In Defense of Science

[Львица] told be about this story the other day and I was totally amazed by the photo that accompanies it: Major benefits for spinal befida surgery in the womb.

Isn't that just wild? Something about the baby in the womb grabbing onto the surgeon's finger is just - miraculous, spine-tingling, utterly powerful.

I need to see this, especially after the doubt-trip I just went to trying to get my fever/cough/help-I'm-trapped-in-a-shit-hole-can't-someone-get-me-out diagnosed. I'd had a cough since Wednesday or Thursday and then on Saturday night at the Ren Fest I started getting super cold. When everyone else was totally fine. Not good.

By Sunday I had a full-blown fever which I hoped would just go away, as fevers usually do for me. No such luck. All throughout watching Torchwood with [Львица], I was shifting between cold spells and hot flashes (the hot flashes seemed to be somewhat triggered by Jack Harkness appearing on screen... please don't use that against me :P).

Anyway, I was sick. Really sick. I woke up Monday with a fever around 101 degrees F. Bad news bears. But I had to go to class - I had to take an Italian test and attendance is mandatory for all of my classes unless you have a doctor's note (university policy, they're hardcore). So somehow I took the test (yes, I took a test with a fucking 101 degree fever - BE IMPRESSED) and dragged myself to my social psych lecture (of which I remember nothing), came home and took a nap, woke up with the fever as worse as ever and decided I should call my mother and have her take me to the doctor.

Generally, I go to Fairview, which is a local hospital/clinic that does really good work. But they close at five in the evening and I couldn't get back to the suburbs until after that. So I had no choice but to go to urgent care at a place called Quello clinic.

Quello and I have a long, terrible history. One of their doctors indelicately called me unhealthy and fat when I was eleven (it might have been true, but still). Another chewed me out for wearing crappy shoes when I had a sprained ankle, saying that the shoes were my problem (um, bitch, I wore those shoes because MY ANKLE WAS SWOLLEN TWICE ITS USUAL SIZE). This time, I was berated for not inspecting my mucus when I coughed and basically told my college is stupid for requiring a doctor's note policy because it violates HIPPA. Oh, and he couldn't find anything wrong with me because he couldn't discern anything from my lungs. I could have a cold, I could have the beginning of pnemonia. So he told me to take 3 ADVIL every six hours along with 2 TYLENOL  to cut down the fever. 3 ADVIL?  I don't even take that when I've got a headache that feels like a rapture in my brain or cramps strong enough to kill a moose. SERIOUSLY, DUDE?!

Needless to say, I did not take his prescribed remedy and I did not believe his lack of diagnosis. So I went to my REAL clinic, Fairview, where they were also mystified at my pretty intense symptoms accompanied by real lack of breathing problems. But they did a much thorough questioning of symptoms AND A STREP TEST which is like the first thing you try in Minnesota when anyone comes into a doctor's office with my symptoms. (It's like everyone gets strep here - which I've actually never had. Actually, I'd never had the test done before either - not as bad as I was expecting. Everyone talks about feeling like they're going to gag, but I didn't get that.)  So the doc decided I probably had just the common flu coupled with dehydration. So no antibiotics, which is probably for the best. Just Tylenol and lots and lots and LOTS of water.

And it's working. I feel two hundred times better. I mean, I'm blogging again. I can actually think straight. That's something. My fever broke earlier today and I feel like I love the world again. I'm still drinking water like a fish, but for the most part, I think I'm totally on the mend.

This is doctors at their best, like the doctor I saw at Fairview. She wasn't rude, she wasn't harsh, she was kind, sympathetic, and legitimately worried for my welfare. Not being pushy, telling me I'm stupid and trying to get me out of there quickly.

But it's so easy to see stuff like Quello instead of stuff like Fairview. It's so easy to loose faith with science, especially in a position like mine. I'm in a psych department that doesn't care about undergrads unless they're doing research and the profs I have are so focused on their own little category of information that sometimes you can't see the big category of PSYCHOLOGY where everything fits together.

And cultural studies isn't always helpful either. It seems like my class this semester keeps saying how science just hates the humanities and how it's whole idea of data just isn't right and that it's totally overrated and over-specified. Okay, sometimes yes, BUT...

I direct you to a professor I had last semester, named Robin. He is INCREDIBLE. I took his science and culture class, after swearing to NEVER take another class about science ever again (because high school science scarred me. And they tended to think of science rather as the U thinks of psychology - one big entity with some distinct parts that fit together - BUT THEY NEVER SHOW YOU HOW. Yes, I know I am both a individualist and a holistic thinker. It's a problem. DEAL WITH IT).

I was utterly blown away by Robin's class. Science in all its different facets, religion, mass media, Glenn Beck, Michael Crichton, people who want to chop their own limbs off - all of this fit together, to show how great and terrible science is. It isn't perfect; it isn't even close. It doesn't give us all the answers. Maybe it gives a few maybe we shouldn't know. But it's working at it.

Just like psychology. Just like cultural studies. Just like everything else. It's working at it.

I have to admit this, for my sake and for the sanctity of this blog: I really, really like science (especially biology. I think, deep down, part of me wants to be Charles Darwin). As much as I criticize it. As much as I complain about how I loathed it in high school (that was because my teachers were terrible and the classes were boring, not because I didn't think the material was interesting). As much as I complain about doctors/researchers/psychologists/you-name-it not getting it, I TOTALLY RESPECT WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

Because when you come home at the end of the day, and you just read about how some guys says the entire world is going to pot because capitalism is destroying the world and that racism and sexism are never going to be solved and OH MY GOD WHITE PRIVILEGE... it's kind of nice to know that science is helping save people's lives. You know? It's nice to have solid answers - even if they are just things that we all agreed on to be true. Yes, they may be constructions. But I perceive them as REAL constructions. And though sometimes data can turn complicated things into cold, unfeeling numbers... sometimes, SOMETIMES those numbers can actually provide comfort instead of cold, unfeeling philosophies.



I don't want to become cynical. I don't want to be jaded and angry and pissed off at the world. This strange balance I find myself in between psych and cultural studies, science and religion, left and right politics, and all the various intersections between all of THOSE categories seems to be working out for me right now. Yes, nothing is clear cut - but then again, nothing in life is, now is it?