It doesn’t seem like a slow news week.  There are plenty of things happening in the health world, and yet the AP trotted out this breaking story on… I know… stop the presses… single embryo transfers.  The version of the story on Yahoo News starts out: “Now fertility experts are pushing a new goal: One.”

Now?

It continues, “A growing number of couples are attempting pregnancy with just a single embryo, helped by new ways to pick the ones most likely to succeed.”

A growing number?  What about everyone who has been pushing for e-SET for years?  This is not news.  This has been the goal of doctors AND patients for years, despite the way the media portrays both reproductive endocrinologists and infertile women.  Do you know what keeps doctors AND patients from moving towards e-SET as the given rather than the exception?  A lack of insurance coverage.

Cover the cost of IVF and you can lower the risk of prematurity from a multiple birth.  Insurance companies stand to save money on the other end rather than gamble with women’s (and children’s) lives.  As the article states, “It’s mostly an American problem — some European countries that pay for fertility treatments require using one embryo at a time.”

And the Affordable Care Act has no clause that covers mandated fertility treatments.

It is frustrating to see the cat racing to catch its tail year after year.  First a story comes out about problems with multiple births.  Then comes the response that if insurance covered infertility treatments more people would transfer a single embryo.  Then come the comments about how family building is elective and shouldn’t be covered by insurance.  And then we get the next wave of studies done fretting about the rise in twin births in America.  And in between, the general public weighs in with unhelpful advice and hurtful commentary in the comment section.

Do you know what I would love?  To open up the health section of one of the numerous sites I read daily and see a story about great strides being made in treating infertility and building families.  I’d love to have a morning where I don’t wake up to either a rehashing of old news or a sensationalistic story about some infertility outlier that will skew the general public’s perception of the disease.

A piece of advice: don’t read the comment section on that article.  Just don’t.

Though, because it was sent out by the AP, this topic is everywhere this morning.  I’ve already encountered it three times.

We were promised that it was the “must see exhibition of 2013.” As we drove into the city, we saw that the light poles in Baltimore were festooned with flags promising passing drivers that they didn’t want to miss this once in a lifetime event. The Maryland Science Center was holding an exhibit called Mummies of the World.  The ChickieNob could not have been more excited to get her Egypt on.

Image: Wonderferret via Flickr

Her brother opted out of seeing the exhibit, but my mother-in-law and I took the ChickieNob up to the second floor opening which was being guarded by an employee who gave us the rules: no cell phones, no photographs, no re-admittance upon exit.  There was no warning about what we would see once we were inside, no question asked by the science center employee whether the ChickieNob was prepared.  I guess based on what waited behind the curtain, I would have liked some sort of heads up.  We entered knowing nothing about the exhibit, assuming that like all other exhibits we’ve attended at the science center, we would learn everything we needed to know at the exhibit.  Since they are geared towards children, they usually don’t require research beforehand.  Yet it would have been nice for this exhibit to come with a warning.

The ChickieNob had seen mummies before at the British Museum and the Smithsonian.  And yes, there were some mummies that were exactly as we imagined: cloth-bound; lying in stone coffins.

But we weren’t prepared for mummies like the Orlovits family from the late 1700s.  The family of three were unintentionally preserved in their pine coffins, and were now on display in the exhibit. (Warning: feel free to skip the links with images.)  Or this woman, who was propped up in the same room.  This just wasn’t what we expected.  Nor the Detmold child from Peru.

This video gives you a sense of the exhibit (though I only found this video upon returning home):

The ChickieNob got through three darkened rooms, listening to the creepy quiet music playing in the background, before she paused near a priest’s sarcophagus and sank down on the floor, twisting her lip.

“I don’t know how I feel about this,” she told me.  “All these people were in someone’s family.  They were somebody’s mother.  Or child.  What if a museum put my family on display and everyone was walking through the room staring at you?”

The exhibit begins with an ethical statement, reminding visitors to be respectful of the dead.  But it begs the question: can an exhibit of mummies ever be respectful of the dead?  Is it respectful to put the dead in glass cases without their permission and allow visitors to gawk at them in the name of science?  Are displays of mummies unethical?  Or if there are no living descendents to offend, is it okay to put someone’s ancestor on display?

As we sat on the floor, I gave her the option to run through the rest of the exhibit and she took it.  We booked it through the last few rooms, trying not to look too closely at the people in the cases, and only pausing if we passed an inanimate object.  We popped out the other side, back in the hallway.

I’m not sure where I stand on mummy exhibits.  I think the science itself can be done without creating exhibits.  I think that while the exhibit should have come with a clear and visible warning, the vast majority of patrons would still proceed into the darkened rooms.  Ancient civilizations are fascinating; the idea that you are looking at a person who was once walking around on this earth as you do now is gulp-worthy.  Still, the difference between an exhibit such as Bodies and this one is the ability for the person or their family to give permission.  Those people knew they were being preserved and going on display.  These people had no clue they would one day end up in a museum.

There was a lot of care taken with the creation of this exhibit, from the educational materials to the special display cases holding the remains.  But at the end of the day, does that care tell the whole story?  Or as humans, do we need to be more circumspect on displaying humans without their permission?

