Helen FieldsScience Writer

After more than a week of gastrointestinal distress, I finally got a verdict: norovirus. I don’t recommend it. The good news is that I’m going to finally start my fellowship this week. You know, the reason I came over here. This. Yayyyyy.

I’m so glad I asked the downstairs neighbor to do my shopping today (my illness being such that I really don’t want to leave my apartment unless it’s for a medical facility). He was fast, and it wasn’t out of his way, which was nice, but most importantly: I got to learn the ultimate German home remedy for stomach problems.

There it is, my friends. This is the value of life overseas: learning that, whatever ails your digestive system, what you really need is pretzel sticks and coke. Two doctors did ask me if I was drinking coke and seemed a little surprised that I wasn’t. I look forward to trying the local folk remedy this afternoon.

Yeah, I haven’t really blogged this week. You know why? I’ve been sick. You know the only thing worse than being sick? Being sick in a foreign country. My fellow Berlin-based Burns Fellows turn out to be princes among men and women, and they’ve been taking turns coming to my apartment with bananas, white bread, ginger ale, and other essentials to the life of a person whose digestive system is running completely freaking amok.

I finally went to the doctor today – perky, ponytail, jeans – and she told me it’s probably a virus and to avoid meat, milk, and “Hülsenfrüchte.” That last one stumped me, so she made me write it down, and I just looked it up: legumes. In case you were wondering how to say “legumes” in German. And surely someone was.

So, there’s hope. It’s probably not appendicitis. That was one of the few times I lapsed into English during the appointment. Doctor: [poking at the lower right side of my belly] [in german] “You still have your appendix.” Me: “Ja. I don’t want appendicitis.” Her: [in german] “Then we won’t talk about it anymore.”

Here’s how you know you’re on a ship:

All the computers are tied down. I don’t think we’ve actually had any boat movement that would be dramatic enough to slide a laptop off a table, but I’m glad they’re tied down anyway. This is one of the public laptops with internet. Instruments in the lab are tied down, too. Also, a lot of work surfaces have some kind of sticky, rubbery mesh material stretched over them and stapled down, so you can set things down and be pretty sure they won’t slide away.

I was worried about seasickness before I came on board, but here’s the result: I never had any. Well, I never got nauseous. For one thing, the ship just didn’t move that much. In the ice, it mostly kind of bounces around – not the steady movement that makes you sick – and we were in the ice for the vast majority of the trip. When we did get into open water with some swells, all it did was make me a bit sleepy. We’re back in open water now, but the big, scary, stormy Bering Sea is doing its best impression of a pond.

I did get land-sick early in the trip – I’d feel dizzy when we stopped all day at the ice. I’m kind of dreading being really back on land. A science writer friend of mine who used to be an oceanographer told me he was always land-sick for three times as long as he was on the boat, which would put me into early August. Yikes. Let’s hope I’m not like him. (Well, other than his wild success as a freelancer.)

No, don’t. Don’t eat more salt. But do read my latest work: a quick piece for National Geographic News about a study on salt and mood.

An editor at NG News forwarded me a press release about this research a few days ago. The scientist’s name was “Kim Johnson” but I saw on his website that his actual first name is Alan, so I asked him what he prefers in print. He says everyone calls him Kim but Alan is better because he gets the wrong pronoun all the time, and he’d already seen “she” a couple of times on stories based on that press release.

This reminded me of my favorite correction ever. When I was interning at the Monterey County Herald in 2002, I interviewed a guy named Kelly Sorenson. He’s the executive director of the Ventana Wildlife Society, which works with condors in Big Sur. He was one of several people I talked to for a story and I only referred to him once, so I never used a pronoun for him. Later that night a copy editor decided something else should be attributed to Sorenson, and added a “she said.” Hooooo boy was my editor mad.

The correction: “An article on page B1 Monday about lead poisoning in condors referred incorrectly to Kelly Sorenson, executive director of the Ventana Wilderness Society. He is a man.” I heard his coworkers cut it out and taped it to his door.