Amazing House

So, this is the house that belongs to my ambulatory internal medicine attending, Dr. Hawatmeh.  It is huge… HUGE!  It’s a brand new house in a brand new subdivision to the northwest of St. Louis.  He’s lived there for about a year, and he’s still working on some finishing touches, but as you can see it is gorgeous, and huge.  And, I never thought I would say this, but it is actually a bit too big for my tastes.  But, he does have 4 teenage daughters, so maybe that fills it out a bit. 🙂  The pool is in the backyard, and even though you can’t really see it too well, there’s a big waterfall and pond way at the end of the property (past the end of the pool).

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Being Sick is No Fun

     Thumbs down to being sick.

It still baffles me that we have come up with so so SO many antibiotics (meaning, specifically, antibacterials) but the methods of fighting off viruses still eludes us.  Sure, we’ve got some that reduce the suffering during a herpesvirus outbreak (acyclovir, gancyclovir, etc) and even a couple that, if used quickly enough, can shorten the misery of influenza virus infection (amantadine, zanamivir).  And thankfully we’ve come up with a few medications that seem to stave off HIV for a while (the reverse transcriptase and protease inhibitors).  But why can’t we tackle the common cold?  What about these coronaviruses, rhinoviruses, adenoviruses…?

I know, I know:  "They mutate!"  "The antigens change!"  "We just can’t keep up!"

Viruses.  Little capsules of genetic material without brains, without thought, without intent or purpose… just carrying out their hard-coded genetic instructions that just so happen to bring mighty humans to their knees.