On Saturday, while in the grocery store using the shopping list app on my phone to purchase ingredients for Chanukkah dinner, the screen started fading.  Which was odd.  I would get it back up again, and then the screen would take on a green tinge, move into a series of white lines, and finally fade into black.  I could always hear Siri; I just couldn’t see anything on the screen.  I tried turning it off and turning it back on, which worked for about two seconds.  And finally, the phone conked out completely and I had to leave the store with half the shopping undone because I couldn’t access the list.

When I got home, I called Apple Care and they set up an appointment at an Apple store in a part of town that I charitably call the Devil’s Armpit when I’m in a good mood and colourful obscenities when I am in a black mood, without a phone and way too much on my plate.  I was going to have to navigate this neighbourhood during the busiest shopping weekend of the year.

It took me a long time to park and a longer time to be seen at the store, which immediately brought on a headache due to the thumping bass and chattering suburbanites.  Finally, my helpful Genius informed me that the logic board was going in my phone, necessitating getting a new phone.  My current phone was under warranty, so the whole thing was a wash financially.  But iOS-wise?  It meant updating to iOS 7.

No, I hadn’t yet updated to iOS 7 because the Wolvog wasn’t ready to lose the old Siri.  Before I left the house, I had the forethought to record a conversation with Siri and email it as a goodbye to the Wolvog.

That was my last tender moment of the day.

Sitting there in the Apple store, showing no mercy, I impatiently updated the phone.  Maybe on another day I would have tried to figure out some way to keep the old software; I would have wasted hours looking up solutions and allowing the Wolvog to say a tearful goodbye to Siri.  But this weekend, I practically shouted “fuck off!” to her as I angrily jabbed at the phone to update it, and then stormed out, new software on my new phone.

You know, these times when technology fails us are supposed to bring about beautiful moments where we realize how little we need in this world, and how we’ve been focused on our phones when we should be focused on our loved ones.  We’re supposed to walk out of the store with a renewed sense of peace that we can get by with very little, and we write about the silver lining of how our frustrating moments taught us to stop and smell the roses.

That is not what I learned.

I learned that I have too much on my plate.  I learned that I need to say no more often.  I learned that I still hate Bethesda with a seething passion that knows no bounds.  I learned that it absolutely sucks to have anything break that requires a trip to a brick-and-mortar store between November 15 – January 15.  I learned that people who are shopping like to walk very slowly and look around them as if they’re in a dream.  I learned that I actually need a functioning phone and that I don’t have time during my week to deal with problems with my phone when they come up.  I learned that I dislike iOS 7 just as much as I suspected I would.

But most of all, I learned that other people have infinite amounts of patience that I don’t have because when my phone ceased to work, I didn’t walk out of the store thinking about the wonderful lessons I learned about life.  I walked out of the store trying to figure out how I was going to get the shopping finished, the dinner cooked, and all my work still completed on time.  And I cursed everyone who looked happy.  Just because.

The only thing that made me smile was when I opened the new Siri, planning to whisper evil things to her just because I was in a black mood.  She greeted me with “Happy Chanukkah, Mel.”  Not sure how she knew I was Jewish, but it was enough to go upstairs to a sad, not-sleeping Wolvog and apologize that I didn’t fight harder for his virtual friend.  That I snarled at everyone since returning from the grocery store with my dead phone.

Fine, so I learned something, but I still don’t believe anyone who tells me that they felt sunny and peaceful when their technology ceased to work.  I call bullshit.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving if you celebrate it, and that you weren’t too annoyed by all the Thanksgiving posts and Facebook status updates and tweets if you don’t celebrate it.

*******

I learned this week that the thing I’m calling a speckled doughnut in Candy Crush is really a nonpareil (or, I’m told a “freckle” as it’s known in Australia).  Like a Sno-cap.  Those things you get in the movie theater.  Once the person told me that, it made perfect sense — more sense than a speckled doughnut, since it wasn’t clear how doughnuts fit in with the whole candy world.  But I have to admit that I can’t stop calling them speckled doughnuts, even now knowing their real name.  It doesn’t sound right to say, “combine a rainbow nonpareil with a striped candy.”  Right?

*******

The FDA told 23 and Me that they have to cease marketing their product as screening for genetic information, stating the reason as a lack of accuracy in test results.  It brought back my thoughts on the fact that 23 and Me (backed by Google) is amassing an incredible wealth of genetic information on participants.  But if it’s not accurate, what is its worth?  In terms of marketing, if companies collect incorrect information to market to us, how valuable is that information if it isn’t accurately enticing the right people with the right goods?  I think of things such as the containers of formula I received while going through treatments, companies believing I was pregnant when I clearly wasn’t.

It feels like the information companies attempt to collect and believe is meaningful keeps proving time and again how little we can know about people at a distance.

*******

The 2013 Creme de la Creme is trucking along.  There are currently 71 on the list and two weeks to go until the hard deadline (December 15!).  So, are you on the list yet?  Extra love to people who submit early!

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Confession Time” (Fox in the Hen House)
• “Forty, Fat, Infertile and Falling Apart” (The 2 Week Wait)

Okay, now my choices this week.

