So much to say....so much to say: The Nurse Boom and Banana Farewell Tour

Nurse Boom and I went down to Orlando about a month ago for a weekend at the Annual ACRP (Association for Clinical Research Professionals) to get our learn on. While not intentionally planned as such, it was a well-timed farewell hoo-rah as we've been conference going buddies for almost five years now. Much like I already miss seeing her face every morning, I will miss the funsies of going to conferences together.

Okay, so it's not a picture from the conference but still: Boom and Banana!

Before I get to telling you all about the impressive swag that we acquired there (and it's worth waiting for, I promise), we went to a keynote speech by Charles Sabine, a news reporter turned Huntington's Disease advocate. His speech was, for lack of a better word, outstanding and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Mr. Sabine's family has been ravaged by Huntington's Disease, a hereditary disease that causes nerve cells within the brain to degenerate, resulting in debilitating physical deterioration and dementia. It's a terrible disease for which we currently have no preventative or curative intervention. Mr. Sabine has watched his father and uncle deteriorate and die from it, he is currently watching his brother deteriorate rapidly and he himself will someday soon begin to experience its symptoms and inexorable decline. It is an area in which clinical research is much needed, hence why he was in Orlando talking to us.

If I related to you all of the things that he said (which are continuing to resonate even now), we would be here all day. I'll spare you and just throw out there that which struck me as the most powerful: the complete uselessness of defining a disease as incurable. (The following is essentially a paraphrase of his speech this morning, a thing that I think he might be okay with if only because it might make 18 more people in the world a little bit more aware of this terrible disease.) Most illnesses and conditions that affect us are incurable: the common cold, influenza, depression, chronic cancers, heartbreak. We cannot cure these things but rather, we’ve learned to ameliorate their effects, to minimize the lasting impact that they have on our lives. Beginning a person’s experience with this disease by telling them that it is incurable does them a great disservice, it removes their hope. Hope is what pulls us through the darkness, it what makes us look for something better and it’s what all research is built upon.

It's just a thought. A thought that makes me proud of the very small part I got to play in heme-malignancies research over the past five years. Thanks Universe.

Now on to the swag!

ACRP swag 2013

That's a grand total of four bags, two t-shirts, three stuffed animals, two coffee mugs, two water bottles, a calculator, six pads of post-its, a medical dictionary, a calculator, three mini bottles of cetaphil body lotion, four pen sized hand sanitizer dispensers, three car iPhone charger, a desk iPhone holder, luggage handle, a ruler, a snap bracelet and five squeezy "work missile" balls. Impressive huh?

We also did some old-school Tebowing;