Guatemala Glucola Gana
As found in a comedrona’s (midwife’s) clinic, glucose challenges for diabetes in pregnant woman use coconut flavored water, instead of the orange-flavored stuff in the US. Score one point for Central American medicine.
or
As found in a comedrona’s (midwife’s) clinic, glucose challenges for diabetes in pregnant woman use coconut flavored water, instead of the orange-flavored stuff in the US. Score one point for Central American medicine.
Oh, to be alive in the ’70s. Apparently this video is from 1971 by Robert Alan Weiss for the Department of Chemistry of Stanford University, and shows some totally free loving hippies acting out protein synthesis as interpretive dance. I personally like the synth organ / bongo drums theme of mRNA binding to the 30s subunit about about 4:36 into the video. Hilarious.
[via kitsune noir]
Investigating a bit further into the Stewart Medical School craziness, there’s a Youtube account for someone claiming to be a med student there, and the videos the person favorited are craaaaazy lectures by this naturopath. (Medblogging gold, GOLD I say!) Like, seriously, seriously crazy, and you feel bad and worry for the students in the audience, ’cause there’s no way anyone could answer the questions in lecture, ’cause they make no sense:
“Tongues shaped like a hammer are the tongues of nymphomaniacs, as well as kidney problems.”
“If you get a patient who gets the flu, and a week later gets the flu again, what do you do? You have them throw away their toothbrush.” Also, if you have a high change in your morning cortisol levels, it’s “some kind of parasitic infection, some type of growth, some type of infection in the intestines.” A student asks him to explain these changes, and he says, “Oh, 15 years of gastroenterologists running correlations.”
A woman’s testosterone level is high because she is scared:
Pretty typical scenario for this real-life, accurate Flash game called Amateur Surgeon: Pizza delivery guy hits a homeless guy with his car, performs surgery on him using his Pizza Delivery Guy Tools, and homeless guy then teaches him how to perform other surgeries, as it turns out he used to be a doctor.
(If only closing wounds was as easy as stapling them and then burning them closed with a lighter! Especially lung lacerations.)
Okay so my idea for a daily randomness of linkage didn’t really pan out. But some random health care and non-health care goodies:
labnormality, n. lab•nor•MAL•it•ee. A patient’s laboratory testing value that falls outside the normal range. (plural labnormalities) Ex: “Man, this guy has a ton of labnormalities… hyponatremia, hyperkalemia, and he’s hypotensive… crap, adrenal crisis!”
Maria’s got a great post that is funny, true, and speaks volumes. Questions.
I for one am spending it with my significant other, my boards review book.
But it’s not all bad. There’s a new Indiana Jones trailer out.
And rejected Shoebox Greeting Cards:
Oh, and by the way? Paget’s Disease? I hate you and all the damn questions about you.
As I am counting down the days until I can get Step 2 over with (T-minus 10!), I’m going insane memorizing diseases I will never see in my lifetime. I need some laughs. So I’m asking everyone to please post their favorite medical joke. (And plus, it’d be a great chance to see people’s faces and comedic timing.) Oh, fine, if you’re anonymous, I guess you just can post the text, but come on, video is sooo 2008. (If you use YouTube, tag your video as “medicaljoke” so they’ll be easier to find.)
Either comment or email me the Youtube link or your blog posting, and I’ll start a running list here on this blog post. And if you don’t have a blog, just leave a comment! Please! I’m begging you! Help a guy escape from the hells of Boards reviewing. I’ll start:
Sorry for the dearth of posting lately; I’ve been busily hitting city after city on the interview trail–and the residencies, unfortunately, continue to be great (making my ranking decision next to impossible).
Two quick bits: Thanks to the LA Times for the mention about the placebo study (and very cool that the reporter found me via my blog).
And thank you to Chicago, where I’ve been interviewing as of late. After 11 years driving without a single parking ticket, thank you, Chicago, for welcoming your forgotten son (I went to undergrad in the area) back with open arms. Two tickets and my car towed today for a tow away zone sign that was crumpled and gnarled away. I missed you too.
(I’m really not that happy about it. I swear.)
Totally stealing this from JoshMD by way of KevinMD, because it’s just too funny:
For the guy or gal who has everything comes the “eTime Home Endoscope.” Nope, not kidding. The BoingBoing review: “Disgustingly Effective.”
