From Patent to Diet--My Wonderful Journey with WANDA

 

Almost exactly three years back, in a windy Fall afternoon much like today (minus the work-from-home component of course), my boss Marina Portnova asked me if I was interested to take up a pro bono project. She was approached by Jeanne Curtis, the inaugural Director of the Cardozo/GooglePatent Diversity Project at the Cardozo Law School. I was fairly new to the firm at that point after a long stint at my previous firm, and pondered if I should do more client-billable work to establish myself as a profitable associate at my new workplace, or take up the pro bono work, which historically almost always proved to be more soul-satisfying. The debate was short-lived once I saw the profile of the potential pro bono client, Tambra Raye Stevenson. Working with more female inventors has been my life-long mission in an effort to leveling the playing field in my professional world involving patents, where only 12% of the inventors were female according to 2018 data. Well, Tambra not only fit that bill, but added more flavor to that, because her invention was not one of the high-tech devices and algorithms that I deal with day in and day out with my silicon valley clients. She invented a talking doll to inspire people to eat better! I realized this will be a unique experience for me, and told my boss that I was in!

Little did I know at that time that during the course of working with Tambra I will embark on my own nutritional journey, and terms like “anti-inflammatory diet”, “dietetics” etc. would be part of my own vocabulary. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me roll back to October-November 2018 timeframe. 

I had my first Skype meeting (Zoom was still not ubiquitous then) with Tambra in early November, 2018. She was based in Washington DC. Naturally my ice-breaker conversation involved mentioning the fact that my American journey began in the greater Washington DC metropolitan area when I joined University of Maryland as a graduate student, and then later started my career in patent law at a law firm in Washington DC. I had to explain to Tambra that we need to file a “design patent” to secure the intellectual property rights on the “looks” of the doll, rather than securing rights to the “utility” of the doll. The social “utility” of acting as a recognizable mascot to spread a positive message about better eating is not good enough from a patent law perspective. So over the next few meetings, Tambra and I collaborated to procure drawings that convey how the doll was going to look like. The doll already had a name—little WANDA, a very clever play on the acronym “Women (and girls) Advancing Nutrition, Dietetics and Agriculture.” Tambra did a great job explaining that Wanda was like “Dora the Explorer” who focuses on reminding children of African American descent to count on the treasure trove of ancestral knowledge about what nutrition is anthropologically optimal for them based on the genetic makeup of the diaspora. Tambra’s own daughter Ruby was the inspiration behind Wanda’s look—the twinkle in her eye, the way she dressed and the way she wore her hair.

Being an immigrant myself, who comes from India, a country that offers its own rich culture and deep ancestral knowledge about food, Tambra’s nutrition activism really resonated with me. And I was thrilled that finally my professional qualification as a patent attorney was giving me the chance to work with a very atypical client with a unique social vision. My then-secretary Gloria also joined in the enthusiasm. We finalized the drawings and the description and filed the patent application in March on 2019. As normal in any patent application, you submit the application and wait for the patent office to get back to you with either a rejection or an acceptance in one or more years.

With Tambra’s application, the first “rejection” from the patent office came in summer 2020. By that time the world had changed due to COVID. Everyone was dealing with stress and immunity-boosting nutrition became paramount. We had every motivation to respond to the “rejection.” We co-opted our trusted draftsman Darryl to tweak the drawings of the doll to overcome the patent Examiner’s rejections. But in a few months, the application got rejected again for the second time. This time I called up the patent Examiner, and she very patiently guided me through the additional modifications that I needed to introduce to the drawings.

While Tambra’s patent application was going through its back-and-forth with the patent office, my own story was changing significantly. In early May 2021, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that causes joint inflammation and excruciating pain if not managed properly. Before the formal diagnosis, I had been suffering with body aches and pain since late summer 2020. I just didn’t know what was causing it. Once diagnosed, on top of medication and physiotherapy, I was advised to take a closer look at my diet, because it is known that certain types of food cause inflammation. At that point, an angel of a friend, Vinita Madhani, connected me with Dr. Avinash Saoji, an India-based doctor of Naturopathy, who conducts nutritional boot-camps to reverse diabetes and other so-called “lifestyle based” diseases that to a large extent are caused by the type of food that we consume, including too much reliance on processed foods. With a lot of skepticism, I joined the program. Dr. Saoji told me at the beginning that though the program was designed for diabetes reversal, it has been proven to benefit arthritis patients as well. For ten weeks, I had to give up on a lot—no dairy, no tea/coffee, no white rice, no regular wheat-based bakery items, no non-vegetarian food, no sugar, no processed food, and no oil!! My first question was, then what is left to eat? But Dr. Saoji and his team at his non-profit organization Prayas, gave us enough ideas and recipes to survive within the stringent constraints of the diet. And lo and behold, around the sixth week, my diabetes, for which I have been taking medication for the last five years, was miraculously reversed! And my arthritic pain was also perceptibly reduced!

