My Sister's Keeper Journal Entry #1

"In my first memory, I am three years old and I am trying to kill my sister. Sometimes the recollection is so clear I can remember the itch of the pillowcase under my hand, the sharp point of her nose pressing into my palm. She didn't stand a chance against me, of coarse, but it still didn't work. My father walked by, tucking in the house for the night, and saved her. He led me back to my own bed. "That," he told me, "never happened."

As we got older, I didn't seem to exist, except in relation to her. I would watch her sleep across the room from me, one long shadow linking our beds, and I would count the ways. Poison, sprinkled on her cereal. A wicked undertow off the beach. Lightening striking.

In the end though, I did not kill my sister. She did it all on her own.

Or at least this is what i tell myself." (page,3)

"The first time i gave something to my sister, it was cord blood, and I was a newborn. She has leukemia -APL- and my cells put into her remission. The next time she relapsed, I was five and I had lymphocytes drawn from me, three times over, because the doctors never seemed to get enough of them the first time around. When that stopped working, they took bone marrow for a transplant. When Kate got infections, I had to donate granulocytes. When she relapsed again, I had to donate peripheral blood stem cells." (page,21)

They don't really pay attention to me, except when they need my blood or something. I wouldn't be alive, if it wasn't for Kate being sick.

Novel Research

Jodi Lynn Picoult (born May 19, 1966) is anAmerican author. She was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003. Picoult currently has some 14 million copies of her books in print worldwide.



Picout was born and raised in Nesconset on Long Island but moved to New Hampshire when she was 13 years old. Picoult wrote her first story at age 5, entitled "The Lobster Which Misunderstood." She studied writing at Princeton University, and graduated in 1987. She published two short stories in Seventeen magazine while still in college. Immediately after graduation, she landed a variety of jobs, ranging from editing textbooks to teaching eighth-grade English. She earned a master's degree in education from Harvard University.



My Sister's Keeper is a novel written by Jodi Picoult in 2004 that tells the story of a young girl Anna who sues her parents for medical emancipation when she is expected to donate a kidney to her sister Kate who is dying from leukemia.





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jodi_Picoult

The Perils Of Indifference

1) The Perils Of Indifference - The Danger of being despicable

2) The ending of "The Lottery" was very shocking and unexpecting to read. In the world we live in now its kind of hard to believe that this story was true because they were killing people for no reason. But stuff like this happens in different parts of the world, that's why we're not used to reading material like this. For example during the Rwandan Genocide the Hutu's and the Tootsie's were killing there own people as well and they did not stop. In this short story it showed how they held a "lottery" once a year and one person had to die.

3) Eli Wiesel's speech is very true and relates to "The Lottery" in many ways. Wiesel's speech shows the truth of how the world really is and how much care there is for things and people.

Informational- The Common Cold

The common cold (acute viral rhino pharyngitis, acute coryza, viral upper respiratory tract infection, or a cold) is a contagious, viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory system, primarily caused by rhino viruses, (picornaviruses) or coronaviruses. It is the most common infectious disease in humans; there is no known cure, but it is very rarely fatal.
Collectively, colds, influenza, and other infections with similar symptoms are included in the diagnosis of influenza-like illness. Often, influenza and the common cold are mistaken for each other, even by professional health care workers, but most of the recommended home treatments (drinking plenty of warm fluids, keeping warm, etc.) are similar if not the same. The symptoms of influenza often include a fever and are more severe than the cold.

Sleep
Lack of sleep has been associated with the common cold. Those who sleep fewer than 7 hours per night were three times more likely to develop an infection when exposed to a rhinovirus when compared to those who sleep more than 8 hours per night.

Vitamin D
A 2009 study found that low blood serum levels of vitamin D were associated with increased rates of the common cold. A randomized controlled trial found that 104 post-menopausal African American women living in New York given vitamin D were three times less likely to report cold and flu symptoms than 104 placebo controls. A low dose (800 IU/day) not only reduced reported incidence, it abolished the seasonality of reported colds and flu. A higher dose (2000 IU/day), given during the last year of the trial, virtually eradicated all reports of colds or flu.



The best way to avoid a cold is to wash hands thoroughly and regularly; and to avoid touching the eyes, nose, mouth, and face. Anti-bacterial soaps have no extraordinary effect on the cold virus; it is the mechanical action of hand washing with the soap that removes the virus particles.