I Know What Your Parents Were Doing In February!...

Steroid insomnia has caused me to be stirring around the hut quite earlier this Saturday morning before I "re-pair" myself to head into work...so I thought I'd get a few things crossed off my list of "To Do's", which has included addressing and mailing several October birthday cards to friends and coworkers. I was rather shocked when I looked in my calendar and noted the inordinate number of people I know who were born in October! My, my , but YOUR parents sure were busy in the chill of February. LOL

I don't know if I am just excessively attracted to October babies or why so many have migrated into my life over the years...there's my bestest friend in North Dakota, who's 9 year old ALSO has a fall B-DAY (actually born on Hallows!), 4 coworkers, let's not forget BUBBIE, 2 extended family members, and 3 other dear friends. I'm rather shocked I even KNOW that many people and would WANT to send cards to them...

And, just as oddly as my pea-brain functions, I began to wonder if there is any correlation between birth month and Multiple Sclerosis (this IS an MS blog, after all...deal with it!). Apparently several scientists have ALSO wondered about this, too. A somewhat recent study published in 2005 in the BMJ looked at approximately 18,000 Canadians and 11,500 Brits to determine if there was any link between MS and birth month...go here for the abstract if you're interested in scientific reading.

Essentially, this study concluded there were fewer peeps born with MS in November and slightly higher poor suckers born with the disease in May (so what about those of us born in July?!? Just really, really unlucky Leo's I guess...LOL)

Another interesting site that discusses birth month and MS as well as a few other diseases is intraspec.ca . These folks seem to think March through May are great months to be born with a higher risk of developing MS (do you suppose this is why the National MS Society holds it's annual Gimpathon/MS Awareness week in March? No, I don't think they had that much foresight either...LOL).

And still, MS NEWS has done an informal poll among its readers, which has found LITTLE significant correlation between birth month and MS...you, too, can participate in this poll if you'd like...so far, about 650 MSers have.

And now, I'm off to begin the painstaking preparations of hygiene and mental push ups necessary to go back to work...I've been off for almost two weeks of work and really not much improved relapse-wise. This should prove to be an "interesting" day, to say the least! Let's hope the cat can successfully adjust to not having her human cushion lying about...LOL...