Skip to main content

Poem for the New Year

Happy 2022--let it be filled with good things.

And on that note, I wrote a poem. (After reading Manifesto of Encouragement by Danielle LaPorte)

Even now

 

All is not lost--

even now

your frozen pipes are melting.

Cells in your body are repairing what is broken and injured.

T cells and B cells are working together to keep the bacteria and viruses in balance with the cells that make up what you think of as you.

Macrophages are cleaning up the mess. Thanks for your service.

That cancer cell? Nope. Sorry buster, not today. Natural killer cells. You don’t even pay them.

Certain very bad jokes aren’t being told. The last person to tell them has just died. He didn’t use the internet so the ripples of their passage only exist in the vibrations of rocks.

That thing you did that still makes you cringe? Even now the last person, other than you, who knew about it has just forgotten.

Just yesterday you learned a new thing and at this very moment you remembered what it was.

People who feel that power and wealth are their birthright are aging. Their telomeres are shortening. Not a thing they can do about it. Their children are consuming post apocalyptic fiction in which the brave and the generous survive and communities work together to create a more equitable and exciting world. They are forever changed.

Under the warming Greenland ice sheet, little live things are evolving to take up a niche not before available to them.

The Bay Area is introducing city wide composting to reduce methane pollution from landfills.

A mother Grizzly bear is sleeping and her baby is growing inside her, ready to emerge when it is warm enough.

Ladybugs are hunkering, their shiny red bodies gathered together against the cold, their very slow biological processes preparing for spring.

Somewhere in space forms of life are solving problems we didn’t even know existed.

Somewhere far underground things are happening that are just as complex and mind blowing as what’s going on at the surface and we have no concept of what they are. But they are immensely fascinating.

In the places in between, that we physiologically can’t imagine because three dimensions are all we have, an awareness exists in which all of this is good. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to make your own ultrasound gel (which is also sterile and edible and environmentally friendly) **UPDATED--NEW RECIPE**

I have been doing lots of bedside ultrasound lately and realized how useful it would be in areas far off the beaten track like Haiti, for instance. With a bedside ultrasound (mine fits in my pocket) I could diagnose heart disease, kidney and gallbladder problems, various cancers as well as lung and intestinal diseases. Then I realized that I would have to take a whole bunch of ultrasound gel with me which would mean that I would have to check luggage, which is a real pain when traveling light to a place where luggage disappears. I heard that you can use water, or spit, in a pinch, or even lotion, though oil based coupling media apparently break down the surface of the transducer. Or, of course, you can just use ultrasound gel. Ultrasound requires an aqueous interface between the transducer and the skin or else all you see is black. Ultrasound gel is a clear goo, looks like hair gel or aloe vera, and is made by several companies out of various combinations of propylene glycol, glyce...

Ivermectin for Covid--Does it work? We don't know.

  Lately there has been quite a heated controversy about whether to use ivermectin for Covid-19.  The FDA , a US federal agency responsible for providing unbiased information to protect people from harmful drugs, foods, even tobacco products, has said that there is not good evidence of ivermectin's safety and effectiveness in treating Covid 19, and that just about sums up what we truly know about ivermectin in the context of Covid. The CDC, Centers for Disease Control, a branch of the department of Health and Human Services, tasked with preventing and treating disease and injury, also recently warned  people not to use ivermectin to treat Covid outside of actual clinical trials. Certain highly qualified physicians, including ones who practice critical care medicine and manage many patients with severe Covid infections in the intensive care unit vocally support the use of ivermectin to treat Covid and have published dosing schedules and reviews of the literature supporting...

Actinic Keratoses and Carac (fluorouracil) cream: why is this so expensive?

First, a disclaimer: I don't know why Carac (0.5% flourouracil cream) is so expensive. I will speculate, though, at the very end of this blog. Sun and the skin: what happens If a person reaches a certain age, has very little pigment in her skin, and has spent lots of time in the sun, bad stuff happens. The ultraviolet radiation of the sun does all kinds of great things: it makes us happy, causes us to synthesize vitamin D which strengthens our bones and it gives us this healthy glow until we get old and wrinkled and leathery. And even that can be charming. The skin cells put up with this remarkably well for a long time, partly aided by melanin pigment which absorbs the radiation, which is why we tan and freckle, if we are fair skinned. Eventually, though, we absorb enough radiation that it injures the skin and produces cells which multiply oddly. It also damages the skin's elasticity which creates wrinkles. The cells which reproduce in odd ways peel, creating dry skin or...