Category: Barbara

13:09 – Barbara just headed over to her mom’s apartment. Sankie isn’t doing well at all–physically or mentally–and hasn’t been since about the first of the year. She’s in her mid-80’s and suffers from some dementia, which makes it difficult to figure out what’s going on. At first, Barbara thought it was just the after-Christmas letdown. She’s taken her mom to the doctor two or three times this year, and every time the doctor has told her there’s nothing to worry about. I think the doctor is wrong.

One of the staff from Creekside Retirment Village called this morning. Sankie had apparently pulled her emergency cord. The staff member told Barbara that Sankie wasn’t doing well at all, and asked about calling 911. Barbara told her not to. She called Frances and they discussed what to do. They’re trying to avoid getting back to the drop-everything-and-rush-over-to-mom’s-place thing, so they decided that since Frances was planning to go over there this afternoon that that would suffice. A little while ago, as we were building kits, Barbara announced she was worried about Sankie and was going to head over to see her.

My guess is that Sankie has a UTI yet again. UTIs are extremely common in women. The incidence rate is something like 10% annually even in young women, and in elderly women it’s much higher. And in elderly women a UTI is often physically asymptomatic, leaving only increased confusion, dementia, and other mental symptoms as indications. I was surprised that the doctor chose not to do a urine culture on any of Sankie’s visits. I suggested to Barbara and Frances that the next time their mom sees the doctor, if he’s not willing to put her on antibiotics prophylactically, they should ask him to prescribe a large supply of co-amoxiclav, SMZ/TMP, or whatever he routinely prescribes for her for UTIs. That way, at the first sign of a possible UTI, Barbara or Frances can start their mom on the antibiotic and keep her on it for 10 days or whatever.

08:25 – Barbara is heading over to her mom’s place this morning to spend the day. Colin and I will remain at home today.

14:53 – Barbara has started her annual Deep Clean. She spent most of the morning in my office, and has declared herself satisfied with all but my main desk, which I haven’t even started on. Actually, I still have some work to do on my secondary (microscope) desk as well. My workroom is a disaster area, but I had to get my office organized and cleaned up first so that I’d have somewhere to use as a staging area while I cleaned up the workroom.

While I was cleaning off the microscope desk, it occurred to me that I probably still had everything there that I’d used to shoot the cover image for Illustrated Guide to Home Biology Experiments. Sure enough, I did. Not just the microscope itself, but the slides, coverslips, 96-well plate, 20-microliter minipipette, tubes, rack, and so on. And the bottles of 3% hydrogen peroxide and 70% isopropanol. Well, not the original bottles, but ones just like them.

And it occurred to me that we never mentioned in the book what that bottle of hydrogen peroxide was for. Drugstore (3%) hydrogen peroxide is death on microorganisms. Not just bacteria, but fungi, protists, viruses, many spores, and even prions. Of course, there are many other solutions that are good at killing microorganisms. The nice things about 3% hydrogen peroxide are that it presents no serious handling hazards and that it’s fugitive. That is, it quickly breaks down into ordinary water and oxygen gas, leaving no residue that might kill organisms that you’re trying to culture. It’s not as effective as autoclaving, but nearly so, and it can be used to sterilize materials that can’t be autoclaved. For those reasons, 30% hydrogen peroxide is commonly used as a stock solution to prepare dilute solutions to sterlize commercial food preparation equipment, which means it’s cheap and readily available locally.

08:43 – Barbara has started her annual Deep Clean, which means Colin and I have to tread carefully if we want to avoid being vacuumed, scrubbed, waxed, dusted, mopped, and polished.