Mi familia

This weekend started off with a huge surprise from my extended family. Where I currently live, I have about 20 cousins. The sad part is that I rarely see them and I hate inviting myself over for tea. But a week ago I decided - hell, I'm going to ring a doorbell no matter what. I kindly let my cousin Tara know that I was coming over for a "tea-cap" and when I arrived I was greeted by her entire clan from 3 different cities/2 different provinces. It just worked out that everyone was visiting this weekend. While hanging out with your cousins may scare the bejeezus out of some folks, this side of my family rocks. There's a lot of history between us while I was growing up. Some of my best memories come from the homestead farm & family motel during the seasonal and summer holidays. I felt so blessed to be able to spend some time with them while we laughed our arses off around the kitchen table.

In this blog, I've chatted a few times about my "adoptive" Greek family. They are a great bunch of folks, have supported me throughout my life, and I'm always proud to be apart of their lives. This is not to suggest that my biological family isn't equally cool - they are awesomely cool. This weekend was just another example of their coolness. What is weird is that these cousins who I feel so close to aren't really so close to me on the family tree measuring stick. I don't have any immediate uncles/aunts. I barely have great uncle/aunts. These set of cousins come from my maternal grandparents side. Yes... for family I must go *that* far back.

My immediate family is very small - like 3 people small, one for each generation: me, my mom, and my granny. It wasn't planned this way. My grandmother did plan to have a large family, but fate would intervene and she contracted polio during the epidemic outbreak in the early 1950s (yeah, this was a factor of why I'm a microbiologist today). My mom was only 3 at the time and the resulting paralysis usurped any logical reason to have more children.


Fast forward things to my mom and her dreams of a nice nuclear family. But once again life circumstances would intervene - one night, her and I ended up on our own when I was 4 months and have been so ever since. I get a lot jokes about my tiny family plus the fact that I'm an only child, but I believe that my mom did her best and if anyone argues, I own several goalie sticks and know how to use them.

This brings things to me, I'm in my 30s and hear the biological clock ticking. I love kids and sincerely would like to have a couple. I have found a lot of people are shocked to hear/see that I'm a "baby-person". This has kinda irked me as it shows that many don't know who I really am. Maybe it's to do with being so "career-orientated" and my academic studies. While that has been a huge focus of my 20s, it doesn't mean that it's my only life focus. I think having kids are important - not just to continue the family line (well within my family, it is all on me), but having kids puts everything in a different perspective. I love the magicalness (yes, new word in the dictionary) of a child's world. Everything is a discovery, everything is an adventure. Those are two things you relearn with having kids. My mom has expressed a profound want of having grandkids. So far I've just pacified her with  a grandcat. I've joked that it would be *too* easy to give her one. She kindly replies, "Thanks, but I'll wait for a son-in-law first." So yes, kids are on my list, can't wait to meet them.


Off to errand land. Cowboy Junkies have been re-appearing on my playlist this week. "Sweet Jane" is one of my favourite mellow tracks. The repeating chords gets you mesmerized. Ciao!

This time it's personal.

Every now and then the ever pondering student of science will lean back in his/her chair with a blank look on their face after the "yet again" realization that whatever they are researching doesn't *really* matter. Oh sure, it matters to themselves, their supervisor, and the powers that may be of funding/thesis committee, but to matter within the realm of the BIG PICTURE, the actual research most people do means diddly squat.

My scientific journey is a shining example:

4th year Bachelor's research project: Determining how well circular pieces of DNA (plasmids) can enter a Salmonella mutant. (For those genetic savvy: the transformation efficiency into a recD mutant).

Personal relevance: I received my B.Sc. honours degree.

BIG PICTURE relevance: on a scale of 0 to 10? Negative eleventy eleven.

Masters' project: Developing a killing assay between human bacterial pathogens and tiny soil worms for a model.

Personal relevance: Killing worms got me a Masters in Genetics.

BIG PICTURE relevance: Yawn.

Doctoral project: Figuring out which genes are actually being affected by an envelope stress response in E. coli.

Personal relevance: I'm a doc! YUSH!

BIG PICTURE relevance: So you reorganized some genetic system in E. coli - wooo.

The irony is that I got into science with the idea that my research would count. Of course every science undergrad has the same idealism. I lost my innocence somewhere between my Bachelor's and Masters. But that did not deter me from continuing on with the Ph.D. for another 7 years. Maybe reality didn't set in quite yet. Anyways, my search for post-doc positions, I really wanted to find something that would be *really* relevant, really contribute, REALLY REALLY MATTER! This was one the key factors why I took my current posting: pneumococcal vaccine development. I knew from the start that even if I developed the vaccine, my name wouldn't be remembered at the end of the day. But at least I could say to people: oh you got that vaccine shot? Heh, I helped made it. Plus the idea that I could contribute to saving millions of strangers annually was nice to know, albeit it'll be still strangers.

That is until this month.

I got a call from my Greek sister-in-law: my niece was in the hospital with pneumococcal meningitis, the exact same bad bug that I'm developing a vaccine against. First, I was highly worried about my niece, immediately took a 48h work leave to drive to another city just to "be" there for her, my Greek bro, and the rest of the family. While road tripping, it suddenly hit me: WHOA! My research matters! Like BIG PICTURE matters! 

While at the hospital, watching my niece sleep (or try to, she was so uncomfortable and it's hard to console a 20 month old lil' tot), things were racing through my mind, wondering if I was even doing enough, was I doing things right? I've griped about the long hours I put in the lab. In fact my Greek brother has mentioned to me countless times "You work too hard". But this time he said, "Work faster."

36h later, I left the hospital with assurances that my niece's condition would improve. She was responding well to the heavy cocktails of antibiotics being administered and just before I left she was playing a little bit and smiling. Driving back, I found a new interest in the project. It wasn't that I was never interested in the project before this ordeal. Just that now, it was personal. My renewed interest wasn't just felt by me. My family (both biological and Greek) seems to be prouder that I am working on something that would prevent this happening to the family again. My bosses are highly more motivated for this project to succeed as the current pneumococcal vaccine isn't sufficient to protect all children* - hence the urgent need for a new vaccine.


It's nice working for the BIG PICTURE team.


My niece is now home and continues to improve. Now it's up to Thea Nanc and the rest of the Strepto Vaccine unit to get this vaccine off the lab bench and into the ampules for vaccine administration. 


* I would like to emphasize that the current vaccines for pneumococcal meningitis are NOT defective. These vaccines as well as various others have saved millions of lives and continue to do so everyday. The limitation is that biological organisms have their quirky way of finding ways around road blocks we set up. This is the challenge that scientists work against always, the constant need to adapt, to learn, to improve.