Should be studying Parasitology right now, but I can't focus. Nor can I watch the movie I have stuck in my head (Gladiator) because I don't own it. So instead I'm posting a few quotes I collected over the past few days and a few amusing moments.
Quotes:
"It's been a while since I've stalked a famous person." - Prof. Andersen
"Like cutting butter with a chainsaw." - Classmate quoting Theater Prof.
“As much as I’d like to, I cannot sustain myself on Ben and Jerry’s, so my reasoning takes over and I eat broccoli.” – Prof. Andersen
“It’s like…an out of body experience…with art.” – Me on Immanuel Kant’s ‘rant’ on beauty
Me: You’re not alone.
Courtney: I know. Lol. Everyone’s dozing off.
Me: Yeah. Apparently brain eating amoebae aren’t enough on a Monday.
Class Rants:
Yeah, so we were covering two of the most disturbing amoeba species I’ve ever heard of. Screw Entamoeba histolytica, these two have no reason to keep us alive.
Naegleria fowleri – this is my newest reason in a LONG line of reasons I will not go swimming in fresh water. Besides just hating the feeling of the lake/river bed, I’m now aware of a free-living amoeba that can be present that will eat your brain. Yeah. As if that weren’t enough, it only takes 5-6 days to kill you and is very difficult to diagnose. I know it’s rare and all that rot (approx. 200 cases worldwide, 81 in USA, 6 in 2007)but the thought of an parasite getting to my brain because I got water up my nose and an amoeba decided to shimmy up the olfactory nerve to munch at my grey matter is more than enough to keep me away from lakes/ponds/rivers for…pretty much my entire life. The fact that it has a 95% fatality rate simply reiterates that.
Acanthamoeba – because just having shitty eyesight and having to deal with contact lenses isn’t enough stress already, now there’s an amoeba that will gnaw its way into your eye if it gets caught under your contact lens. Perfect. Good news: this is primarily from people washing their contacts with tap water or handling your lenses after playing in dirt. Bad news: supposedly it’s also a risk when you shower with your contacts in (do this all the time). Perfect. Thank you so very much Parasitology, I’m going to become a paranoid hermit because of you. Especially because graphic photographs seem to be a must for every parasite we look at. Ugh. What’s more, this doesn’t only go after your eyes, and given the other possibility, you’re going to hope you only get this in your eyes. Aside from Acanthamoeba keratitis (the infection of your cornea/eye by Acanthamoeba trophs/cysts) Acanthamoeba may also cause a granulomatous amebic encephalitis, which has no known treatments and is thus 100% fatal. You don’t even need to translate this whole thing to know what it does. All you need to know is what the last word means: encephalitis. That means it attacks the brain. Enough said.
On that cheerful, disturbing, note, I’m going to study their less-dangerous cousins, the Entamoeba species and other lovely disease causing parasites like the Leishmania species and Plasmodium species (cause malaria). Oh how I love my chosen major right now...
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