Monthly Archives: April 2008

Dream: House fires

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I was returning with someone to an enormous brick manor house, which we saw was on fire. The fire, with flames leaping out of windows and into the sky, was somehow put out quite easily, and I walked around the house to survey the damage.

There was no damage.

There were no scorch or water marks, no burnt timbers, no structural damage of any kind. Even more interesting, the rooms, including mine, were bare. I loved this place and became afraid for it.

We would leave and return, each time to find the house on fire. It was always empty, and there was never any damage. The fire was always extinguished mysteriously and quickly.

Something must be causing these fires, I reasoned, perhaps an electrical problem. Some people volunteered to stay at the house to keep watch over it. Although they lived in it, too, I became suspicious of them.

I got into the car, cramming myself into the corner to make room for the many others I thought were coming. “We’re going to pick up your cousin, J.,” the driver, a registered nurse I work with, said. “That’s it.” I heard and understood her but did not believe her. I did not want to leave, and looked back fearfully at my beloved, empty house.

Dream: Ruined

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I was in the front row of a classroom, waiting for the professor. When he arrived, he made an announcement. I could not understand what he said, but the students behind me seemed to think he wanted them to introduce themselves. When they started to, he thundered at them, “What are you doing?” I became upset because to me it appeared that he had misled them or that he was overreacting.

I remembered that I have a degree and wondered why I was there. I looked on a schedule and found that I was enrolled in two full years of classes and that the first course was on “Potato.” All of this was clearly a waste of time and money, and I dreaded canceling my classes, telling my parents, and packing and moving home again. Had I not been through this before?

I went to my room, which was like a warehouse. A stream of water was pouring from the ceiling. In a panic, I went to someone — perhaps my mother? — and told her about the water and that something must be done right away. She looked at me angrily and said, “It’s all much worse than you realize. It’s more than you. Take a look around.” I did, and now there was water pouring down in this room, another warehouse. It was bare, and all the ceiling tiles were missing.

I returned to my room; I had a hunch I would find the same conditions there. It felt a little like an apocalypse or that we were traveling backward in time, and the condition of the building reflected a regression from the contemporary to the more primitive.

I could see that my life was ruined and felt the waves of despair begin. Again.

Coupledom

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From Friday, March 28:

Overheard at the new Treasure Island in Hyde Park:

He: Oh, we forgot to get bagels.
She (acidly): Then get them.

I don’t think she was hissing about the bagels.

Observed at the corner of 55th and Hyde Park Boulevard:

Man with cell phone to right ear and cigarette in left hand, woman with cell phone to left ear and cigarette in right hand — bookends.

They walked together, mostly, except when one or the other would veer off. When the other finally noticed, he or she would turn casually to catch up, without interruption to the phone conversations.

Nothing but love.

Dream: Duel

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I was in an auditorium, where two people from IT announced that they were going to talk about the Web site. They gestured to me to join them, but I was unprepared. Had I known about this presentation? Had I forgotten something so out of the scope of my day-to-day drudgery? I stood, but remained off to the side so no one would notice me and the IT people would forget me.

To my surprise, they called upon audience members to come forward and play a game. They showed video of passing scenery shot from an aerial perspective; the object was to guess the location of the destination before the video arrived at it.

A young man was the first to be called. His video began in what like a tiny country village with a prominent, almost medieval church. I thought that it might be France; the destination might be somewhere like Arles. The young man was no more successful than I in his guesses. Suddenly, the aerial journey ended at an urban island that everyone guessed to be Staten Island. It was too large, I thought, and I was sure it must be Long Island even though I was puzzled by the skyscrapers.

The young man tagged me to play next (so much for my inconspicuousness), but the IT people said that I wasn’t part of the audience.

I don’t know what happened next — perhaps I failed at something — because I was told I had to duel someone, using real weapons. I was given a long pole with a semicircular blade. This seemed too easy, and I wondered what the catch was going to be.

For a long time I did not see my opponent or know what his weapons were, but he proved to be a large, bald man with brass stars and other throwing weapons. I did not want to hurt him, so I poked him gently with the blade. It made no impression on him. I wondered with suspicion if the blade magically softened or deteriorated at the edge with each blow, which would have been a nasty trick. I became more cautious.

In the meantime, the man threw his stars — but not at me. They never seemed to strike the intended targets, who were people I know and like. Finally, he walked toward me (I was frozen in terror, I’m sure), then veered toward a young man. He used the edge of a star on the young man’s face and neck. Paralyzed and horrified, I was powerless to stop him. I thought he was going to slit the man’s throat, but he made a line in the skin that barely bled. I did not know what to think or do, and I felt guilty.

"I never drink . . . wine," or core antibodies

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Today is blood drive day at work, but my blood donation days are over thanks to an unreliable screening process and FDA cautiousness.

I’ve been a blood donor since I was first eligible. I was turned away once in Hamburg, New York, because my blood pressure was high. As I dripped sweat onto the floor, I asked naively, “Would riding a bicycle three miles uphill make it high?” Undoubtedly bemused, the nurse directed me to rest for a while, then we tried again. This time, my blood pressure was its usual laid-back self. Later, in my 20s, I was rejected once for low iron, but that proved to be a temporary condition.