In a spectacular coincidence, in another few weeks, Tambra’s patent application was allowed by the Examiner---our latest tweaks in the drawings did the trick! Our lives, mine and my client’s, got connected forever! I became a proud warrior who beat diabetes (and managed arthritis to a large extent) through better eating, and Tambra became a proud owner of her very first patent on a doll that talks about better eating! The patent officially issued as US Patent D931,387 right around her birthday! I could not have given her a better birthday gift!

This journey has been one of the major highlights of my sixteen-year-long career as a patent practitioner. Thank you Tambra for being an integral part of my story when my professional life tangled, in the most welcome way, with my personal life. Wish you all the success with WANDA’s mission, and I am glad to be a little part of your journey.

500 days! Delta Variant and the Delta Variation in Lifestyle

I have blogged to commemorate the completion of 100, 200, 300, and 400 days from the official start of shelter-in-place in California in March, 2020. So it is only fitting that I complete the series with a blog post on the 500th day too, which is just round the corner--July 29 to be precise. But that is a weekday and I am in the mood to write now. Just me and my laptop enjoying the sun in the late-ish part of Sunday--with the dog taking a siesta next to me--before another work week starts.

A lot has happened since my last blog in late May. At that point I was barely coming out of the worst health scare of my life, being diagnosed with autoimmune disease (rheumatoid arthritis). The rheumatologist got me started on Methotrexate, a low dose chemo treatment, commonly used as an immunosuppressant. He told me that it would take 4-5 weeks before the medicine starts showing its effect, and that proved to be true. I have been feeling much better since the beginning of July. In fact, though there were some trepidations, I felt like I was fit enough to take a long-ish family road trip to Santa Barbara to enjoy the July 4th fireworks on the beach! And it was totally worth it! It became the slightly-belated but perfect celebration of our 25th wedding anniversary.

The improvement in health can be attributed to a combination of factors. Of course the medicine has a huge role. But I have also incorporated some variations in lifestyle, including cutting down on tennis significantly and introducing yoga to my regimen. But the most significant lifestyle change is enrolling in a 10-week-long nutritional bootcamp and switching to an anti-inflammatory diet. There are lots and lots of restrictions in the diet, but nothing motivates me like results. Though the bootcamp is targeted to reversing diabetes, I was told it would help me with my arthritis too, and that is exactly what has happened. I am half-way done with the program and have been off of the diabetes medication for a whole week now. The joint pain is much less, to the extent that I can now sleep through the night without getting up in the middle of the night because of leg cramps, play tennis (doubles) for 2 hours in the weekend, and spend regular hours at work without crashing down in the middle of the day due to fatigue.

Speaking of work, I have to say I feel for the management. Our firm management put so much effort to encourage the employees to come back to work under a hybrid model, where you are "encouraged" work from the office two or more days each week if you are vaccinated and not otherwise "immuno-compromised". Though I am now technically an immuno-compromised employee, I am doing well enough to go to office two days a week. There was gourmet catered food, that could be customized to suit your food restrictions. For the first time in my life, I became a "fancy" eater and selected gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan entrees, and they were still delicious! It was really nice to spend time in person with our summer mentees. But then with the emergence of the delta variant of the coronavirus, the management had to backtrack a little, and had to grant the employees the option to work fully remotely all five days a week. So from tomorrow onwards, I will work fully remotely again, at least most of the weeks until the policy changes.

One of the perks of working from home is to be able to watch how your son spends his time throughout the day. It has been thrilling to observe a responsible young man emerging out of my little boy, who is going to turn sixteen in a few weeks. He has utilized the flexibility of summer to get done with the prerequisites of getting a driver's license. Now I am enjoying being chauffeured around, as he fulfills his 50-hours of supervised driving requirement. He is also vaccinated now, and has been hanging out with other vaccinated friends in the local playground. I don't have to worry about his social isolation any longer.

All in all, I have to say--and my family totally agrees--that I seem to have mostly got my mojo back. I badly needed that, because I was not sure what to do with the person that I was two and a half months back, who was not only physically suffering, but was also scared to the core thinking that the life that she knew before the autoimmune diagnosis would never come back. Well, I can say it has not come back 100%, but I am OK with that. I still think this was the universe's conspiracy to make me take a closer look at myself and re-prioritize things, including being more careful about what I eat. The journey of self-discovery continues.

