Ahhhhhhh.

My cold is running its course; today was what I call Danger Day, that is, the day my symptoms aren't gone but I have a lot of my usual energy back. This is the day on which the immune system is not back up to usual working condition but I'm sorely tempted to act like it is.

I wasn't that miserable really, but I was sleeping a lot and couldn't go outside for long. After 5 days without a workout, my body was starting to seriously seem like it belonged to someone else. Nothing hurt, nothing felt good, nothing felt tight or loose or different from the day before... it was so quiet down there. Just as strange and disheartening as if your spouse, roommate, or very vocal feline companion were to suddenly fall silent and not speak to you anymore. In case you ever find yourself in this situation, here are flexagon's rules for working out while sick:

• If you're pretty sure you're well enough to work out, but are worried about handling the 7-minute walk to the gym, don't go.
• Cardio and vinyasa yoga are a privilege reserved for those with unobstructed breathing and functioning noses.
• If it is time for squats, ignore the first rule unless you are dead. Get to the squat rack, to avoid retribution next week.
• Remember that the gym is really germy. Wash hands, take vitamins, don't lick the bench, leave as soon as you are done.

Now that I've worked my lower body (yesterday) and upper body (today), there is again bustling in the metropolis below my neck. It's not that everything hurts, necessarily (shut up, hamstrings, I meant in general). It's just that the lights are back on.

DNA sample is getting FedExed tomorrow

Spit. Spitspitspit. That's me spitting a two-milliliter DNA sample for 23andMe.com to analyze in gruesome detail. Here it is, mixed with DNA stabilizer of some sort.



The 23andMe.com folks say they need saliva instead of a cheek swab because they need a lot of cells, by the way, which is a bit weird since I didn't think saliva necessarily HAD cells in it. The Wikipedia page on saliva says that indeed, it's mostly water, electrolytes, mucus and enzymes, but there also may be "possibly as much [sic] as 8 million human cells per mL", so I am shipping away possibly as many (ahem) as 16 million of my cells. I'm still wondering WHAT cells; maybe some immune-system cells?

I forgot to mention another good reason I have for getting analyzed, and that's Birdie, my biological child. Any genetic condition I have, I could have passed on to her; and so I feel obligated to tell her parents anything of particular note that I find out. We certainly were thinking about genetic quality at the time of deciding to do the egg donation (and decided not worry too much about my father's probable cancer-genes, btw, because V doesn't have much cancer in his family) but this level of knowledge just wasn't available in 2000. Mind you, I'm not saying this good reason has anything to do with my actual decision, merely that it is a good reason that happens to agree with my unreasonably strong need to know.

Had a brief talk about this with some people over the weekend (one a doctor, one currently in med school); the one who was a doctor says that the specific cancers that wiped out my grandparents (colon and esophagus) are theoretically not hereditary. It's amazing how much I don't care about that little tidbit of information, at this point. I'm going to be finding out my REAL probabilities soon.



One more thing -- humor me. When I first posted about 23andMe.com, I really thought everyone and their dog would have something to say about it. If you didn't comment and/or don't think this is interesting, why not!? I'm really missing something here. I understand people are thinking deep thoughts about the right not to know their genetic information, but you can't un-know the fact that you COULD now know it. Either you don't have $1009, or you're now choosing not to learn things about yourself, and I'm probably the one who put you in that position (yeah, it was a top news item at Wired for a couple of days, but that was after my post). I think even that much is fascinating.