As I’ve said before, I love McSweeney’s for all its literary humor and fun. And thus I present:
AN OPEN LETTER TO MY ACROSS-THE-STREET NEIGHBOR WHO ALWAYS DOES HIS YARD WORK IN HIS SCRUBS.
I have a friend at another school whose attending specifically wears scrubs for no reason to Starbucks, hoping women will hit on him, and there are plenty of people who have no reason to be wearing scrubs to the campus gym.
My policy is such: if I’m going to/from work and need to quickly do something in public (like pick up a gallon of milk from the store post-call), I’m not going to make an extra trip home or bring extra clothes for something simple. Otherwise, I want to get the nasty hospital-y stuff off me and slip on some jeans or something.
See? Exact opposite. (Click for the full size.)
With a baby, you pull down, THEN up. No, really!
(via a bathroom)
Indexed is a fun little blog I read with entries being simple graphs on index cards. Today’s entry with a healthcare feel:
Here’s all the entries tagged as ’sickness.’ Pretty funny stuff.
November 1st, 2007We just had a 5.6er here, felt by everyone in the hospital. Lacking any semblance of survival instincts, I randomly just start walking down the hall. Let’s hope there’s no aftershocks.
What’s better than dancing condoms singing about safer sex? Dancing condoms singing about safer sex with a Bhangra Bollywood theme!:
Hats off to the Nrityanjali Academy who created this video to educate Indians about safer sex, birth control, and preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS in both men and women. (via Best Week Ever)
I had been planning to write on how amazing it is to deliver babies and such, but I’ve been sick with some nasty virus or something and feel just awful. Fevers, chills, sweats, enteritis, the works. It’s just fantastic, really. In lieu of anything medical related: JK Rowling says Dumbledore’s a bit light in the loafers.
October 20th, 2007Margaret Cho has this great bit about her experience with hematuria, and finally it is somewhat relevant enough to post! (I have no idea who she saw that employs a “vagina washer,” but maybe that’s how it works in the private OB-Gyn world. Who knows.)
I love Best of Craigslist. Some recent goodies:
Happy Friday.
October 5th, 2007I’ve heard arguments about creationism and intelligent design before, but the Creationists really shouldn’t have this guy arguing for them (unless he’s secretly trying to take down Creationism from within–if so, nice work!). Laughable video:
You’re at a wedding, wearing dress pants, and you’re so used to wearing a pager with dress pants that you constantly pat your hip, making sure the pager is still there.
(Feel free to add your own.)
A watched troponin never comes back.
While reading this interesting piece on body type and body motion correlating with sexual orientation, I found this hilarious website as an ad: IsMyBabyGay.com. Just make your baby lick a piece of paper you print out on your own printer, send it in the mail, and for just $20.00 you can find out if your baby is gay or not! What a steal!
(And there’s a 150% money-back guarantee if they’re wrong!)
Similar to Kotassium, my attending reminded me of another medical play-on-words: high-NR, an elevated INR.
Coatastrraphe: coh • tah • stroh • fee: noun. See also white coatastrophe. The act of moving too quickly, sitting down in a chair, or bending over, causing the multitude of notes, journal articles, reference books, pens, stethescopes, cell phones, PDAs, and other assorted items to fall from the pocket of one’s white coat onto the floor.
Can we just call the damn electrolyte Kotassium from now on? It’s potassium, it’s “K,” it’s the perfect combination, no?
Grahamazon Theatre Presents! (Don’t worry, I’m equally offensive to all specialties.) If you’re viewing this through a feed reader or email, you’ll need to visit the site to see.
(I’ve opened up comments due to several requests.)
Wanna be a rich man or woman? Work on wireless monitoring of EKG leads and heart rate, pulse oximetry, blood pressure, and temperature. The cords and wires in the OR are always a ridiculous mess, but the anesthesiologists are great at untangling them. (I’d love to see their Christmas lights and computer desks.)
Me? I’m working on an even more revolutionary invention: the wireless IV.
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Anonymous doctors talk about practicing medicine and The 50 Doctor Poll. Favorite bit:
Do doctors have God complexes?
Yes…. 28
No…. 22Do you have a God complex?
Yes….2
No…. 48
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I love a good pun:
Digital rectal exam, FINGER study, ha!
(I was searching for something totally unrelated, I swear.)