Overachiever

When three different people, who are not related to each other, independently use the same word--"Overachiever"--in a span of five days, then you know the water broke, and you are going to give birth to a blog. The name of the blog baby was already chosen for you. You just have to write it out.

Last Friday we were joking about who has the most number of tennis injuries in our tennis circle. And turns out that my three--right knee, right wrist and left knee--might be at the top, earning me the dubious title of "overachiever" from my funny buddy Mallika. Then on Monday, my chiropractor Kimmy, who has become more of a friend than a physical therapist, used the exact same term when I told her that I have developed a new injury--the wrist--since my last visit in March. Well, two persons saying the same thing can be a coincidence. But three? On Tuesday, my eye doctor, Dr. Rodgin also chose to use the same term when I told him that now he has to do not only the diabetic eye exam, but also has to check for possible signs of inflammation in the eye. 

Yes, seems like the term "overachiever" is trending in my life, and for apt reason too--as my immunity system is apparently on a campaign for overachievement, making excess antibodies. I have very recently been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a form of autoimmune disease that results in joint inflammation caused by an overactive immune system. Nobody knows what triggers it. It can hit people as young as in their 20s or 30s. It is a medical mystery that whoever solves is guaranteed to get a Nobel prize---according to my rheumatologist, Dr. Fischer. There are treatments and I am about to start my medication regime. That certainly is making me feel way more hopeful than when I first received the diagnosis that I have RA, and have to live with it for the rest of my life, as it is a chronic condition.

The journey leading to the diagnosis and post-diagnosis has been "uneven"--to put it lightly. You never know when it hits you.  Going back in time, I now know that I had symptoms since last August. Random pain and niggles moved around in my hands and legs, shoulder and back. I had frequent leg cramps and swelling. I attributed all of it to playing tennis too intensely to counter pandemic-related stress, and of course to the frailty of my middle-aged body. And I have been diligently going through treatment for what we thought was osteoarthritis (the more common type arthritis related to age) under the supervision of my illustrious sports medicine doctor, Dr. Lewis, who was a ranked tennis player herself. With a competent team of orthopedic doctor, physiotherapist and chiropractor (and a few visits to an acupuncturist too), I was confident that I would get better. But it just did not happen. I felt temporary relief periodically, but the knee injuries kept coming back, forcing me to stop playing tennis for a whole month. And then instead of improving, my condition became worse, as acute pain rippled through my whole body. I could barely walk with a badly swollen leg. Started losing clumps of hair.  Sleeping through the night became impossible. Working a full 9-10 hour day became super challenging, as I had to frequently take a break because of fatigue. And the lowest blow was when I could not get up from bed one morning and my hands became almost immobile. I called my primary care physician, Dr. Ademola, and told her that she needed to see me at once. That morning was really something! I had to ask for help from my husband to get up and to dress myself to go to the doctor.

Long story short, X-rays, MRIs and innumerable blood tests conclusively proved that I have rheumatoid arthritis--a disease that not only threatens my most beloved hobby--tennis, but also my livelihood, as I am an intellectual property attorney who has to write a lot every day. Not to mention my love for blogging and being active on the social media, which also involve a lot of typing. Thank God I have at least one hobby---singing---that does not depend on joint health.

Well, there is not much one can do but to accept the reality. I am learning to be kinder to myself, because at one point I was getting angry with my own body for "betraying me". The irony is that we have been taking immunity-boosting supplements to guard against COVID, and now I have to suppress my overactive immunity system by taking medicines!

As always, writing this blog is cathartic for me, and a step forward in the right direction to manage life with RA. I am truly blessed to have the most supportive family, a totally understanding workplace, amazing clients who are motivating me to get better soon because they need my service, and an unbelievable circle of friends and well-wishers, constantly keeping my soul nourished. I found out that ace tennis player Caroline Wozniacki was diagnosed with RA when she was at the top of her game. Reading her blog post about how this "invisible" disease affected her life, but how she has managed to take back control of her life, has truly inspired me. Though she retired from professional tennis, she is aspiring to be a sports commentator to remain attached with tennis.

I think vulnerability and imperfection give the overachievers a chance to reinvent themselves. I am certainly looking forward to reinventing myself. At the very least, RA has given me a perfect "ice breaker" topic of conversation. :-) I am sure there are more yet-undiscovered facets of RA that I will come across--like a treasure hunt. #GamifyRA!

400 Days! Vaccinated Now. But It is Far From Being Over

 I have significantly slowed down in my urge to chronicle the events during COVID. It's been going on for too long and many, like me, are desensitized to a certain extent. It has been 400+ days since we have been mostly staying at home and working from home. "New normal" is a cliched expression now. And thankfully the "new normal" is not looking too bad in the Bay area. Though it is different story in some other parts of the world, especially in India.

