Female complications, day 22

  Limited spectrum

  I stay in bed after Ciara gets up, which is a good thing, because apparently Jalida is puking, and everyone had already started to take action under Ciara and Alith's watchful eyes. So they prefer that I stay at the far end of the house. They've already extra cleaned the dining room and are gradually working their way through the house, and it's lucky that Jalida isn't that often in the main building.

  Breakfast is interesting, and the conversation topic is an update for the newcomers on diseases, germs, disinfection, hygiene, washing, clean food and water, properly cooked food, etc. Haera and Skirlaug are fascinated by the reaction and the information, while Alith is once again relieved that she isn't the one who is nauseous. But somewhat telling, Skirlaug and Haera has been placed at the far end of the table, so if they're already been infected, the chances of them infecting me are reduced, and both have been told to shower and change clothes so their other clothes can be washed, and Skirlaug to wear a face mask. Raneigh is similarly treated, but she doesn't eat with us. Ciara has been using her 'don't argue' voice and face, which apparently is quite impressive. Elvira is serving us while Shakini and Ida are doing extra cleaning, and no one else is using the toilet Jalida used. Jalida has already been banished to the small extra house down by the barns so she won't infect anyone else. They will bring her food etc. Lucky for Jalida that she can't be steamed sterilised. Or well, if it hadn't been torture and murder to steam cook Jalida, Ciara would probably have made sure it was done. They have definitely listened to my thoughts on a pressure cooker for the kitchen, and that the same item works somewhat as an autoclave to sterilise faster and better. Parts have been ordered for one to test, and if it works well, there will be more. Of course the pressure cooker the kitchen use for food will not be used for sterilisation, and Unn will get one for medical use.

  I always panic a bit when someone gets sick, even though I've had a bad stomach days myself, I've always had a bit of an upset stomach. But when the others are ill, and I find out, I'm reminded of the lack of 'proper' medical care. Especially Ciara and Alith will want to put me in a glass bubble if there seems to be something really infectious spreading in the region, and it's no coincidence that Iselin, Kari and Ciara have each asked me about my thoughts on plagues - i.e. epidemics - and after Iselin became my wife she asked me again to be sure I told her enough of that information. Jane has become somewhat anxious as she too is a human and may be at increased risk, so she has told them more than she should. Given how thoroughly I've taught them why I prefer to have backup plans and be prepared, plans have been made for contagious disease in the region and on the island. And those will probably be looked at today. Ciara isn't happy.

  The only thing we can really do is avoid and prevent disease, but sewage treatment, drinking water treatment, sanitary food handling etc, do a lot. I really want to develop penicillin etc, but anything with medicine is such a huge risk. Using mouldy bread is probably the closest we can get at the moment, and a decent start, but I guess mouldy bread can have a lot of other moulds that definitely won't be healthy, so we're trying to find and isolate good mouldy from bad, and then 'grow' it well in a clean environment. A bit like a greenhouse. Once it's proven to be good, only then can it become possible to try using it internally. Testing what is good without using people is an issue, and frankly I'll probably have to accept voluntary test subjects. It's not like all the cures and medicine they have are safely tested and sanitary. In conversations with Unn, I have learnt a lot about healing methods and medicine she has, and tried to figure out which ones are related to something I understand or guess, and how we can improve it, which is something Unn is working on.

  Things like sugar in a wound is now 'proven' to help because sugar attracts water and holds it, which helps wound clotting. Honey also works and has a lot of sugar, and is sticky from the start as well as being sterile and forming a protective layer. Spruce resin can also be used to help wound healing, and it makes sense that it is anti bacterial and anti fungal, as the resin is to protect the tree's 'wound' against fungus and similar infections. Birch bark oil is also anti bacterial, anti fungal and anti inflammatory, and is good for the skin. A birch leaf drink helps with some other ailments, but it could be something as 'simple' as vitamins or mineral deficiency. Somewhat unexpectedly, birch tick, i.e. fungus on dead birch trees, seems to act as an intestinal de-wormer. Birch sure has a lot of uses, and not just for medicine. From the bark a tar can be made, that is good for protecting leather or sealing and waterproofing, and does not become brittle as similar from spruce or pine.

  I know that letting flies lay larvae in wounds, which then eat the dead tissue help wound treatment, and apparently the stinging sensation becomes unbearable pain when the larvae start eating healthy tissue, which is logical but something I hope to never experience. Then, urine is sterile, so peeing on wounds is also something that works for cleaning, but I'm going to go for distilling alcohol and creating a purer alcohol for effective sterilisation.

