Stress, anyone?!

So things have been a little crazy in real life and not so much in a good way. As you might have figured out, I work in public health; I'm an epidemiologist. Most of my job is outbreak investigations and bioterrorism preparedness. Lately, things have been just nuts!!

We have this enormous drill coming up. It's actually the DoD drill, an annual event that was in Las Vegas last year and Seattle the year before. The whole idea of a DoD drill is that the events have to be so huge that they overwhelm all civilian capacities: local, state and federal, so that the military has to be called in to assist. What that means for all purposes is that we're being set up to fail on a grand scale. Now, generally speaking, drills are run to see where the systems break. The point of the drills/exercises is to find the flaws so that they can be repaired before an actual event. That doesn't mean everyone isn't running around like chickens with their heads cut off in the mean time.

And meanwhile back in the "real" real world, we've had some outbreaks and other events that required heavy investigation. I've been looking at a really rare outbreak that we just can't find a link for and we're completely dumbfounded. And then the media had to get involved. Don't get me wrong ~ I'm all for warning the public about potential hazards! But, there's no point in creating hysteria or putting undue attention on something that is otherwise under control. Once the news gets involved, it just makes the investigation ten times harder. Plus, we've got more TB and West Nile season is upon us, so it's only going to get worse.

But I suppose to keep the level of difficulty high, I'm back at work today after three days of unbearable migraines. I actually spent Sunday, Monday and Tuesday flat on my back with ice on my head and a towel over my eyes to keep the light out. Vertical was not good because I felt like I was going to vomit. I couldn't read because the words wouldn't stay still on the page and the tv was too close to a strobe effect. The worst part is I have no idea what brought it on.