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Filed under “Bitter, Bitter Irony, You Taste So Very Sweet”: Protesters march to let their children walk in graduation if they didn’t pass the Texas high school exam, and of course, they march with this sign:
Homage to the guilty pleasure Overheard in New York:
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The disease-ifying of normal just took one leap forward today with this question from Ask Metafilter:
I get very moody if I don’t eat in the morning. If I don’t eat until 3-4pm I get headaches, drowsiness and feel nauseous.. I think I’ve always had this. Since I usually eat enough it doesn’t really bother me. I’m 21, male, and a vegetarian. What do I have?
I love the answers:
You have a condition known as hunger.
The good news: it is easily treatable
The bad news: there is no permanant cure
This condition can be treated at a specialized clinic, the one you want is known as a restaurant. This condition can also be treated at home, but you will need specialized supplies from a grocery store. Most sufferers find that several treatments per day are necessary.
Two Pomona drug suspects were arrested this morning after mistakenly dialing 911 when they were actually trying to reach their drug dealer, police said.
“No one said criminals are smart,” said Pomona Police Sgt. Michael Olivieri.
Love this stuff.
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In the old middle school joke style, set to the tune of “Yes, Oh Yes, This Happened To Me Yesterday”:
I’m an optimist. At least it didn’t hit my mouth.
Inspired by my 72 hours of hell (aka, all of my weekend):
Oh I hate you flu
Aches, fevers, chills and coughing
Tylenol won’t help
Cytokines do suck
Interferon is the worst
Man I feel shitty
Couldn’t even sleep
Nyquil barely worked, lasted
only an hour
I got a flu shot
So maybe it was para-
influenza. Hmm.
Took so much Advil
Hope my kidneys are not shot
(I’m a worrier)
Felt better today
Could stand up without weakness
Happy ambulation!
My roommate, a first year med student, tells the story about learning about fecal-oral transmission of HepA. A classmate leaned over to him and whispered, “I got the Hep A vaccine…so I can eat all the poop I want!”
Oh to be a first year again.
I think the Product(RED) stuff is kind of lame, and it seems like more has been spent on its advertising than it’s actually going to generate for HIV and AIDS treatment in Africa. Maybe I’m wrong.
But I’m still one to do my part. Introducing the newest Product(RED) line, Product(MEDRED):
And for my Spanish-speaking colleagues:
While reviewing infections of the neck and complications of strep throat, I read about PANDAS, which stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections.
I hereby decree that all new Pediatric Syndromes must have similarly-cutesy acronyms. Like BUBBLEGUM or DUCKY or KITE or BINKY or BUNNY. Alternative spellings, like ELEFUNT, are acceptable.
(Not trying to offend anyone here, the name of the disease is cutesy, obviously the disease itself nor the patients it affects are being joked at.)
Curse ye, Lords of HIPAA! We had a patient with the funniest name ever, but I obviously cannot mention it. Le suck.
Takes place during a PBL session. Pretty funny. (via my roommate)
February 5th, 2007But Happy Christmas. A cute/funny holiday card from a hospital’s NICU.
December 10th, 2006The cutest/saddest animation ever. Happy Thanksgiving!
November 23rd, 2006Just moved up to San Francisco, and already beginning to call it home.
I swear this is not Photoshopped–I saw it driving by me last week:
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Now I could go for this. Playing video games before surgery reduced a laparoscopic procedure time by 11 seconds. 11 seconds is a long time if you’ve got a bad bleed.
How long do you scrub in? Longer than your attending. How long do you play Mario Brothers? Longer than your attending.