I donated primarily through the Red Cross and later the University of Chicago hospitals. More recently, I’ve donated through an agency that performs workplace blood drives. My blood is healthy; the trouble has been getting at it and drawing it. My veins are either too deep or too small, and there seems to be only one, on the outer edge of my left elbow, that’s consistently viable. We tried apheresis once, but it took too long.

At some point in the 1990s, after a donation the agency sent me a letter saying that my blood had tested positive for hepatitis B core antibodies and could not be used. This seemed unlikely to me, so I asked my doctor to order a screening. He couldn’t find anything, and I wrote a rather tetchy letter to the agency with the results enclosed.

If I remember right, I donated a few more times without problem, then in the early 2000s the screening once again revealed the presence of hepatitis B core antibodies. By now, I was a little upset because it was clear to me the screening was flawed. I did not try to donate again until November 2007; I was under the impression that I still could.

No.

I received a stern letter from the agency saying that, although the screening was negative this time, I have been permanently deferred as a blood donor due to two positive screenings [with negative screenings in between].

The letter was not well written, and it wasn’t clear to me if this was this particular agency’s policy, a generally accepted practice among blood donation organizations, or legally mandated. I did a little digging and found the following on another organization’s site:

There is also evidence to suggest that a high percentage of positive HBcAb tests in healthy blood donors are false positives. The hepatitis B core antibody should not become positive because of vaccination. Donors are deferred after 2 positive occurrences.

This sounded to me like a generally accepted practice that makes no sense.

In the meantime, the agency had gotten my Social Security number wrong, and the voicemail I’d left with the corrected number had gone unnoticed. Finally, I got hold of a living being and told her that my pint had been dispensed with as no good, so my Social Security number didn’t matter. “Oh, no, it’s important that we have the correct number on file,” undoubtedly to send to the CIA, FBI, Red Cross, the remnants of the KGB, and anyone else who might be out for my apparently tainted blood, what with the hepatitis B core antibodies that I sometimes have and sometimes don’t.

I had a thought. “Can I talk to someone [a nurse] who can explain why I’ve been permanently deferred?” The conversation with the nurse was enlightening, frustrating, and almost amusing.

She told me that blood from a donor with hepatitis B core antibodies can’t be used as it causes problems for the recipient. Right — I understand that perfectly and have no desire to make someone whose health is compromised worse. According to her, the presence of these core antibodies is not a bad thing for me, as they provide protection against hepatitis B. Right — I am familiar with the general principles behind antibodies.

I pointed out that I either have them or I don’t, and it looks to me like the screening process produces a number of false positives, making it rather useless. “Yes,” she conceded, “the screening does produce a number of false positives.” She went on to say that it is only a screening, not a test. The screening can be affected by a number of factors, such as medication and viruses. It is the FDA that requires donors with two positives to be permanently deferred. “But,” she said (and would repeat several times, even after agreeing that most likely I don’t have hepatitis B core antibodies, “it’s not a bad thing for you that you have core antibodies . . .” “I thought you agreed that it’s very unlikely that I do?” “Yes, but it’s not a bad thing because . . .,” etc. “Something caused the positives.”

After several sets of this back-and-forth serving match, I said, “Essentially, you’re telling me that the FDA permanently defers a huge pool of healthy blood donors based on a flawed screening process that yields a high number of false positives.”

Yes, that’s what she was telling me, and that’s what I gleaned from my own research.

Part of my rational mind understands the FDA’s conservatism. With the best intentions, we don’t want to make a recipient’s condition worse.

The other part of my rational mind, however, knows that I’m the ideal blood donor — healthy and with no risks of blood-borne diseases from transfusions, travel, or lifestyle practices.

The nurse from the agency said they would call me if the regulations are changed and that I can still donate bone marrow and organs. Meanwhile, despite the constant pleas for blood donations, I’ll have to keep my healthy blood to myself. For that, I am genuinely sorry.

Dream: Lawn bowling for monster-gods

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I was with a man and a child and being threatened by a monster-god who was electrical in nature. He seemed to suspect our presence, but for some reason I didn’t understand he couldn’t see us.

We knew we were in terrible danger and that the only way to avoid the monster-god’s notice was to roll a ball between us so that it would not lose contact with the ground while rolling but would hit one or the other of us (not the child) at the end of each roll. At the same time, any kind of movement might attract his attention. All of this frightened me because the condition not to be seen — rolling the ball — included the condition to be seen — movement. It was a dilemma.

I faced the monster-god, which made the situation more horrible for me because I could see his reactions, if any. I would have to communicate them to the man somehow.

The man raised his arms, at which the monster-god raised his. I trembled in fear. The ball never rolled; it bounced, and the monster-god seemed to follow its erratic up-and-down movement. It never went straight; it veered off in different directions, which the monster-god seemed to notice. The more I saw of this, the more I was convinced that I was being toyed with and that I was doomed.

I feared the man and child, too.