I'm alive! Surprisingly enough, I survived the last couple of weeks that are now a blur when looking back. For those of you who don't know, I came down with mono a couple weeks ago. Well, actually not just mono... I also had some sort of bacterial infection (maybe in my kidneys??), tonsilitis, and some sort of liver infection/inflammation. The first week was really rough, and I can honestly say that I don't remember large parts of it. There were several phone conversations that I had that I don't even remember what was said, but at least I remember who it was that I spoke with! Were it not for the help of Nick (refer to my last blog) and Tim (my very good friend) the week would have been much worse. Nick was the biggest help - he went to the grocery store for me a couple times, cooked for me (even though I wasn't able to eat), drove me places, and was generally very supportive (even as much as letting me sack out at his house for an 18 hour binge sleep when I couldn't drive all the way home). Now that I'm through the worst of it, I'm just trying to keep myself well-rested but there are still some lingering problems. My throat finally started coming down from the swelling - it was really getting bad there for a while where I could hardly breath when I slept - but my glands are still a little swollen and there is still a lot of pressure in my upper abdomen. Nonetheless, I'm alive and doing fairly well so that's all I care about:)

Aside from the fact that being sick really sucked, it also put me very far behind in the lab. Experiments are piling up left and right, and now I'm fairly certain that I won't make my end of the year deadline to have the paper out. My plans are to revise what I have written already while I'm at Shane/Tonya's for Christmas, so I'll have to make sure to set aside some time (but not too much, because I want to have fun too!)

But speaking of experiments, I have one running now that I should probably go check on to make sure it's not over-done. 'Til next time!!