Happy Thanksgiving

Boo wife and I were driving through Auburn Township in Geauga County a little while back when we ran across these two guys, or girls, I can't tell. Anyway, it was the first time I have actually seen a wild turkey in the wild and not on a bottle of Bourbon.

Of course, I shot them, with my camera.

As an aside, as a kid one of our neighbors would go turkey hunting around this time of year. I remember one year hanging out with him has he plucked the feathers and removed the buckshot from the bird and kept thinking to myself, what happens if you come across some buckshot while your eating this?

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and I hope, even more, that you all have alot to be thankful for. I know I do.

Potpourri

It was a sad, fun, nice, relaxing weekend, one of the nicer weekends I’ve had in a long time. It started Friday evening when we took Manisha out to dinner. Manisha has been working in my lab for a couple of years but I have known her and her husband for quite some time now. Unfortunately, for me, she and her husband are leaving, so we took her to L’Albatros for her going away dinner. This was sad, but also fun, she will be missed tremendously and we all wish her the best.

I am new at food photography so the pic is not that great. I enjoyed the chopped salad with bleu cheese, a lot of different flavors with chicken confit, a combination of romaine and radicchio lettuce, and sundried tomatoes. The bleu cheese was nice but not overpowering. For my entrée I had the cassoulet, which consisted of white beans and carrots, with duck, two-types of sausage, pork belly, and lamb. It was not a traditional cassoulet, but was termed ‘deconstructed’; I have also seen it referred to as ‘Haute cuisine’ version of cassoulet, as the meats were not cooked with the beans. Overall the dish was a little salty for my taste. However, the duck was very good as was the house made sausage and pork belly. The lamb was a little over cooked. Other members of our group seemed to enjoy their meals and 3 people ordered the special that evening which was beef tongue, it seemed to be a winner as their plates were empty. The service was excellent and overall I would give it ‘3.5 tails out of 5’, and feel as though it deserves another visit.

Saturday morning I woke up early to take Anthony to get his haircut; it was getting a little too long. We came home for some breakfast and hung out until the afternoon when he was taken to his Grandma’s for the night, Thanks Grandma! Boo wife and I went to a ‘post wedding’ reception downtown at Sammy’s. Good friends, good food, drinks, and dancing. The Bottom Line Band was awesome and we had a great time.

We slept in Sunday morning and then went out for breakfast before heading to pick up Anthony. We hung out with family for a while before heading home. Anthony and I caught the end of some bad football while Boo Wife went out to meet some of her friends for dinner. After Anthony went to bed we settled in for the Season finale of The Next iron Chef.

Ruby Tuesday

Although there was a little bit of red, ok probably more pink, in my previous post on Aspergilloma, here is my submission for Ruby Tuesday. Please join Mary the Teach to check out more Ruby Tuesday Pics.

Click on the picture to enlarge.

Shot with Nikon D80, 135mm, ISO 200, 1/800 sec, f5.6

A Fungus Among Us

There aren't many things that look like this on a chest X-ray or a CT scan. What the first image is showing is known as the Cresent's sign or Monod's sign. A solid mass surrounded by a radiolucent crescent. The mass represents a mycetoma or fungus ball. Sometimes they will be freely mobile and repeating a Chest X-ray with the patient in the decubitus position will show that the mass has moved.

We were consulted to see this gentleman who had an underlying leukemia and was recovering from his chemotherapy. He was admitted with new onset fever and chills, the chest X-ray revealed multiple infiltrates and the CT scan you see. Anyone of a number of fungi can cause a mycetoma, but more often than not this picture is almost classic for an aspergilloma.
Further review of the CT scan revealed that the anterior segment of the Right Upper Lobe (RUL) bronchus led into one of the fungus balls. We were asked to perform a bronchoscopy to determine if indeed this was Aspergillus. The image below shows the takeoff of the anterior segment of the RUL, seen at about 8 o'clock. You can already see the black gray of the fungus sitting in the area.
As we moved in for a closer look we can see the fungus ball even better.
Finally, we 'popped' into the segment for a close up of the mycetoma.
Cultures grew out Aspergillus niger and the patient was treated with IV antifungals. Since Aspergillus is an angoinvasive fungus, meaning it is capable of invading the vascular bed, some patients present with hemoptysis (coughing up blood). It can be so severe that some patients die by drowning in their own blood. Patients presenting this way are either taken directly to surgery to remove the aspergilloma or for bronchial artery embolization.

Aspergillus was first described and named by Micheli in 1729. The similarity in appearance between its fruiting heads and the brush used for sprinkling holy water (aspergillum) probably suggested the name.Photo credit Jasper Juinen/Getty images

Photo Credit

In 1952 Hinson described the first case of Allergic Bronchopulmonary Aspergillosis (a very different disease than the mycetoma) but, more importantly he was the first to note that Aspergillus can cause at least three types of disease in humans. 1) Saprophytic, 2) Allergic, and 3) Septicemic or Pyemic.

It is also important to note that Aspergillus is a ubiquitous mold representing between 0.1 and 22% of the total air spores sampled. Underlying disease, host immunity, and the organisms virulence all play role in the development of disease in humans. There are 250 species of Aspergillus, but only a few are human pathogens. Most people go through life never being bothered by this fungus.

One of the most interesting historical aspects of Aspergillus is the following; in 1890 Dieulafoy, Chantemesse, and Widal were the first to describe the disease in pigeon-crammers and they called it maladie des graveurs. The pigeon-crammers of Paris performed 'gavage' by taking a mouthful of grain and water and spitting it into the mouth of a pigeon. Each man fed about 2,000 pigeons a day and it was well known among them that they would succumb to a chronic pulmonary disease.

Last I saw of this patients records he had recovered from chemo, the aspergilloma was treated and resolved, and he was Cancer free.

References:
-NIH/Medline plus on Pulmonary Aspergilloma
-Review of all forms of aspergillus infections
-Pulmonary Aspergillosis: A clinical update
-Broncho-pulmonary Aspergillosis: A review and a report of eight new cases. K.F.W. Hinson, AJ. Moon, and N.S. Plummer. Thorax 1952;7;317-333.

Ruby Tuesday

Here is my Ruby Tuesday post. Stop by and see Mary the Teach over at Work of the Poet for all of today's submissions. There are over 100 participants, from all over the world, all with great photos. Have fun.

I took this photograph this summer at University Circles, Parade the Circle festivities.
Nikon D80, Shutter 1/80, f5.6, ISO 200, focal length 105mm.

Dona Nobis Pacem

An idea, started by Mimi, over at Mimi writes.

The BlogBlast for Peace idea is simple: To have as many people put globes like the one above on blogs around the world and Blog for PEACE.

There are various globes on Mimi's blog that you can customize yourself. Mine once again is a very simple cut and paste job but some are more elaborate. You can see all the Peace Globes in the Peace Globe Gallery.

Ruby Tuesday

Happy Ruby Tuesday courtesy of Mary the Teach over at Work of the Poet, head over there to see all the great submissions. It has been a long time since I submitted anything but here is a recent pic of Anthony playing at the local park with some red in the jacket, some red rope, and chain.