7:23 a.m.: I check my inbox again. Really? Still? I sure hope he’s
enjoying his breakfast this morning while I’m trying to cure
cancer.
7:24 a.m.: I write the statistician an email asking for my data.
I promise myself not to check my email again for another hour
while I bang out this intro.
7:25 a.m.: I check my inbox again. Nothing.
10:14 a.m.: I have finished my intro. I decided to give a brief history of leukemia, starting with Virchow, to put my discovery into
context. I’m at 5,300 characters without spaces. I’d better check
the abstract guidelines on the ASH website to make sure I’m not
running over.
10:15 a.m.: What?! 3,800 characters without spaces? Why don’t
they just ask us to Tweet out our abstracts, while they’re at it?
I start cutting the portions of my intro from the 18th century.
Most of the good stuff happened in the 19th and 20th centuries,
anyway.
10:30 a.m.: Time for another positive affirmation session in front
of my work mirror. I am good enough to write this abstract.
11:23 a.m.: The statistician finally emails back. He has to do a
lot of “data cleaning,” whatever that means. He’ll have my results
to me within 6 hours. I start writing the results section of the
abstract. I might as well – I know which way this thing is going.
1:45 p.m.: The results section is basically finished, except for the
Kaplan–Meier survival curves I’ll ask for. Because a picture is
worth 1,000 characters without spaces.
2:00 p.m.: Lunch. Since my hospital just kicked out McDonald’s, I guess I’ll go for a salad instead. Or maybe I’ll just eat this
leftover KFC I brought from home …
3:11 p.m.: I finish lunch. I’ll just work on the conclusion, should
only take about 10 or 12 sentences.
4:05 p.m.: Positive affirmation session. I am smart enough to be
on stage with Dr. Williams.
5:30 p.m.: Email from the statistician, with attachment! Here’s
the moment we’ve all been waiting for. I open it and … Wait –
what?
5:35 p.m.: Bicarbonate! Of
course – bicarbonate channels in
blasts! It makes so much sense.
And with a p Value of 0.063 for
response to chemotherapy, this
will be at least an oral presentation. I email the statistician; he’ll
have to re-run his analyses now
focusing on bicarbonate!
6:03 p.m.: The statistician emails
back. He is working on data for
other abstracts, he’ll get the new
analyses back to me in a few
hours. That’s okay, I’ve got to rewrite this bad boy.
Mikkael A. Sekeres, MD, MS,
is director of the Leukemia
Program at the Cleveland Clinic
in Cleveland, OH.
8:37 p.m.: Still working on the abstract, take a break for a positive affirmation session. I am the King of Bicarbonate.
11:06 p.m.: Email from the statistician with new analyses. No
association of bicarbonate with survival, and all associations
disappear in multivariate analyses. But at this point, I think I’m
good to go anyway. This is the first time anyone has ever shown
the importance of baseline bicarbonate in acute leukemia. I’ll
leave it for other investigators to gather the sample size to prove
what’s obvious anyway – bicarbonate runs the show.
11:53 p.m.: I’ve entered all the new data and proofread my
abstract. I upload it to the ASH website and … what? “Too many
characters without spaces?” 4,900 characters? How can that be?
It must be the tables! I’ll never get it down to 3,800 characters
in time! All this work for nothing, not to mention depriving the
world of this finding!
I bang my head on my desktop over and over again. But wait, let
me check the ASH website. … Yes! Pacific Time! The deadline
is 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time! I’m saved! Thank you ASH, which is
based in Washington, DC, for making the abstract submission
deadline Pacific Time!
2:04 a.m. (EST), August 5, 2015: Email from [email protected]:
“This message serves as confirmation that your submission was
received.”
Mikkael Sekeres, MD, MS
Editor-in-Chief
Here are the tables, baseline characteristics, univariate analyses, and a p Value of 0.83 for the association of chloride with
response to chemotherapy. That can’t be!
Well, maybe it just stabilizes disease and people live longer. I
move on to his survival analyses and find … a p Value of 0.97?
Huh? This doesn’t make any sense! My logic behind this was
airtight. How could he not find an association within the data I
sent him on 23 patients? There has to be something here we can
present at the annual meeting. Let me scan the other variables.
*Guarantee of acceptance to the ASH Annual Meeting is only within the warped and
often delusional mind of the author.
ASHClinicalNews.org
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