December 12, 2005 - 5:36 PM

Hep Hep, Hooray!

This was in the news this past weekend:

>Los Angeles County health officials said Friday that they are investigating a new suspected hepatitis A outbreak at Cafe Pinot, one of downtown Los Angeles' top restaurants.
Four employees of the restaurant at the Central Library have fallen ill in the last few weeks, prompting the county Department of Health Services to urge restaurant patrons who dined there between Nov. 25 and Dec. 4 to contact their doctors for injections of antibodies to prevent infection<

Margaret had a birthday on Wednesday the 7th, and where did we go to celebrate? Why, Cafe Pinot in downton L.A., of course. And me, without my health insurance. Bah. I found this bit of info to be interesting and amusing (I'm sure it won't be either if I start to show the symptoms):

>Hepatitis A is usually spread from person to person via the fecal-oral route...The incubation period for Hepatitis A is two to seven weeks.
Symptoms of acute Hepatitis A include: fever, chills, muscle aches, fatigue, jaundice (a yellow color to the eyes or skin), nausea, loss of appetite, vomiting, abdominal cramps, dark-colored urine, fatigue and/or light-colored bowel movements.<

Umm...the fecal-oral route? That just sounds wrong...luckily, one (and so far, only one that i can find) news-reporting source has found it necessary to clarify what exactly the "fecal-oral" route is:
"The virus most often is spread through fecal-oral contact, such as touching hand to mouth after using the bathroom or shaking the hands of infected people who did not wash properly."

Ahh yes. Luckily, my week-long bout with fatigue started BEFORE we went to dinner that night, and my 3 week-long run of bowel-riffic problems happened before Thanksgiving (I know! That's a long time! And too much information!...incidentally, it abated just after my reunion, which makes me wonder if it wasn't induced by stress and anxiety related to the reunion since the various meds my dad had me take didn't work).

Question: how do asian people know that they are jaundiced if they are already of the yellow skin?

And finally this bit of publicity-spin:
>However, officials are still trying to determine exactly what caused the outbreak at Cafe Pinot, said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, public health director for Los Angeles County.
"There's nothing at this point that suggests the restaurant is responsible for this," he said. "We don't know if it was produce or hand-washing technique or what. Anything could have caused it."
Fielding, who said he has eaten at Cafe Pinot, said he found no reason to close the restaurant, adding that he would readily eat there again.
"I wouldn't hesitate to eat there," he said. "People have a lot of choices in restaurants, but I would recommend not striking it off any lists. I don't see any reason to avoid it."<

Thank you Dr. Fielding. (psst, if you type in keywords "hepatitis cafe pinot" into Google, you get a ton of hits)

**********
It's been two weeks since I last wrote, huh? I've been trying to have a life, which certainly consumes time and makes me too tired to update. I have 3 diary entries that I've started, but are just not completing themselves. *sigh*

We'll leave what is turning out to be travails (but not quite a saga yet) in regards to J for another entry, but I'll leave you this morsel: I have no idea what's going on. But something is happening. Sorta. Maybe.

I finally got to go down to LDBL and Mer's new place in Playa Del Rey near LAX this past weekend. I've been an awful friend in not checking in with them more often ever since Nick moved back to Maryland and they skedaddled out of the Valley. We drove up to Santa Monica and had dinner at an Italian restaurant on the Promenade before checking out LDBL's High School's performance of Guys and Dolls (is this really how bad high school productions are? I guess I just had a different perspective while futzing around in the pit orchestra all those years at my school. I do have to give the singers much props for having some actual talent in that department).

Friday I saw Syriana with my new movie-going partner Flori; we also saw Good Luck and Good Night a few weeks ago. GL&GN was superbly acted with a gravity and snappiness to it that made it quite enjoyable (5.75 stars out of 7) whereas Syriana, also showcasing some good acting, was more unwieldy and bloated, weighted down by its "importance" (3.5 out of 7).

There have been a bunch of shows and other things over the past month, and I'll get into those. Whatup.

Now Listening To : K's Choice-Almost Happy
Random Thought : You shoulda watched this past week's episode of Drawn Together. So funny. Honest.

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