sleep does visions of my future hold.
And in sleep I am depicted as a rose,
A character both beautiful and bold.
But upon waking I am just a thorn.
At least thats how you often make me feel.
Perhaps I was just better off unborn
Then all of this for us would be unreal.
And so in theses last words I tell it true:
In fact I'm better off not here with you.


Reading it over, i immediately remembered what kind of headspace i was in when i wrote it. I still feel an attachment to every line i've written, even if so much of it DOESN'T relate to my life anymore. There are poems from days i felt abandoned; days i felt angry; days when, living overseas, i felt homesick. There is nothing written out of happiness. I'd never felt the pull of poetry when I was happy. Til now. Til that post last week, when i wrote a poem about my son. Its strange that, of all the thoughts and feelings that this little man has inspired in me, that he should bring me back to poetry, which was always a refuge in a dark place.

Perhaps that means that dark place may have finally seen some light.....

Gum, Tangled Tongues, Pledges and Music without Borders

I start with what has become the almost ubiquitous food element of my weekly blog. Yesterday morning I had breakfast sitting outside, on the side walk, in up-town Chicago, in the shadow (literally) of the Wrigley building. My breakfast was horrible, but I will come back to that. Willem Wrigley (Jnr.) moved to Chicago in 1891 – to sell soap ad baking powder. As part of his sales campaign he gave away chewing gum to his customers. When he discovered how popular chewing gum was, he started to make and sell his own. The rest, as they say is history. However, history is not without its problems. An international industry has grown up around the need to remove from public places dropped chewing gum. In the UK we spend some £400 million on street cleaning, of which, almost 20% goes on chewing gum removal. Cleaning Trafalgar Square today of dropped chewing gum would cost over £20,000. Being a pragmatist, Wrigley argued that educating people not to drop chewing gum on the street was the most effective long term solution to this problem! The company first printed the advice to ‘Use this wrapper to dispose of gum’ on packaging in 1933 and this continues still today.

I was in Chicago for a conference. This was held in the Drake Hotel, the oldest hotel in town. I thought the best view of the hotel was from the 95th floor of the John Hancock Centre, which is currently the fourth-tallest building in Chicago and the sixth-tallest in the US. Interestingly, given where we are economically, the original construction of the tower was briefly halted in 1967 due to a similar credit crunch. For a number of years the building was left at a diminutive 20 stories.

I was both amused and slightly perturbed to learn that Wrigley’s newest gift to the world is something called a Starburst Tongue Tangle. As regular readers of this blog will know, this time of the year is a desperately anxiety provoking one for me as the lead up to Graduation gathers momentum.

Pronouncing people names has, and perhaps will always be, my nemesis. Additionally this year, I was confronted with a request to get our nurses and midwives to make a pledge at their graduation ceremony. The suggested pledge was a modified WHO version of the one doctors tend to make. Whilst I don’t have a problem with a pledge per se, (I would like us to adopt and adapt the pledge suggested in the PM Commission on Nursing and Midwifery’s ) the thought of trying to get this sorted by July filled me with despair. Fortunately, common sense has prevailed and we will work towards introducing a multi professional pledge for the student’s graduating in 2011.

To celebrate individual and shared achievement is always a good thing! Two Fridays ago, the University held a Thank You event. I went and participated, and of course shared the self congratulatory good feeling and bonhomie. However, the tug of war event was a little unexciting (but maybe that is how accountants get their kicks), and listening to the choir was difficult in the heat of the afternoon.

I was thinking about this as here in Chicago, the first of a series of open air concerts entitled Music without Borders was held in the fabulous out door arena in Millennium Park. The music was brilliant and was provided by bands whose membership was international. People picnicked in the park, enjoyed each others company and great fun. I wondered if we could consider something similar for our next Thank You event.

Finally that breakfast. Well I eventually found a place called the YOLK. They provided what was a wonderful breakfast, gave great service and it was a lovely place to be in. BUT the noise of all those people talking and having breakfast fun was almost over whelming. I hope our EGG space in MCUK doesn’t end up with similar problems!

Food, Glorious, Food!

I am so loving food right now. I'm loving cooking it, eating it, watching it being cooked on tv and i'm loving reading about it. I'm not loving it enough to get hugely, grossly fat though - so no worries about that. I'm just enjoying the rituals of food is all, and how it makes people come together and be happy. ( Most of the time - my failed attempt at soup last night didnt really make anyone happy ).

I sit down of a Friday evening and plan out a menu for the week - i go through my recipe magazines and very few cookbooks that i own and choose the recipes i'd like to make, and write out the weeks shopping list as i go. My mother always did it that way and i always thought she was a bit anal. But you know what? Its so much easier that way! No going to the freezer and/or fridge and going " Uh, what am i going to cook tonight ? " . No getting out your recipe only to find that you dont have any mushrooms/chicken stock/ peanuts ( or, you know, whatever ). I dont plan it down to the specific day though - i just ask Mick in the morning what he'd life for dinner, give him the options, and he usually says " Suprise me! ". Easy as that. This weeks menu includes a beef massamun curry that i'm really looking forward to and my first attempt at beer battered fish.

I'm also enjoying baking. I've baked something almost every week since Flynn has been born, just for that fun of it, and now that we're hosting mothers group at each others houses rather than going to a cafe there is even more incentive to whip up a yummy slice or some muffins. Plus, and i know this is a little big-headed, but i really like getting compliments on my cooking from the other mums. I made a slice a few weeks ago that got the thumbs up all round - i even got asked for the recipe! - and this weeks " Apple and Cream Cheese Friands " scored me a " gee you're a good cook! ". Big smiles from me! And i'm not a baking snob either - i'm totally happy to share my recipes. I know some people are all " oh no, its an old family recipe, i couldnt possibly share it with you " but most of mine come from magazines or http://www.taste.com.au/ so they aren't exactly a secret!

So, in the spirit of sharing, leave me a comment ( if you want ) with your favourite meal to cook, a link to a recipe, or to your favourite cooking website!