Our place out here in the middle of nowhere is a sanctuary away from the pressures of the world for both The Girl and me. It’s also a place where we can escape people. Both she and myself are borderline introverts. Seeing patients all day long taxes us and so it’s nice to come home to the quietude of nature.

Trouble still finds us though, as I’ve posted about previously (and have yet to finish writing about). It seems that people are people no matter where they are. Take a conversation that I had with one of our other neighbours last year for instance:

“So you’re doing some landscaping huh?” he said.

“Yeah, they’re getting started,” I said.

“Wow, looks like a big job,” he said.

“Uh huh. We’re planning on it taking at least 3 months,” I said. At this point I started inching away from him because I knew where the conversation was heading.

“Must be costing a lot,” he said.

“Yup, it sure is,” I said. Inch..inch…

“If you don’t mind me asking, how much is it costing you?”

Pause.

“You mean the landscaping,” I asked. I couldn’t believe he just came out and asked. Would it be bad for me to say that, yes, I did mind him asking?

“Uh huh,” he said. Now he inched closer to me closing the gap that I’d slowly been creating.

“Well it’s costing about half as much as our house is worth,” I said. I was quite proud of the fact that I was able to avoid giving an actual figure.

He wasn’t satisfied though, “Really!?”

“Yup,” I said and started inching away again.

“So like $50,000?”

I think my face took on a look of incredulity here because of the obvious magnitude of the work involved. I said, “Our house is worth more than $100,000.”

We were one of the last people to move into this neighbourhood. All of the pre-existing neighbours had been through our house while it was being built, and all knew how much the house was listed for.

“$150,000?” He went on.

And so it continued until he got close enough to the figure and then I said, “Yeah, it’s around there.”

Wow, huh?

It’s almost one year later now, and I still don’t know what the best way would have been to tell him that it wasn’t really any of his business. Living out in the middle of nowhere and not having lots of neighbours means having to maintain decent relations with them.

What would you have done in this situation?

Note to self: When your sister-in-law, who is a registered dietitian, tells you to sprinkle flax seeds over your food in order to increase your Omega-3 intake, don’t go overboard with the quantity. If you do, you will spend a much longer time in the smallest room of the house than you really want to.

I saw the prisoner today for his consultation. He and his 2 guards were 35 minutes late for their appointment. He had his leg irons and handcuffs on but he was dressed in regular clothes, including his rasta hat. Both guards accompanied him into the room while I did the exam and went over the details of a retreatment and potential future apicoectomy.

Before I could give anything to the patient (like the AAE brochure on retreatments), I had to pass it by the guards. I guess they don’t know for sure that I’m not in cahoots with the guy.

Overall this was nothing like Oz. The prisoner was a nice guy, and so were the guards — although I don’t know what our next patient thought as he watched them leave our office together.

For those of you who think that the practice of dentistry is merely a technical skill (like putting tires on a car), think again. Here’s a quote from a foreign-trained dentist who got in trouble for practising without a license here in Canada:

“I used to pull teeth, extractions, fillings, root canals, bridges, dentures. When you work like this, you gain the experience and you gain the ability.”

But Mr. Bytyqi said he and his wife, who is also a dentist, struggled to find their feet in the profession after they arrived in Canada as refugees in 1999. They have two children, aged nine and 11.

[...]

He also failed a Canadian eligibility exam four times despite taking courses to upgrade, he said. A letter from the Association of Canadian Faculties of Dentistry, dated November 2004 — after the last test Mr. Bytyqi said he took — states his score was 31 per cent.

Mr. Bytyqi said the exams relied too much on theory, which he had studied decades earlier.¹

Yeah, screw theory, let’s get down and dirty and just rip those teeth out of your head.

1. Story on Canada.com. [↩]

In this laboratory¹ you will apply the techniques of dilution and measurement of concentrations to investigate a physiological parameter: the hemolymph (or blood) volume of an insect. A parameter is a quantifiable variable of a system you wish to study. Determining values for a parameter such as hemolymph volume allows you to measure the effect of a treatment in an experiment, or to calculate other things. For example, you can determine the absolute amount of a metabolite such as an amino acid if you know both its concentration and the volume of the hemolymph containing it. We have chosen the cockroach because it is readily available and it is large (for an insect!).

Your objectives are:

1. To determine cockroach hemolymph volume by injecting a known amount of Amaranth Red dye, and measuring its dilution by the hemolymph.
2. To think about and correct for possible errors in the method.

Outline:

1. Derive a standard curve for dye concentration by a method simulating the dilution by the hemolymph.
2. Inject a cockroach with a known amount of Amaranth Red.
3. Extract hemolymph samples at given times
4. Plot your data and calculate hemolymph volume.

My friend Steve and I were partners for the cockroach experiment. Steve was the data recorder, I was the grunt who did the actual dirty work. I told you he was smart.

The experiment consisted of us diluting cockroach blood in situ with Amaranth Red dye. Some reports have indicated a degree of carcinogenicity² with this dye, and the lab manual that we were working from told us to be careful with it because it was carcinogenic. As part of my grunt responsibilities, I had to draw the extracted blood/dye mixture up into a pipette (a long measuring tube).

Read the rest of this entry »

1. http://www.ableweb.org/volumes/vol-15/8-smith/8-smith.htm [↩]
2. http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/AM/amaranth.html [↩]