Prior to leaving for Boston, I decided to get my first haircut since losing my hair!
The stylist may have been a little taken aback by my "I don't know what I want...just cut it!". Thankfully I was happy with the results.
I drove to Columbus Friday night to spend some time with Andria and Muhtadi and be closer to the airport for my early morning flight. I had caught a pretty nasty cold during the week (maybe I rushed back from surgery......) so flying didn't feel too great on the ears. It took almost all day for my ears to finally pop and get out of the cloud my head was in. We landed in Boston and were welcomed by...
lovely weather! It actually wasn't too bad...a bit of a rain/snow mix. We normally don't have this conference this early in the year, so all in all, we might have lucked out.
I had forgotten my antibiotic, and thanks to Mom and making a few phonecalls, we determined, I didn't need to go to the pharmacy so I headed straight to the convention center, home of Experimental Biology for the next few days. I quickly met up with my old labmate Jen. It was so good to catch up and chat a bit. I've missed that girl!
After catching up, I had a new experience for the meeting, going to meetings! I am on the communications committee for the American Physiological Society as the representative from the Teaching Section, so I am a de facto member on the Teaching Section Steering Committee. It's actually really fun to get to interact with the other folks, particularly since we had a conference call earlier this year and I could put some faces to voices.
Last year I had presented some work from CSU in a session of rapid fire (5 min) presentations and won an award for the best in session. Because of that, I was asked to help co-chair the session this year. Basically, I got to make sure powerpoint presentations were loaded, read off the titles of presentations and presenters (haha, said gila instead of glia once...maybe I should have read ahead...), and be prepared to ask questions in case there weren't any from the audience. The session as a whole went well, and it was nice to do some thinking right out of the gate.
Post-session, Jen, Sarah D and I had a delicious seafood dinner before heading to the concert (see last post). This guy Shakey Graves is awesome you guys. Check it out:
A really impressive show when he's doing the one man band thing, and when he adds the bass and drums even better. The venue (the Royale) was cool and the company (seen below) couldn't have been better!
One of the best parts was the concert started early (opening act at 7), so I was able to get to bed at a reasonable time, pretty clutch while nursing a cold and having a 7:00 AM session.
Side benefit to these conferences and being in an urban area...no concern about getting my steps in!
Fortunately, I had a great room at the Residence Inn. As the front desk guy said I got the upgrade due to my Marriot status (haha I've stayed like twice) and "really lucky timing". I could totally have lived in this room...
Sunday started early with a poster on the PhUn Week activity I did that I had shared about earlier. This conference is pretty huge, here are some pictures for the scale...the main exhibit hall has all of the exhibitors trying to sell stuff and hundreds of posters each day from all the different societies.
Then there are tons of other sessions in rooms throughout the convention center. and a lot of standing around "networking"/talking with folks.
It was in a few of those hallway run-ins when I probably was awkwardly upfront about things. A few conversations went along these lines:
Person who I see at these conferences once a year: "Anne! Hi!"
Me: "Person! Hi!"
Person: "How's the year been?"
Me: "Good, busy, you know. Well, it's been interesting...I got a cancer diagnosis in the fall, spent first semester in chemo, had some surgeries, etc, so yeah....hanging in, but doing ok...."
Person: "....oh my gosh, so sorry to hear that."
I filtered a few times, and some people already knew. I probably just need to get over feeling like I need to justify: my hair, my weight, my work I did this year, etc. But yeah, I'm awkward. Whatever.
I had another meeting Sunday, for the communications committee. You should all check out: http://www.physiologyinfo.org/ and http://ispyphysiology.com/ our communications initiatives. I need to write a blog post soon! Probably will have to be a little better than the stream of consciousness rambling I do on here!
While I was busy at meetings and such, my student was presenting literally all day long (3 times!). She did great, and the undergrad poster session went really well overall.
While I didn't get to be outside much, fortunately the weather also broke on Sunday and was finally sunny!
That evening I met up with my good friend Sarah and her boyfriend. We ate at this fantastic Italian restaurant in the North End, Mamma Maria. It's in an 18th century row house, literally across the street from Paul Revere's house, the oldest building in downtown Boston. The food (I had rabbit stew) was delicious. Unfortunately, Sarah and I forgot to take a picture, so we'll throwback to the time she returned from her Army tour in the Middle East and I took her to Tour De Fat in Ft. Collins and then we hiked 4 14'ers the next day...
It was so great to catch up with this awesome lady. Afterwards, we went to the institution that is
Mike's Pastry Shop.
I had Sarah surprise me with a treat (cash only! what the heck?!) and I was definitely pleased when I got back to the hotel.
Monday was another great day of catching up with friends at various meals throughout the day, cool sessions (constitutional rights related to social media, undergraduate physiology programs...haha, not a ton of science for me that day), and overall fun.
It was invigorating to be at the conference, around so many passionate people that are doing things they enjoy and are making a contribution...either to students' lives or our general knowledge. I was pretty jazzed about it all when I got back. I'm really glad I was able to go...and as my other brief post shared, there was some of the "happy to be alive and well" going on too.
Tuesday was a crazy day at work and then I had multiple doctor appointments. The first was to "plan" for radiation. It's a fairly involved process including:
-CT scans, with and without contrast
-creating a mold that I will lie in each time to ensure that I'm in the same position
-tattooing marks to line of the lasers with (literally tattoos! my first ever! they are really just little blue pin prick dots)
They take the scans and figure out where exactly they will administer the radiation. This takes a couple weeks, so I still get to wait a bit before starting my daily treatments.
After the radiation meeting, I went to the post-op follow up at the plastic surgeon. All is well, though I was SUPER disappointed to hear that I have to continue to wear this bandeau for at least 2.5 more weeks.
These chicks are lying. No one is happy about wearing this. When I asked if I was done, the surgeon literally laughed at me. When I said it was annoying he sarcastically replied "yeah, you're the first person to ever say that". Apparently the implants can 'rise up' a bit and it really does help, so I guess it's worth it. As Mom said while I was complaining on the way home, everything else has gone so well, I probably shouldn't be so upset about this, but in all of my 'planning for the worst, hoping for the best' I didn't plan on this! Grrrrrr. At least I don't have to wear the ace wrap (unless I want to you know, be seen and have things all smooshed around, and was given permission to take it off, when I need to, in order to stay sane.
So it's April. Tuesday I had a late night working on things that were due the first of the month (that deadline snuck up on me) but I made it!! Hard to believe that there is only a month left of classes. Crazy.
This post ended up being more of a what happened then how did I feel while it was all happening...but regardless, its been a pretty good few days. I'm looking forward to a few days off (hooray Catholic school!) even though I have to get some work done as well.
Happy Easter ya'll. HE IS RISEN! ;)
Your hair cut is super cute!! And it sounds like you had a great time at the Conference. Is it back in SD next year??
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