I humbly present, for your approval, evidence that most spammers are really, really schizophrenic and need to get back on their meds. We’ve got some serious derailments, thought blocking, and loose associations going on. Some recent messages:
with lower spurs of the Mountain. Two of these here thrust forward west
from the main mass in long steep-sided ridges that fell ever downwards
towards the plain. On this western side there were fewer signs of the
dragons marauding feet, and there was some grass for their ponies. From
this western camp, shadowed all day by cliff and wall until the sun
began to sink towards the forest, day by day they toiled in parties
if they saw him stoop; and even grownup he had still spent a deal of his
time at quoits, dart-throwing, shooting at the wand, bowls, ninepins and
other quiet games of the aiming and throwing sort-indeed he could do
lots of things, besides blowing smoke-rings, asking riddles and cooking,
that I havent had time to tell you about. There is no time now. While
he was picking up stones, the spider had reached Bombur, and soon he
mommy porterhouse kulak remorse attrition chimeric callahan drophead studio pigtail
permitted salaried cityscape whelan daphne concession secretary bella liturgic
impregnate antagonist bandit coed cognitive nude trudy afterglow cordite lens stoichiometry
angling thetis polecat birthday mattson coachmen mackerel serendipity
booky obeisant spartan carfare percent elect amplitude adagio
phlox ferocious kite plight sandpile leper typesetter ciliate
You see, when some schizophrenics are really sick, their speech gets all garbled up. People start speaking circumstantially–you ask a question and they’ll eventually answer it, but only at a very roundabout way. If they’re speaking tangentially, they go off on a tangent, and never actually answer your question. Even worse, they might start to have a flight of ideas–they start saying phrases that are somewhat related to each other, perhaps the last word of one sentence starts the next sentence: “All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chases the weasel… Weasels are great pets!” (Sometimes if it’s all rhyming words together, that’s clanging.) The most confusing are phrases using loose associations–the sentences don’t even relate to each other anymore. Thought blocking occurs when patients stop talking mid-sentence, and report having their train of thought totally disrupted.
I’d say the spammers need some Haldol, stat.
It appears there’s no physician consultant to the show Desperate Housewives (yes, I watch it religiously, so what?). Taken from this week’s episode, not only is the chest x-ray totally whitened out, it’s also upside-down and backwards. For shame!
A BBC news program(me) accidentally confuses a Internet marketing expert with the Internet marketing expert’s cab driver, and interviews the cabbie. Read the story and then watch the video, the expression on the man’s face is absolutely, absolutely priceless.
May 15th, 2006I don’t think this will come off as funny as my attending tells it in person, but she once had a medical student who thought that the abbreviations “BID” and “TID” were just doctor speak for “I agree” or “Yes, that’s all.” (BID actually stands for “twice a day” and TID stands for “three times a day.” As in, take this pill, three times a day.)
My attending found this out the hard way; she’d always ask the medical student about a patient’s medication doses. The medical student would say “The patient is on Haldol 5mg.” And my attending would ask, “BID?” And immediately the student would nod back with a smile, “BID!”
I really wasn’t expecting Michael to email me back. But he did. He had some pretty good answers, which I couldn’t find him plagiarizing anywhere from Google, so I sent back some replies to help him with his paper. Never assume!
Every so often I get an email like this, essentially asking me to find references and/or answer essay questions for some high schooler. This kid at least pulled off the enthusiasm bit:
Hello, my name is Michael XXX. I am a student at Troy High School who is doing a research project on universal healthcare / single payer system. Would it be possible for me to ask you a few questions regarding this interesting topic??
Please tell me your full name.
1. Tell me what you think universal healthcare means and how it will work.
2. Explain three ways how will it benefit society.
3. Some are concerned that the costs will overwhelm society with heavy taxes. How will healthcare be paid, and is it a viable solution?
4. Does society need universal healthcare? Why? What evidence is there of it?
5. What are at least three reasons against universal healthcare? Please explain.
6. How can you refute these arguments?
Could you also direct me to any more sources that you may know that could prove helpful for my project? I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Michael XXX
My reply (I’m cruel):
Michael,
Which Troy high school?
Those are fantastic questions, and I would love to participate in an email discussion of these topics! I’m very busy taking care of children on my Pediatrics rotation, but I will definitely find time for this!
If you could provide me with your thoughts to these questions first, I think it will help me to respond more appropriately. I would hate to waste your time telling you information you already know.
Thanks, looking forward to it!
Sincerely,
Graham
The bf’s interpretation of me, with scrubs, white coat, and stubble after coming home post-call.
Set to the tune “Ho” by Ludacris (which I totally loathe, but hey, I’m on call tonight).
Who’s full code?
Who’s full code?
Who’s full code?
I said that you’re full code.
Rinse and repeat.
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Email was down, so if you emailed or commented, I didn’t get it. Sorry for that. I ask for your forgiveness. (I also ask for you to vote for me for best medical blog–I’m in the second half of the page.)
And just to know how my day went: One patient was hallucinating so much he thought he was eating a burrito; the other patient just started dialysis, had really bad abdominal gas cramps, and then looked at me and said, “Dude, I just pooped myself.” Ahh, medicine.
A hilarious graphic about how to choose your medicine specialty from a new blog I just found. Love it.
January 1st, 2006I’m allowed because I’m a blonde. (And because I know the real answer is 5.)
