This has been the worst winter in my family's health history, that I can recall. From Christmas until now, we've had approximately three weeks in which everyone was healthy. We've had colds, fevers, stomach bugs, bronchitis, strep and croup. One person, then another, then another. Only Phoebe has remained completely healthy the entire time... must be she's already paid her immunity dues. Chloe has benefitted from breastmilk still, Phil has a stronger immune system overall, and the two of them only caught a handful of bugs each... however, Piper and I had the brunt of it.

In fact, I took finals with strep, and faced midterms with bronchitis - though the worst of it appears to currently be over.

I joked with Phil that I shouldn't restart yoga, because it seems whenever I hit a good routine of doing regular yoga, I got sick again. I did yoga yesterday anyway.

I found a website that talked about the likelihood of being diagnosed with an impending miscarriage, and then going on to have a viable pregnancy.

At Misdiagnosed Miscarriage one of the referenced pages talks about blighted ovum - an empty fetal sac - being diagnosed in women with retroverted uteri (tiled backward) only to find that the baby had been well hid due to the position/shape of the uterus when using transvaginal ultrasounds.

So out of curiosity, I did a search, and have found multitudes of accounts of this happening... So I did a literature search. Sure enough, there is nothing in the literature about this.

Do I see a research project in my future? Maybe... I gotta get through a dissertation first.

Dean Michael J. Klag of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has had Popline reinstate the keyword "abortion". Apparently, it was an overreaction to the request to limit access to two articles that apparently advocate abortion. I still feel that censorship is unnecessary, and am irritated at the Bush administration for making the request - it is unclear if the articles in question have been restricted or not.

Good for Mr. Klag.

I have not intended to be remiss in my postings here on my blog. However, strep throat (me), taxes, spring break and the like have slowed me a bit.

Yet this article on Wired.com brought me back screaming.

At Johns Hopkins, a medical search engine called Popline has censored the word abortion. Gloria Won, a librarian at my university, UCSF, discovered this, and contacted them. Their librarian replied back that they essentially feared that federal funding would be taken away if they allowed the phrase to bring up references. The article explains the basis of this fear:

Under a Reagan-era policy revived by President Bush in 2001, USAID denies funding to non-governmental organizations that perform abortions, or that "actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations."

So, bringing up information ABOUT abortions on a search engine is somehow promoting abortion as a method of family planning? At the same time, she indicates that there are many alternative phrases that would bring up the same search results. Such intuitive things as "Fertility Control, Postconception", or "unwanted w/2 pregnancy". Huh?

They are completely off their rocker with this one, if you ask me.