The Best Valentine's Day Gift Ever.

This short post is simply my way of blowing off enough excitement to be able to do work in the office today. I apologize in advance for the dopey lovestruck schoolgirl tone of this post but I'm all emotions right now.

My boyfriend lands in Durban tomorrow and I already can't sit still. Do you know how hard it is to sit and enter numbers into an excel spreadsheet when you know that in 24 hours you'll be reunited with someone you love whom you haven't seen in 5 months?

When he told me that this was the window of time he'd be taking off to come see me, my first words were, "Wow! This means you'll be be here with me for Valentine's Day! The gods love us, our stars are aligned and we were meant to be together, its fate!"

His response? "Or...I know my girlfriend and picked my vacation dates accordingly."

I think this exchange exemplifies two important points: 1) I'm hopelessly romantically ridiculous to put so much stock in a made-up holiday but alas that's who I am; and 2) I have a wonderful boyfriend. I've decided this second point is much more important than any star-alignment.

And on that note, I think it's time to stop this corny gushing and get back to work. Again, I apologize for any gagging, eye-rolling or embarrassment to said boyfriend this post might induce. But in the words of my favorite Will Ferrell movie, "I'm in love, I'm in love and I don't care who knows it!" (Any guesses as to which movie? Daniela, hush your mouth.)



I have one more cheesy thing to say and then I promise I'm done. I hope everyone has a lovely Valentine's Day and spends it with someone who makes them happy....even if that someone is yourself. After all, YOU should be the first person in the world who can make you happy.

And I hope you feel the love radiating to each and every one of you, my faithful readers, from all the way over here in this corner of the world.

FINALLY.

This will be a short post and really more of an explanation.

Work is incredibly busy these days. One of the projects I've been working on is a large chart review. This means we've been combing through the clinic charts of hundreds of children who were started on antiretroviral therapy back in the days when ARVs first became available to children here, the so-called "roll-out" period. These days we're pushing to make an "abstract deadline." This is a familiar phrase for those of you in the research world. For the rest of you, I'm going to get very basic so please don't be offended. Abstracts are short summaries of a research project. If one wants to present a project at a research conference, then first you must submit the abstract months in advance and get selected to present. So that's we're trying to do...submit an abstract for the chart review in order to get selected to present at a conference in Italy.

Alas, no I will not be going to Italy if we make this deadline. Only my bosses. But suffice it to say that there is a lot of work to be done for the preparation of this abstract, the least of which is actually writing the darn thing. We're trying to get through as many files as possible, input those files into our electronic database, analyze said data with a statistician and THEN we'll write the abstract. Of course, we're trying to data collect until the last minute in order to get as large a sample size as possible. Hectic? You bet.

Also, of course, when it rains, it pours. I finally, finally received permission to touch patients (thus permission to data collect or even just practice drawing blood) about two weeks ago. Then last week, the last step of approval for my own study finally came through. Five months after I first submitted my application.

So now, I have all the permission in the world to work on my study and practice my clinical skills while at the same time furiously working to capture data for the chart review.

Suffice it to say, I'm busy these days. I spent about 12 hours over the weekend, working at an excel database. And now as I write this, I realize I really have to run downstairs to check on my very first subject! I recruited her to my study yesterday. She's this severely malnourished little girl, weighing in at about 13 pounds even though she's 15 months old! She's sickly, has scabies and her parents don't bathe her very well at all so she's stinky on top of it all.

BUT...I love her. She's my very own first subject in my very first self-designed pediatric study. After all the hoops I had to jump through, the countless emails and phone calls pushing for approval, she represents to me the culmination of my efforts this year. She's my reward for fighting through the dense thicket of South African clinical research bureaucracy.

Don't worry though, I haven't forgotten to write about Cape Town. I just decided I'm going to put it on hold until my next trip there..in two weeks! With my boyfriend! So stay tuned. :)