Why is ReDS so intractable?

When Annie first came down with the disease now known as ReDS, I read everything I could get my hands on about the topic. There wasn't much, mind you, and it was all rampant speculation, but I tracked every bit of it. Scientific papers, blogs, message boards, quack cure adverts. Since Annie's death, I haven't had the will to read very much at all. Anything remotely useful is inevitably meta-tagged and commented on with horrible, horrible slurs against ReDS victims. It's hard to filter out.

But I've heard they've been making progress lately, and what with the GEAS report, I'm feeling more obliged to dip my toes back into the information stream. Maybe I'm just adding to the rampant speculation, but I'm wondering if ReDS has biologicals similarities to other diseases.

A friend of mine once came down with a case of chronic Lyme's disease, and an article she sent me a long while ago made me wonder if ReDS works by a similar mechanism. Chronic Lyme's disease, is different than regular Lyme's disease, by the way. It doesn't always show up on normal tests for Lyme's because the bug hides so well. And the symptoms can be like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (a controversial beast itself).

Anyway, so what happens is the Lyme's bug hides out in places where the immune system doesn't think to look. Also it is able to shift itself into different forms to avoid antibiotics.

Article excerpt:

Once disseminated throughout the body, B. burgdorferi secludes itself and becomes difficult to detect through laboratory testing—and by the host’s immune system. The bacterium may hide in its host’s WBCs or cloak itself with host proteins. Furthermore, it tends to hide in areas not usually underimmune surveillance, such as scar tissue, the central nervous system, theeyes, and deep in joints and other tissues.

Phase and antigenic variations allow B. burgdorferi to change into pleomorphic forms to evade the immune system and antibiotics. The three known forms are the spiral shape that has a cell wall, the cell-wall-deficient form known as the “L-form” (named not for its shape but for Joseph Lister, the scientist who first identified these types ofcells), and the dormant or latent cyst form.

Encapsulating itself into the inactive cyst form enables the spirochete to hide undetected in the host for months, years, or decades until some form of immune suppression initiates a signal that it is safe for the cysts to open and the spirochetes to come forth and multiply. Each of these forms is affected by different types of antibiotics. If an antibiotic targets the bacterium’s cell wall, the spirochete will quickly morph into a cell-wall-deficient form or cyst form to evade the chemical enemy.

Yikes. Is this why ReDS is so intractable? Has it learned to be a superbug? In that case, developing a simple vaccine or antibiotic regimine probably isn't in the cards.

This will take some serious nanoengineering and machine learning to crack.

Poetry for the Apocalypse

Sometimes I need to remind myself that despite Annie, despite GEAS, despite everything, I am incredibly lucky. I still have X. We still have each other. We will get through this.

A poem by Simone Beaubien:

The Last Man on Earth

"Seeing as the world is coming to an end," he asks, 
"I was wondering if you’d be willing to go to dinner
with me?"  This close to the Apocalypse, cell phone
reception is terrible and I have to ask him to
repeat himself twice.

I tell him yes, but, so as not to appear too eager, 
we schedule for two weeks ahead, on a Tuesday.  
By the time the date rolls around, the Four Horsemen
have already ridden and the tapas bar is a cantilevered
pile of rubble. 

We squat over the steaming bricks and talk about
Barcelona: how the tiny, pale tentacles of the squid
curl in their exquisite
  vermillion oils;
the sweet, smoky egg of the crème Catalan;
and the Parc Guell, its lovely curves made of delicate,
shattered things. Probably
no one has a key to it anymore. 

We decide to go out again, this time on a Friday. 
It’s hard to tell when Friday is, so we agree it
will be the next time the Widower Murphy
serves fish at the new common kitchen. 
The Widower Murphy dies of the shaking fever
two days later, but we go out anyway. I didn’t intend
to dress up, but I’m pretty sure I’m wearing the last
blue jeans in the world.

At the end of the night, he says,
"Seeing as all the condoms in the world will expire
in two to four years, I was wondering if you’d go to bed
with me tonight."  There isn’t a bed. I make him lie down
first on the burning sands and, afterwards, I pick the
white, bubbled crust from his buttocks and shoulder blades. 

We can’t make up our minds to go out again,
so he just never leaves. It’s okay.
There’s no place left to go. 

Superstructive Horoscope

Could my horoscope for the week be any more appropriate to Superstructing?

For the next week, Capricorn, be an expanded and intensified version of yourself. In other words, do what's most unique about you, but do it even more and better and clearer than you normally do. If, for example, your specialty is being an emotionally intelligent organizer who artfully creates order, do that with even more flair than usual. If you have an exceptional knack for building structures that bring out the best in people, go crazy with that skill. It's a perfect moment for you to be bigger than life. Why? Because you have more power than usual to change the world around you.

I know, I know: I don't literally believe in horoscopes, but sometimes... well, there's a lot to be gained from the psychological mirror. There is a call to action that I know I need to answer. As much as I chatter about the small panics that X and I face, I haven't ignored the implications of the GEAS report. I haven't processed the reality of it, yet, but I haven't ignored it either. My subconscious clearly knows I need to get crackin'-- in fact we all do.

Getting Outta Here-- We Hope.

Shit. I just heard there will be more restrictions on transportation due to the spread of ReDS. It sounds like most restrictions center around Louisiana, but who knows?

