Continuation

I suppose I ought to warn you that Life quite often gets in the way of my blogging. I am a graduate student in a Ph.D. program, and those duties plus the extra ones due to the department interviewing to fill faculty positions make it so when I get home at night, I want nothing more than a good supper and some alone time with my "Babylon 5" DVDs.

So, by way of continuing my introduction, I am a graduate student in a conservation biology Ph.D. program. Basically I'm a "tree-hugging, bunny-loving hippie" (to quote my little brother) interested in how environmental stressors affect fish body symmetry. I completed my master of science degree many years ago in the same interest and actually managed to get it published. My current research is with an adorable little fish called the Japanese medaka Oryzias latipes:



Told you they were cute. *grin*

One advantage to using these guys for my research is that because they are so small (approx. 1.5-2.0 cm as adults), I can have more of them per tank than my original study organism. A big disadvantage is because they are so small, I have to have more specialized equipment than one normally needs to do this type of research.

Well, their size and my disability mean I have to have more specialized equipment than one normally needs to do this type of research.

My MND -- intermediate spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) -- blesses me (she said sarcastically) with weak muscles that progressively grow weaker with time. As such, to take measurements on the fish, I can no longer easily manipulate the fish under a microscope and measure them with a ruler or calipers like I did 12-13 years ago. I need a good quality stereo microscope with a good quality camera with as much resolution as possible to capture digital images of my fish.

Check.

I also need a computer with good graphics and monitor.

Working on it.

"Wait!" you, a Faithful Reader, cry out. "Hold on a second. If your dexterity ain't what it used to be, then how do you maintain your broodstock? How do you feed them, clean their tanks, remove the floaters? How do you conduct your experiments and raise the babies? How do you even get back into the TOP SECRET rooms where they all live?"

That, Faithful Reader, is what my minions are for.

You see, I have two amazing undergraduates who act as my lab assistants. They are part of our department's Undergraduate Mentoring in Environmental Biology program funded by the National Science Foundation. They are paid through the department's NSF grant to work in a lab and gain research experience. It's a great program, and I am lucky to have two of its best students. I literally could not do my research without Arianne and Carla.

And that, my Faithful Reader, is how fortunate I am to be a biologist with a severe disability who can still conduct quality research without having to do modeling. *shivers* If my only choice as a biologist were modeling, I think I'd rather just sit back and become a bank teller like my grandmother suggested 16 years ago. Thinking about the level of mathematics required to do modeling gives me a headache.

Who -- or what -- is a Road Hog?

First by way of introducing myself -- the name. "Road Hog" was a nickname given to me by my high school advanced junior English teacher, Ms. Marilyn Darnell. She was the first teacher I ever had who didn't resent me being in her class because I was a disabled student or treat me extra special because I was a disabled student or flat out ignore me because I was a disabled student. She treated me like I had a brain in my head and knew how to use it. She treated me the same as every other smart-assed teenager in her classroom. It was unexpected and refreshing.

Introduction

Former French general and president Charles DeGaulle said at the funeral of his disabled daughter in 1948: "Now she's like everyone else."

I have not read this quotation in context, so I do not know what he meant, but I can imagine one possibility from 1948 -- Now that she's in Heaven, she's normal. She can walk, see, hear, think, speak, whatever it was she couldn't do while alive.



I am a disabled woman, and I relish not being like everyone else.



I get inordinate pleasure from rolling over dry leaves with my power wheelchair and hearing them crunch under my tires. I like living on campus at a university and being allowed to have a dog. I love making jokes about my disease and my "strange" body and watching people who don't know me well fidget and try to respond. I love giving my "niece" rides on the back of my chair or seeing my "nephew" sleeping peacefully in my seat as his mother helps me into bed.

Having a degenerative motor neuron disease (MND) isn't sunshine and daisies -- but neither is it darkness and peace lilies. Continue reading as I continue writing, and maybe together we'll work out what it was, is, and will be.