Whew. It's been crazy around here. We celebrated our first wedding anniversary, I started my job at Hopkins, we went to Aaron & Maureen's wedding in Philadelphia, I went out with Sarah for her bachelorette party (hubby is the best man in Sarah and Mike's wedding)... all good stuff. I will definitely have a more detailed post and some pics for you soon...ish.
This weekend is Kevin & Shannon's wedding in College Park. Both of their parents were married at Memorial Chapel on the College Park campus, so they're having their wedding there as well (wow - have you ever seen all three versions of "there" in one sentence?!). Hubby is a groomsman in this one, so we'll be attending the rehearsal and dinner Thursday night (at Ruth's Chris! Swanky!) and then the wedding on Saturday, where some of his family will also be in attendance. For those of you who don't know, Kevin and his sister Sam are the matchmakers that brought the hubs and I together oh-so-many years ago :] Sam is my friend, Kevin is his friend, we all lived in the same neighborhood... you get the picture. So of course Kevin and Sam were both attendants in our wedding, I was in Sam's and now he is in Kevin's. One big happy family, right? Love those Knapsteins!
Then NEXT weekend is Mike & Sarah's wedding in York, PA. Mike is (clearly) Ben's best friend - he was Ben's best man and now Ben is returning the favor. They also asked me to write something original to read during their ceremony (how sweet was that?!), so I'll also be participating :] That's gonna be an overnighter for two days (Thursday for the rehearsal and dinner, Friday for the wedding, and we'll be home Saturday). Should be a GREAT time!
In the meantime, I've been getting settled at my new job and getting my first project rolling. More to come on that. Suffice it to say, it's going well and I think I'm going to really enjoy my summer, despite having to get up with the alarm every day and actually work for 8 hours. GASP. It's a change for me, but having my evenings and weekends TO MYSELF is a pretty sweet consolation prize ;] I just LOVE being able to enjoy my evenings and weekends completely guilt-free, with nothing hanging over my head! And the more obvious icing on top of this cake is that my work has a real, tangible, personal purpose.
This is my bright, beautiful niece Lacy.
She's a little math whiz who loves to play teacher and make up quizzes to stump her family. She helps her mom out with her three younger siblings and is a little mommy-in-the-making with her 6-month-old little sister Caraline. She's 10 (almost 11) going on about 25, and seems to have always been a little extra mature for her age. She's always sporting a cute new outfit, and she always greets you with a funny story about something random that happened since the last time you saw her. Unless you heard her cough, you wouldn't know that she has a chronic illness. She has cystic fibrosis, the most common genetic disorder among caucasians, which primarily affects her lungs and digestive tract. She is susceptible to damaging and persistent upper respiratory infections, and has to take pancreatic enzyme supplements at every meal to properly digest her food. She does several different therapies on a daily basis to break up the mucous in her lungs and keep them clear of harmful bacteria, and when she gets a common cold sometimes her body needs some extra help to clear the infection (which lands her in the hospital on occasion). She takes it all in stride, and has become a pro at taking care of many of her own therapies. She's quite a trooper, this girl.
This summer, I am working in the Guggino Lab at the Johns Hopkins Cystic Fibrosis Research Development Center (if you follow this link, you may recognize the little munchkin hugging her doctor at the top of the page!), one of ten basic research centers in the country funded by the CF Foundation. One of the major focuses of CF research today is gene therapy, which is what I'm working on this summer. The CFTR protein is mutated in CF patients, and normally functions as a channel to allow salts to pass through cell membranes. The most common mutation (which Lacy also has) is called deltaF508, and it causes the protein to assemble itself into an incorrect shape. The cell recognizes this incorrect shape and "tags" the mutated protein so that the degradation machinery of the cell can dispose of it. The deltaF508-mutated CFTR protein, however, is still close enough to the correct shape that it could function as a relatively normal channel if it was allowed to survive and go to the cell surface where it belongs. The lab that I'm working in this summer focuses on finding ways to trick the cell into allowing the mutated CFTR protein to escape degradation and reach the cell surface so that it can carry out its normal function, which could vastly improve symptoms in CF patients.
This work, and the vital work of other labs across the country, is funded in large part by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. To make a donation to CFF through our Great Strides team and to read more about Lacy, click on the Great Strides button on the left-hand side of the screen (you may notice that the Great Strides walk already happened, but it's never too late to donate!). And for my Baltimorians, there's also a raffle for Club Level Ravens tickets going on right now to benefit CFF!
So that's what I'm up to this summer :] A new job with a purpose. I probably won't make any tremendous new discoveries in my 10 weeks here, but I take heart in knowing that I'm making a small contribution to the HUGE push for a cure, and adding something tangible to the hope that one day, Lacy and kids like her won't have to fight this battle any longer.
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