In 2021, on three consecutive Wednesdays in January, in a trium of blood-bound events, we survived a catastrophe, we served a correction, and we held a celebration. Democracy is, at times, a gory and brutal mess — an angry boil in need of lancing — and sometimes in need of a realignment of values based on the witnessing of a live horror, in real time, as we are confronted by the monsters some of us have become in the lighted dark of day.
The internets have lately been filled with delicious and vile revelations about our blood. The media is in a tizzy of mice and memes and surgeons and even strippers — each one vying to try to measure and mess with our blood — and I’m sure all of this is all just the start of what just may become a regular Boles Blogs featurette: This Was the Week in Blood!
I have MRSA – to be specific I have HA-MRSA. MRSA is a superbug – its full is name methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria – the HA denotes I contracted it in hospital – if I had contracted it outside of hospital it would be denoted CA-MRSA – community acquired MRSA.
Superbugs are a group of microorganisms that are resistant to at least one or more commonly used antibiotics. The commonly accepted list of superbugs is as follows:
MRSA – (Staphylococcus aureus strains resistant to multiple antibiotics) , VRE (Enterococcus species resistant to vancomycin), PRSP (Streptococcus pneumoniae strains resistant to penicillin), ESBLs (Escherichia coli and other Gram-negative bacteria resistant to antibiotics such as cephalosporins and monobactams) and multiple drug-resistant Clostridium difficile.
A great joy of teaching is when your students surprise you with something unexpected. One good way to find out what students are thinking is to ask them to respond to a writing prompt. My favorite writing prompt for Playwriting students is to ask them to write a dramatic scene that begins with this line: “I’m going to kill you!” 30% of students will immediately write, as a second line, “Just kidding!” — but for those students who believe in the threat first line, the rest of the story tears off.
Continue reading → The Written, Rising, Art: On Writing Writing Prompts
I vividly remember December 2, 1982. Barney Clark was the first successful recipient of an artificial heart. His crawling life-back-into-death experience lasted a gruesome 112 days. We all tried to be happy at the prospect of a fake heart beating to give us life, but watching Barney, in his wheelchair, dead-in-the-eyes and comatose-of-expression gave us all pause about the meaning of being human. Are we our hearts? Does our mind define us, or are we merely a beating muscle mindlessly flexing and reacting to electric impulses?
Last night, I read an amazing article published in Popular Science detailing an all-new heart replacement called the HeartMate IIs — and its hallmark construction is that it gives recipients no heartbeat or pulse because the device is not a pump, but rather a sophisticated, spinning, Archimedes‘ Screw:
The HeartMate II was an Archimedes’ screw with magnets implanted in the axle and an electric coil in the cylindrical case surrounding it—the saltshaker-shaped device that Cohn had placed in my hands. A charge zipped around the coil, drawing the screw along at 8,000 to 12,000 revolutions per minute. The axle spun on a synthetic-ruby bearing, lubricated by the blood itself. Connected to a portable battery, it let patients live fairly normal lives and was designed to stay in place forever, not merely as a “bridge to transplant.” Patients’ own hearts still worked; the continuous flow of the pump just helped things along.
Julie pulled the smoking gun from Amy’s neck and blew smoke away from the barrel as blood spattered the air in droplets of fading life.
Continue reading → The Missing Middle Finger: Ten Sentence Story #101
On December 6, 1998, my wife Janna and I began to serve the Vegan lifestyle. I say “serve” because being Vegan can be a lonesome service to a greater cause as everyone around you devours animals and wears their skins.
Continue reading → Why I Am Still Vegan After a Decade of Service
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