First, the better news. Both me and my husband are fully vaccinated now and are past the two weeks' buffer time post-vaccination. So theoretically, we are fully immunized now--at least 95% likely to not get sick from the coronavirus, if you believe the clinical trial statistics provided by Pfizer, the vaccine that we got. As of now, 28% of all Californians are fully vaccinated. There was that minor uneasiness when the news came out about one batch of possibly contaminated Johnson and Johnson vaccines. But that seems to be resolved by now. I have shared plenty of jokes with my friends and clients---"I am Pfizer girl," answered by "I am a Moderna woman." 

Meanwhile, the public schools have opened in a hybrid model. My son opted to exercise his "fully remote" learning option, because he has a good set up at home and is not uber-social anyway, but for a lot of students having the opportunity to go back to school was a blessing. Some of them really wanted to have human interaction. Some simply needed better infrastructure than what they have at home---"digital divide" is a real thing even in the silicon valley. Many extracurricular activities, including most of the sports activities resumed, giving the parents a little respite and the kids an avenue to channel their pent up energy. Professional sports leagues are allowing a limited number of sports fans to attend the games live. It is hard not to be hopeful.

But a big part of my sense of hopefulness also depends on what is going on in India, and unfortunately it is getting grimmer by the day. My own uncle (in his early sixties) and cousin sister's husband (in his forties) are right now hospitalized with COVID. Thankfully both of them are stable. But just a few hours back I heard from our school chat group that a batch-mate of mine has passed away in our hometown after suffering for almost a week. I went numb. Her name is--was--Madhumita too.

At least today is a Sunday. So even if I am distraught inside, I am fortunate to have family around. Husband is doing the taxes, son is finishing up his homework---all of this normalcy of a weekend matters hugely. And then there is sports. I lean heavily on sports when I have to process my grief. Playing tennis myself helps the most, but I am nursing a knee injury now, and cannot play. So I have to satisfy myself with watching tennis--and cricket too (the Indian Premier League cricket is going on now). 

Speaking of tennis and injury, I have this interesting hiccup-y relationship with tennis. I play and then I get periodically injured. It is a constant cycle. Part of me wished I were not good at tennis. Then I would not play intensely enough to get injured, especially when I am fully aware that I have a far-from-perfect knee situation (seen the MRIs--it is not pretty inside my knees.) But as it stands I improve in between successive injuries. So I don't quit. I just patiently wait for the injury to become a thing of the past so that I can resume playing again.

Just like the whole world is patiently waiting for this pandemic to be over so that people can resume life again.

300 Days! New Year. New Trouble. New Hope.

 

Pretty much everyone was happy to usher in 2021. COVID vaccines were being administered. Electoral college process was progressing. How can 2021 not be better than 2020?

The happy-ish mood continued on January 4, the first Monday of the new year. It also happened to be my birthday. Lots of lovely phone calls and text messages during the day helped fighting the ‘back-to-work-after-the-holidays’ blues. It was the perfect low-key birthday that I wanted, topped off with a socially distanced surprise visit by our family friends in the evening.

January 5 was OK too. Tuesday tennis in the evening. Georgia senate election reporting on TV. Everything was 'normal'!

Come January 6. Wednesday. I had a pretty significant zoom meeting scheduled with the entire engineering and marketing team of my new start-up client. So I was preparing without the distraction of emails and push alerts on my phone. But then one of my clients called and said “Can you believe what’s going on in the Capitol right now?” I had to take a look at CNN, and there went normalcy down the drain!

We are professionals. So I still conducted the crucial meeting with my new client team, and we all agreed that it is strangely comforting to have the impersonal immersion to immediate work on your plate when insanity happens in the real world and you cannot do anything about it right at that moment.

January 7 did restore people’s faith in democracy to a large extent, because lawmakers did their job rising above the turmoil. While 2020 caught us off-guard in the beginning, we are all much more resilient in 2021. We had to be--in order to survive. It is now 300 days since the first shelter-in-place order took effect on March 17, 2020. Close to 2 million people have fallen victim to COVID worldwide. Almost 375,000 people passed away in US alone. New strains of COVID have emerged to make us all a little worried about how effective the vaccines would be after all. But we march on. We laugh. We cry. We extend warmth and support to one another in the hope of better days to come.

And who knows, if some miracle happens, then by the time I write again to commemorate the 400 days---I have written to document 100 days, 200 days, and now 300 days---I might actually be vaccinated. No harm in being an optimist. :-)