Nobel Prize for Medicine!
Oct. 3rd, 2005 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zdashamberHuzzah! I log on this morning to see that the Nobel Prize for Medicine went to two Australians who cured me of ulcers! And, of course, lots and lots of other people. Noble indeed, really.
Yes, not long in the past, ulcers were thought to be caused by stress, and the answer was a very unhelpful "stop stressing so much." Oh, gee, y'think? I began to find in my sophmore year of college that eating caused me an hour or so of lying-on-the-bed pain, and not eating also caused me an hour or so of lying-on-the-bed pain. I learned by heart that the least acidic thing it's possible to drink is water. I was doing midterms and homework, and getting up at the butt-crack of dawn to hang glide every weekend...
School. God preserve me. Thing with school is ever-present continuous grinding guilt at all the things you should be reading/studying/filling in, and aren't, because there are other things in life, too... If work ever sucks I can think, Hey, at least I'm not in school anymore. And I like learning things and taking notes on lectures... Anyway:
But Barry Marshall and Robin Warren proved it wasn't just coincidence that Heliobacter pylori clustered around ulcers. They were the main causative agent. And a course of cheap antibiotics were all that was necessary to wipe them out. So after some months of a few hours of pain a day, when it finally ocurred to me that this was maybe something I should get checked out, I went to the doctor a few times and got a prescription and bang! pain gone! Eating ok again!
Bless them, may the money and fame keep them ever well. I like Nobel prizes in general, but this time it's really neat that it's personal. Huz-zah!
Yes, not long in the past, ulcers were thought to be caused by stress, and the answer was a very unhelpful "stop stressing so much." Oh, gee, y'think? I began to find in my sophmore year of college that eating caused me an hour or so of lying-on-the-bed pain, and not eating also caused me an hour or so of lying-on-the-bed pain. I learned by heart that the least acidic thing it's possible to drink is water. I was doing midterms and homework, and getting up at the butt-crack of dawn to hang glide every weekend...
School. God preserve me. Thing with school is ever-present continuous grinding guilt at all the things you should be reading/studying/filling in, and aren't, because there are other things in life, too... If work ever sucks I can think, Hey, at least I'm not in school anymore. And I like learning things and taking notes on lectures... Anyway:
But Barry Marshall and Robin Warren proved it wasn't just coincidence that Heliobacter pylori clustered around ulcers. They were the main causative agent. And a course of cheap antibiotics were all that was necessary to wipe them out. So after some months of a few hours of pain a day, when it finally ocurred to me that this was maybe something I should get checked out, I went to the doctor a few times and got a prescription and bang! pain gone! Eating ok again!
Bless them, may the money and fame keep them ever well. I like Nobel prizes in general, but this time it's really neat that it's personal. Huz-zah!