Out of the night, when the full moon is bright,
Comes the horseman known as Zorro!
Zap!
One second, there was nothing. The next, a beautiful blue-green orb hung sparkling in the universe.
One minute, there was chaos and confusion, the gnashing of teeth, anarchy. The next, there was quiet, calm, serenity, a sense of order.
One day, there was a horrible wrenching disease called Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis, horses dropping like helpless flies and a sense of despair filling the land. The next, there was Siobhan Ellison and Oroquin-10, the wonder drug, come—not unlike Mighty Mouse—to save the day.
Who was this masked woman and from whence? Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear as we relate the incredible tale.
The Life And Times Of Siobhan Patricia Ellison
Siobhan was born on December 13, 1952, of poor but humble parents in Ipswich, England. Before she was five, her loving mother had graduated to her second husband, a U.S. airman named Tom Floyd, and made tracks for the American Dream via a voyage on the celebrated Queen Elizabeth II. Being a military brat, Siobhan was carted across the country from one desolate outpost to another, arriving somewhere in California by the time she was eight. It was there that she was allowed to adopt her first pet, a pound puppy in the early and undetectable throes of distemper. When the disease reared its ugly head, the family sorrowfully marched on down to the local veterinarian, who, as fate would have it, also turned out to be a fabulous wizard. In only a matter of minutes, he took Siobhan’s dying puppy into the bowels of his establishment, exerted his curative powers and returned with her happy, wriggling pet, albeit in a spanking new healthy body. He had performed a rare and impossibly difficult “soul transplant,” the wizard said, causing the puppy’s slightly different appearance. Although there were no lightning bolts in the area, Siobhan was suddenly struck with a vocation—she decided then and there that she would become a veterinarian. And a wizard, too, if that wasn’t asking too much.
School Daze
Believe it or not (and nobody does), school was difficult for little Siobhan. Her father went to work for the Martin Company and was assigned to every new missile base constructed in the 1960s and there were lots of them. Siobhan and her older brother, Stuart, never stayed in any one place long enough to attend a school longer than six months. She could never catch up. After awhile, she decided why bother? And embarked on a career of wandering through the woods, collecting caterpillars. She cleverly returned home at the correct time and was quite pleased with her new life. Unfortunately, as inevitably happens, she returned home one day to find a faithful schoolmate standing at the door, talking to her parents. Certain that Siobhan must be ill, the helpful student had been kind enough to deliver her homework. Oops. Siobhan was accompanied to school and back from that time on.
Gainesville
Eventually, Siobhan arrived in Cocoa, Florida, where her parents decided to stay awhile. Finally inserted into a stable environment, she did well at school and was eventually accepted into the University of Florida. Not one to fool around, she achieved a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Microbiology in short order (she wants you to know that she found immunology particularly fascinating). She then became a Master of Science, her thesis being Equine Leptospirosis and Autoimmunity. She loved research and spent several years running a biochemistry laboratory and a research viral lab. Biochemistry, especially the cell-signaling pathways and the research that elucidated them was especially challenging and interesting. Finally, she graduated from Vet school in 1983, realizing that singular childhood dream. It seems there was only one Big Goal left. Now she had to figure out how to become a wizard.
Pre-Wizard Days
In 1997, after fourteen years as an equine practitioner in Ocala, Siobhan returned to the halls of academe. We had a racehorse named Vaunted Vamp who was cleaning up at the track ($420,000 career earnings) and more than paying all the bills, thus providing an opportunity for Siobhan to return to UF to secure her PhD. She properly dedicated her thesis to Vaunted Vamp. At the university, she quickly found a group which was working on Equine Protozoal Myeloencephalitis and spent considerable time outlining a project that could contribute to understanding the pathogenesis of the disease. And a diagnostic test.
Siobhan says, “The questions I had in 1997 are the very issues that confuse veterinarians today. A side note on my list of questions was ‘The pathology is inflammation.’ That’s what I wrote back then. And, fourteen years later, I can demonstrate that it’s true. I questioned when and how merozoites reached the equine central nervous system, how we can recognize horses which do and do not become infected and how we can detect an immune response to the parasite. Could merozoites linger in cells and result in chronic infection? And what could I develop to eliminate horse deaths due to drug trials?
My PhD project would develop the tools to answer these questions. The plan was to make antibodies, construct a genetic library from the Sarcocystis neurona genome and use these tools to examine the immune response of horses. And that would result in a diagnostic test.”
Long story short, years passed, progress was steadily made and Siobhan developed a blood test to determine the presence of EPM in a horse and the type and degree of the disease. Blood samples flood in to her little Fairfield lab daily and she is in constant communication with horse owners and their veterinarians about horses which present positive. The drug she has developed, Oroquin-10, has a cure rate of over 93% and sells for one-tenth the price of much less effective competitors, thus saving hundreds of horses who would not be helped by other drugs or whose owners could not afford them.
Father, Will You Tell Us Again How The Story Ends?
Of course, girls. It ends as the sun sets in the Golden West—West Fairfield, perhaps—and the lights begin coming on in the little laboratory. Now, as little girls everywhere nestle into their snuggle beds and curious adults sit down for a stimulating evening of reality TV, the covers are removed from the lab microscopes, the blood samples spin in the centrifuge and the wizard prowls over her busy realm. There are secrets to be discovered, horses to be saved. Sleep can wait til morning.