  I get why wound treatment is prioritised and more easy and logical to understand than internal medicine, remedies or cures, which is the hardest thing. Broken bones are bad enough, but an appendix, damage to the stomach or other organs? Glands not working properly? That is the biggest problem. But we've got to start somewhere, and an improvement is an improvement, and Unn is putting together a medical kit, which various implements, tools and such like a stethoscope funnel.

  Something we need to try making is good needles and syringes. Syringes do not exist here, which makes it more difficult to take blood samples or inject 1% saline in case of large blood loss. There will hardly be nice modern disposable needles and syringes, so we will try to make syringes as they were historically made out of metal and a glass tube, and probably in both silver and iron. Stainless steel won't happen until that exists. Interchangeable needles for different sizes are needed, partly to make manufacturing easier but also because it must be possible to replace a dull needle without scrapping the whole syringe. Every thing about the syringe must also be able to withstand sterilisation. We will try to make the hollow needle pretty much like we made much as we made small tubes before for manometers etc, ie drill out a cylinder which is then slowly and carefully drawn via forming templates to a tube with a smaller diameter, much as they do fine metal wire, and select the best pieces. To make really fine hollow needles we'll probably have to try to have some kind of fill that can be dissolved or removed once finished. Beside drilling out tubes, we'll try to use electric welding and formed sheet metal and other things. Since we potentially will need a lot of thin fine metal tubes for a lot of different usages, we can make a small special machine. I expect different metals to be a complication, since I need steel, brass, copper and silver, and some of those work harden.

  We need to make good diagnostic and surgical equipment, and I really should try to figure out how the heck I'm going to be able to classify blood types, so we can start performing blood transfusions between two people. At least both Jane and I know what blood circulation is, its purpose, and that there are different blood types. But I don't know what the difference is, or how many different combinations there are, or why it's labelled the way it is. I've heard about blood groups 0, A, B, AB and Rh, and that they can be positive or negative. Once we start analysing blood and see how they clump or react, it's best to not use Midg?rd letter combinations because there could be problems in the future if Midg?rd and Alfheimr start trading and exchanging people, and the systems have the same name but in reality are different blood groups and meaning.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  I can foresee so many problems with blood and diseases and risk of infection, and I know how little I know. Still more than even medical people here. Beside incompatible blood transfusion, I am mostly worried about infections. One weird thing I know is that humans can get blue skin or grey skin, like via silver ions if that is drunk as a health cure, but there is also a rare genetic disease that affects the blood, and makes the skin blue hued instead of red hued. There was a family living in mountainous terrain in the US that had some inbreeding problems, so the unusual gene for that was passed on and a lot of them turned blue, while their siblings or relatives were just carriers of the gene. Apparently the cure was fairly simple as it just changed the chemical balance of the blood, but had to be taken every day. One problem with telling people that here, is that I don't actually have proof of it, and I dislike not having proof of something I tell them, in some areas more than others.

  In the coming years I will make a lot of lab equipment I know of like microscopes, centrifuges etc, and just start doing tests to see if we can learn anything about it and see how blood reacts with blood and many other things. Simply supporting medical research like so much else. I should build a smaller research hospital, with needed facilities for that, and just general medical care and surgery.

  Ciara doesn't like Haera being close to me, because she might be infected or brought the disease here, but we don't have a choice, so I tell Ciara that it's already too late after yesterday, and it's better we keep to ourselves so we don't infect others.

  So Haera and I talk, in the library and on the mezzanine. We discuss Thrymheim, the design of her mansion, and combining practical need with utility as I sketch it out on a couple of large slate tablets, and we walk around Thrymheim a bit to discuss practicalities and even take a trip to the guest house. We also discuss things like the library and the maths book, and we do have some books here for her to read, and I want to write and copy many more.

  But I'm relieved when we've talked enough and I can get away from Haera by doing some work in the workshop. We will have a production of carbon rods, and that means that arc light bulbs are possible. So I'm building a simple experimental rig, to get an idea of the type of light, light intensity, current-voltage requirements, light stability and carbon rod consumption. As expected, it is a bright, sharp and unpleasant light, which will have dangerous amounts of UV that need to be filtered out to not be harmful to eyes and skin. Clear glass should stop much of it. But it is electric light and powerful, and it will have uses. If it can be bounced off a white painted surface and made more pleasant, it would be useful as a spotlight and perhaps as industrial lighting. One question is whether I can make it more pleasant by introducing something that 'melts' and glows, because a glowing surface gives more stable light and warmer light, which will balance out the blue-UV from the arc. Limelight was something that was used for stage lighting.

  It's something to contemplate about while I continue with Bodil's glasses.

