Thankful For My Job And Education

Today while in my work meeting at Community Neuro Rehab i realized how thankful i should be for the experience and education i am getting at CNR.  I also thought how nice it was that i was using my college education in the real world.  I may not always be in brain injury but cognitive psychology and psychology type jobs but those were two disciplines i studied in college.  After going to a coffee shop and meditate on the thought, i thought it was pretty interesting that not too long ago my job did not exist and certainly not for someone right out of college.  Most of them were kept for doctors and people of that sort.  I found this describing when brain injury started to come into the rehabilitation era....


Facilities dedicated to TBI rehabilitation were probably first established during World War I.^[122] Explosives used in World War I caused many blast injuries; the large number of TBIs that resulted allowed researchers to learn about localization of brain functions.^[132] Blast-related injuries are now common problems in returning veterans from Iraq & Afghanistan; research shows the symptoms of such TBI's are largely the same as for TBI's involving a physical blow to the head.^[133]


Overall, it was just a wake up call.  A wake up call reminding me not to follow into the everyday customs of going with the flow and complaining about different things when i have so much to be thankful for.  It is so easy to get bogged down from boredom or other simple (in retrospect non-devastating) hinderances in our lives.  If i sit down and recall where i was in the job word 7 months ago, a year ago, two years ago, i will quickly become extremely pleased with where i am at the moment and the experience and life skills learnt at CNR.  I think this goes for many people who are working right out of college and even people who are in jobs that are particularly not as useful to their overall resume.  We learn no matter where we are, we meet friends and benefit in unseen and unknown ways just for spending continual time with particular people and regularly being available in continuous locations.  Just a thought...... 

First Man "Functionally cured" of HIV using Stem Cell Transplant

First man "Functionally cured" of HIV

This is very promising news for the medical world.  It is ironic considering the Des Moines Register which is the local newspaper in my town just did a piece entitled "As AIDS turns 30, many fear a dimming spotlight".  The link is Des Moines Register AIDS article.  Which i am not saying is a bad article or wrong, merely saying it is ironic that both were produced at the same time.

The way the scientist did this miraculous endeavor was through stem cell research. Here is a main excerpt from the article: "Timothy Ray Brown suffered from both leukemia and HIV when he received a bone marrow stem cell transplant in Berlin, Germany in 2007. The transplant came from a man who was immune to HIV, which scientists say about 1 percent of Caucasians are. (According to San Francisco's CBS affiliate, the trait may be passed down from ancestors who became immune to the plague centuries ago.).  "

I thought it was very interesting that 1 percent of caucasians are immune to the trait.  I had never heard of this, it highly intrigued me.  The article is quick to say that this procedure can be fatal, and Timothy does suffer some neurological problems from the operation, nonetheless, he and doctors agree it is a great miracle for his body to be eliminated of the HIV replicating virus.  It is also a great window into the possibilities of stem cell research and shows that if given the time, research, and chance, stem cell's could battle some of our toughest ailments.