cyclonefence
cyclonefence's JournalGrammar nazis can't help them(our)selves
From a column in last Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer, by regular columnist The Grammarian:
A new study in the Journal of Neurolinguistics from researchers at the University of Birmingham found that when certain people come across grammar errors, their bodies respond physically.
Heart rates change. Stress increases. Bad grammar activates the part of our nervous system that provokes the fight-or-flight impulse we get when being chased ... like by a tiger. All of that happens when we encounter someone breaking grammar rules. To some of us, it can feel like an attack.
Interestingly, we don't respond so violently when the errors are made by a non-native speaker/writer or someone with an accent (Polish, in the study).
So there's a scientific explanation for why bad grammar makes us angry. That's the good news.
The bad news: It's biology. It's instinct. It's the tiger that won't stop chasing us.
And there's nothing we can do about it.
But a good thing happened while I was in the hospital
I got a visit from a bariatric surgeon who told me he could fix my hernia!
I have the biggest hernia in the world. It's in my diaphragm, and my stomach and sometimes my colon pop up into my rib cage, making it hard to breath. My stomach is up there permanently, and the colon comes and goes.
This guy says there is a new robotic technique that he can use that will cause my own scar tissue to invade the mesh he'll put in there to make it stronger than ever, even if I cough a lot--I have copd.
So that will be wahoo! if it works. It's scheduled for Jan.2 as long as my cardiologist and pulmonologist sign off on it. I know my lung guy will be all over this like white on rice.
And I never would have met this bariatric surgeon if I hadn't been in the hospital for all that diarrhea.
Well, here's my terrible hospital story
Don't ignore persistent diarrhea.
My default setting is constipation. Then I got diarrhea. I figured Diarrhea? So what--it'll run its course. It went on and on. I ate only toast and bananas, then after consulting Dr. Google added plain boiled chicken breast. The first week I figured it was a virus, but nobody else got sick.
The second week (and into my second pack of Depends) I figured I must have food poisoning, so I continued with lots of fluids and chicken noodle soup.
The third week everyone was sick and tired of me talking about my bowels so I made an appointment to see the doctor early in the fourth week.
I felt fine this whole time, btw.
She sent me for blood work so I got that done, and as soon as I got home she called and told me to go to the ER because my potassium was dangerously low. All those bananas. I lollygagged because who wants to go to the ER plus I felt like the diarrhea was slowing down.
I got there and sat for hours and finally saw a doctor who said my heart was beating 133/minute, and they started doing stuff to try to slow it down, including a chemical stress test. Nothing worked, so they admitted me.
I felt fine.
I ended up, after ten MFing days in the hospital with a defribillator/pacemaker installed, and now I feel awful.
Plus I can no longer use our almost brand-new induction range, or the headphones I use to get to sleep at night, or the electrologist to rid me of chin whiskers, or have anything with a magnet in it near my chest.
I felt fine before all this.
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