How I became part sea urchin Catherine Mohr
My story starts in the northern
Galapagos Islands,
under 50 feet of water
and a big school of sharks.
I’d been scuba diving with a group
of friends for about a week,
and it had been glorious:
manta rays, whale sharks,
penguins and, of course,
hammerhead sharks.
Today’s dive was particularly tricky.
The surge was terrible.
You had to have your camera rig tight in
and your arm out,
because the surge kept
throwing you into the rocks
while you’re scanning up
for that beautiful photograph.
It was going OK, until …
not OK.
Something was terribly, terribly wrong.
I pulled my hand back,
and I had long, black sea urchin spines
all the way through my gloves,
which meant all the way through my hand.
Now, this is bad.
I mean, obviously when you have something
all the way through your hand,
it’s kind of bad anyway,
but in this case, sea urchins
have a venom on them that,
if you’ve ever tangled with them,
you know that a sea urchin spine in you
gives you horrible, painful inflammation.
But that wasn’t even topmost
in my mind at this point.
This did not look real.
I could not believe that this was my hand.
Now, in a crisis, I tend to disassociate
into, like, little scientists,
and I start talking very analytically.
All analysis was gone,
adrenaline brain kicked in,
and I just yanked the spines out.
I don’t remember doing it.
I just remember thinking, “I can’t
get my glove off with these in here.”
I do remember taking the glove off
and a big plume of black
coming up in front of my face.
And biologist brain now shows up
and starts freaking out.
“How could all that toxin
have gotten into that wound already?”
Well, physicist brain then shows up
and very calmly explains,
“No, no, no, we’re at 50 feet,
red wavelengths are attenuated.
That’s blood – not black.
And sharks.
So what are you gonna do?”
Well, I cranked my cummerbund
down really hard over my hand,
and I simply swam away.
“Let’s let that big old cloud of blood
dissipate a bit before we have to surface
through all of these sharks.”
So when I did surface,
my warm-blooded-mammal brain
was in an absolute gibbering panic:
“They don’t feed when they’re schooling.
They don’t feed when they’re schooling.
All the way up.”
And they didn’t.
So apparently, they have read
the same books that I have.
(Laughter)
Now, it turns out,
when you’ve been stabbed
with sea urchin spines,
and you’re two days away
from any medical help,
the thing that you’ve got to do
is, unfortunately, cook your hand.
So you put it in water
as hot as you can stand,
and you keep adding boiling water
until you think you will go
absolutely insane.
Now, it worked –
the hand itself did not work so well
for several weeks after that,
but eventually,
fine motor skills returned.
All except for one spot, that stayed
stiff and painful for weeks
after the other things had gotten better.
So it turned out, I’d broken off
a tip of the urchin spine
in the joint itself,
and that’s why it wasn’t getting better.
So the orthopedist says,
“You know, we should get this out.
Nothing too urgent, not an emergency.”
So we scheduled a small surgery
for a few weeks out on a Monday.
And on the Friday before,
I broke my pelvis
in a horseback riding accident.
(Laughter)
Yeah.
So we kind of postponed that surgery.
My broken pelvis and I were now
facing six weeks on the couch,
and I would have gone absolutely insane
if it hadn’t been for my friends.
Spontaneous parties broke out
at my house every night for weeks.
I was fed. I was entertained.
It was great.
But that kind of enthusiasm is sort of
hard to sustain over the long term,
and eventually it petered down
to just one friend,
who would send me jokes during the day
and come and keep me company
in the evenings –
someone I got to know a whole lot better
during this period of convalescence.
And when I was finally
pronounced well enough
to do weight-bearing activities,
we loaded a telescope in the car
and drove up into the mountains
to look at the Hale–Bopp comet.
Yes, we are geeks.
And got caught in a landslide.
(Laughter)
I know – like, really?
No. Just kidding.
(Laughter)
No more disasters. No.
Just the opposite, in fact.
That was 21 years ago,
and for 19 of those years,
I have been married
to that marvelous introvert
who never in a million years
would have approached me
under other circumstances.
We have a wonderful 14-year-old daughter,
who did all my illustrations.
(Cheers and applause)
Yeah.
So, pro tip:
apparently, nothing makes you sexier
than needing a walker
on your first date.
So this isn’t a story about piercings
or sharks or boilings or breakings.
It’s a love story.
It’s a love story with
a funny little epilogue.
Now I was weight-bearing again,
I could reschedule that surgery,
get the spine out.
But I didn’t need it anymore.
Turns out, when you break a bone,
your body scavenges calcium
from all the bones in your body –
and from the little sea urchin spine
that you happen to have lodged
in the joint of your finger.
So yes,
my pelvis is now part sea urchin.
(Laughter)
So to biology brain, physicist brain,
adrenaline brain,
warm-blooded-mammal brain,
I get to add “urchin brain,”
with all of the superpowers
that that confers.
You don’t need to worry, though:
that I am not fully human
is one of the things
that my family loves the most about me.
(Laughter)
Thank you very much.
(Applause)