  The lunch is interesting, and Haera plays her role quite well without overacting. But she has practised playing roles her whole life, and being charming is close to being seductive. She would have made a good character actress because she continues with the charm and seduction when we meet in the afternoon and slowly ramp it up, even when it's just the two of us in the study.

  But I think she is trying to make it easier for me to have sex with her.

  The glass lenses I made for Bodil's glasses are the most accurate I've made, but I try to make sure they are even and nice. There have been a couple of extra lenses because it is surprisingly quick and easy with the lens machine. It's far more difficult to get exactly the same magnification and focus. These lenses are made of yellow tinted glass because it is both among the absolute best and clearest glass without tiny air bubbles etc in it, and as a bonus, yellow glass should reduces the problem of colour dispersion which I think will cause headaches.

  As far as I know, I don't have access to glass with different refractive indices and can not make coatings and surface layers. This yellow glass strongly attenuates the bluer but also the deepest red part of the spectrum and makes colour dispersion less noticeable because orange-yellow-green are relatively close to each other and close to the eye's maximum light sensitivity inside the green area. I can see a blue LED through the glass, but it is much fainter and more of a bright spot that is almost green in colour instead of dazzling blue. So instead of trying to focus light over the whole colour spectrum from purple 380 nm to deep red 700 nm wavelength, where 700 nm is almost double the wavelength of 380 nm, these will mostly pass light between 540 to 640 nm, a third of the colour spectrums width. But greens, yellows, oranges and reds look okay, and that's where the eye gets most of the important colour information from nature and the environment, even if it's distorted, like the sky isn't blue while trees can look pretty normal. I know the eyes and the brain will try to adapt and interpret, and it can feel weird taking of enclosed yellow, orange or red lenses or similar, which are often used for contrast enhancement when shooting, skiing etc.

  I tried to measure Bodil's focus distance separately, eye by eye, and they have a slight difference unless I've fecked up my measuring, and since the lenses don't have exactly the same focus anyway, I design the glasses to compensate, and build to allow fine tuning of the shape to match lenses and focus, and use the frame length that will be suitable for her. They honestly look pretty decent. Ciara agrees, but she is bad at giving me an unbiased opinion. She is happy to help me as she likes the rotating and rhythmic movement of the lens machine, and has been good at keeping an eye on the clock so I check the lenses at regular intervals, even though the workshop has a clock with an adjustable interval alarm. Ciara wants to accompany me and be useful, so of course I let her.

  Since Bodil is away and will return tomorrow, I start working on Hillevi's glasses lenses, which is done with the same method, but instead of a larger arc on the outside, these are flatter on the outside and concave overall. These will be more difficult to do, and will need to be as good as I can, because Hillevi will wear them much more than Bodil who only needs hers for close in hand crafting. Lenses really should be tested to like 0.5 diopter steps.

  Iselin comes in, and after a brief update on the glasses, she cup her hand by my ear and whisperingly reminds me that I have to let myself be seduced. Even I can see the absurd humour in this, but I take the opportunity to give her a couple of kisses and a hug. Iselin is not happy about Haera's presence and all the consequences, but she handles it well, and she really want to know that I can father a healthy child. Ciara doesn't like Haera's presence either, but I've given my opinion, so it trumps her own.

  During supper it becomes clear what Haera wants, and I'm glad most of my sambos aren't here, because only Ciara is in the dark now, and it helps that Ciara has her own particular view of women who want to have sex with me. Elvira doesn't manage to be completely unfazed and sends a couple of quick glances towards Haera, and feel a little embarrassed when that is spotted by me. It's a good thing Alith is the only bodyguard in here, because she knows the plan.

  After I shower, as planned I work in my study next to the bedroom. Haera comes in. Her hand wander inside my collar as she whispers in my ear: "Iselin and Shakini saw me come in here, and to be honest, I'm really excited. Apart from the bathroom during the Stag Night, I've only been with Asbj?rn before, and this evening is going to be more than fantasising or a brief moment in silence, and I've overheard your partner's conversation, and talked to Caecilia."

  I should have realised that Caecilia obviously have been talking about her favourite subject when the Queen and Princesses have asked. I turn round and Haera have tried to make herself pretty with a bit of makeup around the eyes and she is lightly dressed in some sort of embroidered thin robe, which she smilingly but slightly uncomfortably opens up to reveal that she is wearing an obviously expensive fashion teddy underneath. A Cougar warning kicks off in my head and I can almost hear a cat growling, but Haera is so unaccustomed and insecure that it doesn't really feel threatening or like I'm her prey. So I put my work aside and take Haera into my room and we do what we need to do, but we'll start with sensual affection.