Saw a really kind patient today that is a Harley rider, complete with the leather vest and boots and all. He’s a big guy, obese, and has obstructive sleep apnea (he stops breathing when he sleeps because there’s lots of fat around his airway). The usual treatment for sleep apnea is a CPAP machine (continue positive airway pressure. You wear this mask at night that’s hooked up to a machine that blows air into you so your airway stays open).
He hated the mask–felt claustrophobic with it on–so now he just goes out and rides his Harley down the highway, and tilts his head up a bit so his nostrils hit the air stream. Similar effect, and works well for him, he reports.
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In a little more good-spirited fun, someone has knitted a digestive system. The liver’s a little small, and the common bile duct is emptying into the stomach, instead of the pancreas/duodenum, but hey. Not bad.
I’ve always thought that one way to tell if you’re truly fluent in another language is if you can make a joke in the language–humor requires not just meaning and proper grammar, but a level of comfort with the language and a good sense of comic timing. It’s totally true for the medical languages, too.
Case in point: at the beginning of this month’s rotation, I attended a weekly neuroradiology conference where the attendings kept making these only-funny-to-neurologist jokes about patient’s MRI scans, and I didn’t get a single one. They all went right over my head, but everyone else in the room was just cracking up.
Yesterday in clinic, I found myself making an only-funny-to-neurologist joke while evaluating a teenager with chronic daily headaches. As I sat down to present to the attending, I said, “Looks like a pretty classic case of giant cell arteritis,” and I got a good laugh from her.
Giant cell arteritis is a headache disease, but only presents in people over the age of 55. Ha! Err… ha. Sigh. Soooo lame.
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I’m pretty convinced a big plus of going into the surgical or emergency medicine fields is the stories that you get out of it. Blatantly stolen from an attending:
“You wouldn’t believe the kind of lies people make up when they present to the ER with something stuck up their butt. My favorite? A man comes to the ER with a zucchini up there, and proceeds to tell me, ‘Yeah, I was gardening naked tonight at home when I fell backwards and it got stuck up there.’”
Another hint from the attending–”If you ever get a votive candle stuck, don’t just pull on the wick. It’ll come right out, because your body has warmed up the candle wax, and you just won’t get anywhere.”
I’m tellin’ ya. It’s all about the stories.
What’s better than The Beatles’ song about a budding medical student who serially kills people with a metal mallet? When it’s put to animation.
I just laughed out loud in the library reading this piece from the NEJM:
Words never seem more needless to a busy resident than those elicited from a somatizing patient during a complete review of systems. All the compulsiveness nurtured in medical school evaporates before the onslaught of bewildering trivial complaints that have presumably found, finally, a sympathetic ear. How to shut off the torrent of words?
The conventional strategy is to ask questions that have simple yes-or-no answers, but this rarely hinders the determined somatizer from expanding a yes response into an intricate account of the details of his or her belly pain or dizziness. Long ago, a creative fellow resident invented the only effective method I know of for dealing with a patient with an all-positive review of systems, though I hesitate to recommend it. We called it the “Corning couplets” in his honor. Typical couplets might be “Have you ever had constipation or syphilis?” and “Do you have headaches or lice?”
[via kevinmd]
except student loans and coffee.
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I’m reviewing cardiovascular and respiratory physiology for the Boards right now, and a little self-experimentation goes a long way. I have a little burst capillary in my cornea right now, and I’m pretty sure it’s from doing a Valsalva maneuver to refresh my blood pressure and heart rate physiology. And whenever I start reading about tidal volumes and functional residual capacities and dead space, I have this uncontrolled need to breathe really deeply.
Heard today in class, which seems like it’ll be a really interesting month of classes. (Oh, the ESR is the “erythrocyte sedimentation rate,” a lab test that’s known for being very non-specific.)
Q: What’s the best reason to get an ESR?
A: To tell if the lab’s open or not.
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Fever of Unknown Origin (FUO) is when a patient has a fever (that’s >99.7F oral, or >101 rectal) on three occasions or three days in the hospital, and nobody can figure out why the heck he or she has it. It’s usually due to an infection, cancer, or autoimmune disease, but I’ve recently recalled from my childhood one major cause that no one at Smartypants Stanford thought of:
Child faking a fever.
I was no expert at this, and having a nurse and physician as parents didn’t help, but on at least one occasion I took the thermometer my mom gave me and stuck it up next to the lightbulb of the lamp next to my bed. Voila, temperature of 106. Unfortunately, lacking the knowledge that I’d probably be dead, or at least look close to it, at 106 degrees, I was forced to go to school.