X and I have finally settled on a plan of action to get out of here, but we still need to scrape up the funds to do it. I will definitely have to dip into my 401k, despite the massive penalties. But the rest? We're still working on that.

As for the destination: Oregon. It's a place that's been in the back of my mind for a long time-- before any of the current crises-- and it's where perhaps the most kickass survivalist I know lives with her boyfriend. S is a woman who once converted a strip of land from driveway blacktop to fully functioning permaculture garden in less than two years. Kickass. Seriously, check them out. Everything home-made or community-traded, like so many people these days. But they were always way ahead of the curve. I mean, selling cat milk? Who'da thought.

It's going to be such a tremendous improvement over our current situation, even if a part of us can never truly leave here.

We need to get crackin' if we're gonna duck any transportation bans.

The *Other* Border Fence

Sometimes, I just can't take all the xenophobia that's popped up around here. Ten years ago, this would have been a joke:

Designer Gas Masks

As long as I'm still in NYC, I may as well make a comment on fashion. It's funny how humans adapt to things so quickly-- perhaps especially New Yorkers. The first masks we donned to deal with high ozone and ReDS-warning days were ugly, bulky, and undisguisable.

Flash forward a few months, and now there is a market for designer masks-- some so thin they seem like they'd be barely any protection at all. Now there are so many colors, so many designs-- the graffiti artists are having a ball. Steampunkers add brass trims to match their outfits. Masks have even made appearances on the runway at indoor fashion-shows. One made of glass! It's almost as if these hindrances have always been a part of normal urban life and culture. Almost.

Reminds me of the surgical masks that motorbike riders in Vietnam (pictured) wore fifteen years ago-- some were bland, but most women at least found ones that served as fashion statements. The same happened when Vietnam enforced its first (successful) helmet law back in 2007-- people complained that in addition to the discomfort, it would ruin their done-up hair on nights out. But soon enough, people turned the helmets into another opportunity for style.

Funny how we still fuss over these vanities, even after the GEAS report came out.

Why We Stayed; Why We Stay.

I know, I know. We need to take action. We need to leave. This burnt-out city holds no future for us.

When people ask why X and I stay here, I usually only talk about the original reason: my firm sent me here on a temporary basis. It was a great opportunity to cultivate a new practice area that I could bring back west. A sweet deal, at the time: they even paid for rent. For a while.

Most people accept that version and leave the questioning at that-- if they're still here, they read the economic winds wrong too.

Closer friends know the more fundamental reason: after Annie's ReDS diagnosis, we couldn't move back. On the CDC's recommendation, the Feds forbid us from boarding airplanes or crossing state lines. Among other forms of quarantine.

Technically, we are free now-- X and I. We've had a clean bill of health for months. Socially, we are still treated like lepers-- anyone who has been in contact with a ReDS patient knows the experience-- but the TSA has removed our names from their "no-go" lists. Or so we've been told-- the bureaucracy there remains as byzantine and secretive as ever.

No, what's kept us here for months on months longer than we should have tolerated is the feeling-- unspoken, to each other and to the outside world-- that to leave here would be to leave her: for real, for good, for ever. Her ashes are here, so we can't help but feel some last essence of her being is as well.

Annie, Annie. Will you forgive us? If you were a little older, maybe I could imagine you wanting us to move on. But it's hard to know what a two-year-old would wish for their parents. You didn't know what death was, yet. Except as whatever was happening to you.

I guess we didn't really know, either.

Waffles Made With Fish Oil?

As I've mentioned, current shortages have driven many people to um, creative alternatives to traditional food sources. (My second experience with the below delicacy turned out to be pretty gamy-- and after so many years as a vegetarian the texture of any meat is odd to me. X and I really need to get out of here.)

But before the shortages, society was getting creative with food in entirely different ways. I scrounged up an old article about nutraceuticals. In the '50s, everyone seemed to think the future would involve lots of pills instead of food. Yuck. In the actual "future" we figured out how to provide missing vitamins as additives in our existing foods. This came in handy when particular fresh food supply shipments became uncertain, and we had to start limiting ourselves more to local fare.

Now though, at least in a lot of places-- at least where X and I are stuck-- we've fallen a step backwards, and the enhancements aren't available any more. More than a step. What I wouldn't give for regular, mundane food, especially kinds that grow on trees rather than scurry up them. Sigh.

Squirrel Melt: It's What's For Dinner

Ten years ago, I was a vegetarian. Five years ago, I was still a vegetarian. Heck, two days ago, I was still a vegetarian.

Today, well... Let's put it this way: the uncertainty of global food shipments being what it is, it's harder to get the foods that made it easy for me to be vegetarian. South Indian food. Ethiopian. Thai. Of course there are still some delicious local vegetables from the coop and neighboring towns, but some of those dishes really aren't to my taste.

So today, in a time when supplies are thin, I had to turn to a... more efficient source of protein:



I have to admit that it doesn't involve any of the factory farming abuses that prompted me to go veggie in the first place. I try not to picture the process too vividly (and did not prepare the dish myself) but was shocked by my own subconscious as I drifted to sleep last night: suddenly the slow, fat squirrels of my college days frolicked across the inside of my eyelids; taunting me with frying pans and sticks of butter.

Sigh. Hopefully I can go back to vegetables again soon.