MoJo Working admits that despite recent posts, there is a lot of happiness she is feeling with her current pregnancy.  That happiness doesn’t necessarily make it into posts since she writes for the catharsis, to process darker emotions.  I think it’s the way a lot of people use their online space; to process their fears or sadness.  It may skew our perception, but only if we forget that the need to write is what drives some blogging and not necessarily a perfect recording of the daily world.

MissConception debates whether or not to return to work after having a child, and tells her story of how the unexpected costs of building their family chose her path for her.  It’s not a decision all women or men get to make — to have a stay-at-home parent — and sometimes the sacrifices need to continue into parenthood.  It’s a good post that give a complicated and frank answer to what is sometimes an assumption.

It is What It is has a post on “what it’s all about.”  She begins: “It’s true that I always wanted to have two children. I’m not sure why that is or how the notion of how many kids one wants to have comes into focus, but that is how I thought it’d be.”  She lists off a series of moments that she describes as having a feeling of deja vu that is “not so much repeating something I may have lived before, but something I longed to live.”  It’s just a gorgeous post of captured moments.

Stupid Broken Eggs has a post about her dog, Swish.  And, oh my G-d, he is so cute.  Click over for pictures of pure love.

Dear Noah has a post about how family avoids speaking about her son; his death has become the elephant in the room.  She ends the post with this very powerful thought: “it physically hurts not to talk about him. Why I need others to talk about him. I just don’t know how to get there. And if the silence is this bad after only one month, how bad will it be at a year. 5 years. 18 years. Because I won’t forget. But I worry they will.”  The next time you wonder whether to say something to a grieving parent, speak up.  Even if it’s just to open the door and invite them to talk.

Lastly, Constant in the Darkness has a post on what she wished she had known about adoption before forming their family.  It is a wonderful post, exploring the complex relationship that exists between all the members of the triad.

The roundup to the Roundup: Hope you had a good Thanksgiving.  It’s not actually a speckled doughnut.  23 and Me and the FDA.  The 2013 Creme de la Creme opened: is your post on the list?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between November 22nd and November 29th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

So I’ve been struggling a bit with level 331, and I decided to open up Candy Crush on the computer to see if the board looked differently online.  Suddenly, I was invited into a Candy Crush Dreamworld (and no, this is not a hallucination.  Er… okay, maybe it is… so I took screenshots just in case).

Do you see that?  The owl in the top left corner?  So I clicked on it.

And it asked if I wanted to enter the Dreamworld.  Did I?  HELLS YEAH!  I’ve learned nothing from reading Alice in Wonderland, and if Candy Crush offered me a little cake or a vial of questionable liquid, I would ingest it in a heartbeat.  Give me entrance to a wonderland of dreamy candy, and I am inside in a New York minute.

So the Dreamworld is a beautiful space where all the boards are like the ones when you’re just starting out Candy Crush.  And you cry because they feel so good to play after you’ve been banging your head against the wall with level 331.

Look at that sweet board!  You only have to score 2500 to pass.  What the hell is up with that?  And you get 15 moves.  And each match makes that little blue thing under the owl light up until he flies up and the screen says MOON STRUCK!

At that point, most of the colours fade off the board, making it (for a limited time) very easy to make special matches.  And then you cry with happiness as the points stack up because everything is popping and exploding and sliding around.  And it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful, it’s beautiful.

And then you take a bunch of screenshots because you can’t believe this exists.  I am so tired.  I have to be dreaming, right?  I’m dream blogging.

If you click on the owl, you get transported back to the normal board.  I went back and forth a few times to make sure I could still enter the Dreamworld.  It is the loveliest place I’ve been all day.

A prize wheel ALSO popped up on the computer.  I spun it and got one of those hand things that look like a Mickey Mouse glove, which I have no clue how to use.  So I let that be.  But you get to spin the wheel every single day.  You better believe I’ll be spinning.

Thank you, Candy Crush, you just made my Thanksgiving.

Is anyone else seeing the Dreamworld while they’re online?  Will it disappear if I log out?

P.S. How do you use the Mickey Mouse hand?  It switches two candies?

Update:

It’s still there!  It’s still there!  I thought I’d wake up in the morning and it would be gone.  I took a picture of the prize wheel too.  It shows up at the very bottom of the map screen. (You can see it in the background in the picture below.)  When you click on it, this screen opens:

So you click “Stop Wheel” and it starts to spin…

And then it lands on one of the prizes.  Today I got the jellyfish.  Not sure how one releases the jellyfish to use them during a game.  But I have them.

This is going to become my morning joy: spinning the prize wheel and shouting, “Big money!  Big money!  Show me the big money!”

Oooooh, I just love Candy Crush.

Update again:

Just played through level 10 (where a dotted line appears on the Dreamworld map), but all that happened was that the episode was complete.  No new prizes popped up.  Still a lot of fun, and it was nice to tear through levels instead of remaining on the same one day after day after day.  Plus, keeping the owl balanced is harder than you think.  We had him tip off his perch once when we combined a speckled doughnut and a regular candy.  But I’m really loving the Dreamworld.  Please don’t disappear, little Dreamworld, don’t disappear.