January should be excised out…

January is evil for all of us who have osteoarthritis. El Nino, global warming, Al Gore and who knows who else have wrecked the weather in NC. One day it is 60 degrees and then it is 35 and there is freezing rain. And I want to crawl back under my heated blanket until spring. It is the season where I have new joint issue every week. The current joint of the week is my left shoulder…swollen and disagreeable every morning despite heat, ice, prayer and happy images of happy smiling, little ERs and Golgis knitting new collagen fibers… but this never lasts long because I think about protein synthesis ratios and realize my chondrocytes are less efficient than a shoe factory on a technical break in Belarus (imaging therapy is worthless when you are a medical student and yes i realize no one else in the Western hemisphere will understand my Belarus reference).
I spent 20 minutes staring at Cox enzymes and Cox inhibitors yesterday which ironically have been a part of my life longer than any of my actual human friends (at least who aren’t related to me). It is remarkable how something can such a part of your life, yet you know so little about it really (this happens a lot when you are in medical school). Those little, magical rings of allosteric enzyme inhibitor Carbons allow me to function. They got me into medical school as much as anything else. They allowed me to sit through the SAT, MCAT, a myarid of orthopedic mishaps. I feel a strange sense of affection to these little rings. I also feel strangely owned by them. And I shudder when a picture of vioxx flashes across my com screen remebering its betrayal.

Maybe its the cold, maybe its the amount of chai tea I drink, maybe its that lipid metabolism is duller than dirt, maybe its the fact I have been sitting in a classroom for the last 18 years of my life, maybe it is the beginning of Cox inhibitor induced liver/kidney disease…

but January always makes me a little loony and I think it is especially bad this year.