A big Shout Out and A big Thanks to Peter Wick for his knowledge sharing. Above and Beyond!!
Thanks for the nice words, Wendy. I'm hoping whatever is plaguing you is benign and also not COVID but we'll have to wait for results. And to be clear, I was just reiterating things Wendy was already aware of; it was just Sunday night on a holiday weekend. She knows that contacting her actual physician is the best thing to do if things get serious. I was just reviewing things with her and lending her an oximeter so she could track an important data point.
Over the past several months there has been the occasional misunderstanding about my background so I'll provide the details and context.
My first degree in '87 was a Bachelor's in Pharmacy. I already knew that I was bored with pharmacy practice before I graduated since you must go through at least a couple thousand hours of internship at the retail and clinical level in a hospital.
I decided to go straight to grad school and get a doctorate in one of the basic sciences behind pharmacotherapeutics - pharmacology. That degree is a PhD in pharmacology. It is different from what pharmacists must have at a minimum now to practice - that is a PharmD, or a Doctor of Pharmacy. In the '80s, the PharmD still signified an extra level of expertise in pharmacy practice but that wasn't what I wanted to do as a career. The PharmD is now the entry-level degree for professional pharmacy practice and it is often mistaken for the PhD in pharmacology and vice versa.
I did work part-time as a pharmacist in retail and long-term care consulting to make extra money while finishing my doctoral studies as well as to supplement my postdoctoral income but that ended in the late '90s. That is why I do have clinical knowledge to go with my laboratory science experience. My pharmacology research was in neuroscience and I focused on the regulation of dopamine and norepinephrine activity at the synapse in my undergrad, doctoral and postdoctoral studies. I also briefly taught pharmacology as a TA at Michigan and as an adjunct at Northeastern.
I retired from laboratory science and shifted to software development for medical applications for a while. That was fine until my wife's career became more important and so I shifted to being her overly educated cabana boy. It's from there I've had a wonderful view of her career and get to cheer her on still.
You then may have read in one of the COVID threads along the way that I sustained a traumatic brain injury in 2014. Recovering from that really sucked for someone already in his 50s and it involved a variety of jobs as I got back to the land of the living. Anyway, I decided to make a change and have now completed my MSW studies at Seton Hall. I plan on combining my neuroscience background, therapeutics, and social work credentials to work with the brain injury community in some capacity. Knowing that COVID's long-term neurological consequences are becoming more of a problem than we anticipated, that might be where I wind up. Those patients' concerns are getting similar responses to the ones all types of brain injury survivors and ME/CFS patients have gotten all along.
Over the past year or so here I've taken to discussing some of the COVID issues and research going on as well as relaying reports about the extent of COVID transmission and the different variants we've had to deal with, especially last fall with the appearance of the omicron lineage variants. Obviously, I have been a very conservative and cautious voice and am constantly urging people to protect themselves from COVID infections with masks regardless of their vaccination status and prior COVID infections.
It is still your best course of action to avoid getting COVID infections. You do not want to risk any related harm or further consequences. It has been well-documented that even though someone may have been fully vaccinated and boosted, their acute COVID infections may not cause serious illness but those patients can still develop prolonged complications at a significant rate - at least 10%.
Thank you for providing your background as you did Peter. Congratulations on completing your MSW studies.
Peter and many others represent the best of MOL. He has been a tremendous help to us all in understanding the many aspects of covid. We have been fortunate on MOL to have multiple covid posters who actually understand communicable diseases. So, on this Memorial Day it is important to give thanks to not just those who served and died in the military, but those who serve in all sorts of jobs that support our nation. The term "essential worker" takes on a new important meaning.
sac said:
Amen!
He's also a pretty good singer!!
Us trumpet players are all good singers. 
It's all about breath control. 
drummerboy said:
Us trumpet players are all good singers. It's all about breath control.
Heh heh.
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I won't go into details and frankly I'm fine with this being a one comment thread. Big picture is that I contacted Peter a few hours ago to share some issues and discuss next steps if necessary based on some symptoms I had from yesterday. Peter is amazing and is a retired pharmacist and listens and knows more than most. We talked about next steps depending on test results and he then came over and lent me a finger pulse Oximeter. (Oxygen fine for now.)
As I said I don't plan on following up here; he gave me all the advice I need for now and of course we discussed when if at all I contact my doctor.
You have always been a mensch Peter. You prove it time and again. The gift of caring; the gift of time. If anyone questions Peter's credentials in a snarky manner well then just re-think that please. Disagreements about studies, etc. are fine. That is not what I am referring to. Thanks for listening all. And continue to listen to Peter's great perusal of the research out there that of course is constantly changing.