Tom Floyd
Of course, all this might not have happened if Siobhan’s mother, Mary, had not wed Tom Floyd and come to America so long ago. It was the second marriage for both, Tom having three kids from the first and Mary two, Siobhan and Stuart.
Tom was born in Modesto, California. He was a big guy, about 6-6, and an accountant by trade. He was operating a successful accounting firm still in its infancy when he was called back into service from inactive duty in 1952. In the Air Force, he was primarily a navigator, reaching the rank of Captain before resigning in 1958. He took a job with the Martin Company, then worked several years for NASA, retiring in 1986.
Tom and Mary financed the brunt of the educations of Siobhan and Stuart, sacrificing a lot to do it but seemingly happy to do so. They were also available for extra-curricular activities. Once, they moved Siobhan into a new apartment near UF and she immediately knew the place would not work out. Tom drove up the next day and moved her to another apartment. And, unlike anybody else’s parent, never complained.
If you take good care of Siobhan, however, rest assured she will take good care of you. Years later, when Tom was in the middle of his annual visits to his widely scattered children, he deplaned in Texas requiring immediate hospitalization. A lifetime of excessive friendliness with cigarettes and the bottle, not to mention an otherwise less than healthy lifestyle, had diminished his body’s capacity to fight off illness and he deteriorated rapidly. Within days, he was in a terminal care facility.
Siobhan was not getting satisfactory answers to her questions via the telephone. Armed with a durable power of attorney she had Tom sign earlier, she was off to Dallas. When she got there, she was not surprised to see her stepfather drugged almost to unconsciousness by his alleged caretakers. She ordered all drugs be stopped. When he began regaining his senses, she hauled him onto a plane with medical capabilities, flew him to Tampa and ambulanced him to a nursing home in Ocala, where he remained for a few months.
When it was time for Tom to leave, he decided it would be nice to drive to Siobhan’s house. Siobhan did not think this was such a good idea. “Oh, let him drive,” I foolishly told her. “Fine,” she said. “You go with him.”
Once, when I was a little kid, I fell out of the top of a tree in front of Jackie Fournier’s house. I kept trying to grab branches all the way down but they kept breaking, though they did slow the descent. Believe it or not, I landed on top of a telephone post. Later in life, I fell asleep driving my car from Gainesville to Orange Lake, rolling the thing, crushing its nice T-Top roof and smashing my face. Neither of these times was I as close to death as driving home that day with Tom Floyd. We decided Tom would not be driving for awhile. Certainly not with me in the car.
Tom had earlier sold his house in Rockledge and built a little cottage, connected by a tunnel, to Siobhan’s house. This building is Siobhan’s lab (and guest house) today. Tom was not too intrusive but he came over each night to have dinner and argue with me about nuclear energy and “that Bill Clinton.” It got hot and heavy but by next day everything was back to normal in time for me to drive Tom to the VFW. He couldn’t drink any more but he liked to sit around, nurse a Coke and palaver with his buddies. Either Siobhan or I would drive over to Orange Lake before dinner and pick him up. Tom’s health held up for about a year and probably would have given him longer if he didn’t feel duty-bound to make a regular visit to England to visit his wife’s sister. The taxing journey left him frail on his return. A week later, Siobhan called me in Miami to tell me he was gone. Tom’s ashes were spread here—as were his wife’s earlier. The lab remains his lasting memorial.
Happy Birthday To You
So now Siobhan is 59, although you can see from the current pictures it hasn’t made a dent in her. If she finds a hint of loose flesh, of course, she is “getting fat,” while in truth her waist is tiny. She still weighs 115 pounds and I don’t think it is possible to be 5-6, weigh 115 and still be fat. Her mind is as sharp as ever as she barrels along, always looking for new insights, forever explaining the nuances of EPM to the constant legions of emailers and telephone callers and preparing her own weekly blogs (you wouldn’t understand one whit but she’ll send them to you if you like.)
When she is not working—almost never—Siobhan likes to play in her garden, though much less in winter. She likes her weekly movie and will grudgingly attend a sports event on occasion if she is bribed with dinner at Panera and ice cream afterwards (she never ceases to celebrate last year’s Panera/ice cream spree and a subsequent softball game rainout). She dotes on those few who have risen to the level of friends, especially Debbie the blacksmith and Allen the codger.
We have an occasional disagreement but not much in the way of arguments. I drive too recklessly and she always takes the wrong lane. She doesn’t tolerate mistakes well, although she’s a little more forgiving of her own—which, admittedly, are few. Siobhan is not too sugary with words or compliments or exaggerated affection but, then again, in 25 years she has never claimed a “headache,” either.
So, on we go. Appreciating the small things like donut day (Tuesdays), a nice work by one of the two-year-olds in training, a grateful letter from a client whose horse has been “saved.” I know it sounds corny, but I bought her a birthday card the other day that said each day with her was a gift. Corny or not, it is also an understatement. So happy birthday to a beloved ally, co-worker, muse, helpmate and lover. You’re one of a kind. The world couldn’t handle another.