Also fun to say in the “Eff You” category: 5-FU, a chemotherapy / cancer drug.
Herpes virus infections (oral, genital herpes, EBV - the virus that causes mono, VZV - the virus that causes chickenpox, and others) can never be cleared; they live in your cells until you die.
So, of course, the associated joke:
Q: What’s the difference between love and herpes?
A: Herpes is forever.
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I almost forgot. I’m the opening line in the latest Stanford Medicine magazine. Always happy to serve as the big, fat Commie Pinko.
5-10% of alcohol is removed from the body through the breath. This fact, of course, lead a classmate to ask if you can sober-up by hyperventilating. “Theoretically, yes,” said the lecturer.
Seeing as though this’ll be Valentine’s Day #2 without a significant other, I may just have to try it.
Speaking of V-Day, there’s a really nice piece at the end of this week’s This American Life about Johnny Cash, his wife, and the song Ring of Fire. Told by Sarah Jewell, one of my favorite contributors. It starts at about 47 minutes in, and it’s so sweet and romantic that it even made me feel a little less jaded and bitter about the whole thing.
Aldehyde dehydrogenase is the enzyme in your liver that helps you get rid of alcohol (actually, it’s the second step in the process, but I digress). Some people of Asian decent have less of this enzyme, so when they drink alcohol, they can turn red; in most texts, this is a mutation that decreases alcohol metabolism.
Turns out that everyone else is the mutation. If you look at animals’ versions of aldehyde dehydrogenase, they’re more similar to the Asian version of the enzyme; so somewhere along the way (Germany? Russia? England?), I evolved the ability to drink more. (Disulfram, a drug that can help alcoholics stop drinking, blocks this enzyme, making you flush, and not enjoy the alcohol as much.)
So no, I can’t control the weather, shoot force beams out of my eyes, or read minds… but I can drink more alcohol. Better than nothing, I guess.
IM conversation taken out of context:
On that lovely note, I’ve gotta shower and study my STD’s.
The STD’s. Not mine. I’ve got to stop saying that.
A number of totally random thoughts, after two days of class (we’re halfway through a week of derm):
My favorite gift wasn’t the dress shirt or slacks so I can look spiffy in clinics; it wasn’t What’s The Matter With Kansas, or the sour watermelon gummies, or even the underwear. Not the sweaters or calendar of Paris, either.
My favorite gift this holiday was the knowledge that I’m not going bald, as I had been previously thinking for the past couple months, and frantically ranting to my classmate Yana about. No, no, dear readers. I get to keep this lucious mane of hair. My mom has the same hairline forehead V that I have.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.
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From a former babysitter with her own GI stories:
Two doctors opened an office in a small town, and put up a sign reading “Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones, Psychiatry and Proctology.”
The town council was not too happy with the sign, so the doctors changed it to “Hysterias and Posteriors.”
This was not acceptable either, so in an effort to satisfy the council, they changed the sign to “Schizoids and Hemorrhoids.”
No go. Next, they tried “Catatonics and High Colonics.” Thumbs down again.
Then came “Manic Depressives and Anal Retentives.” Still not good.
How about “Minds and Behinds?” Unacceptable again.
So they tried “Lost Souls and A**Holes.” Still no go.
Nor did “Analysis and Anal Cysts,” “Nuts and Butts,” “Freaks and Cheeks,” or “Loons and Moons” work either.
Almost at their wit’s end, the doctors finally came up with a business slogan they thought might be acceptable to the council: “Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones, Odds and Ends.”
Problem: Inflammatory Bowel Disease is on the rise. It’s a set of GI syndromes-most notably, Crohn’s and Ulcerative Colitis-which are quite nasty: bloody diarrhea, fever, malabsorption of nutrients, indigestion, increased risk of colon cancer, many times requires surgery or lots of immunosuppression.
Solution: Give patients pig whipworms to eat. In a small study, 23 out of 24 people became symptom free by the end–quite a miraculous change. Note, these are not the type of whipworms that give you a prolapsed rectum. That would be human whipworms. Just in case you were wondering.
In other news, I’ll be ingesting a couple tapeworms (Steve and Lou are their names) to help me lose a few pounds before Hawaii. It’s a Paris Hilton secret.
I pray to the gods and the power of Grayskull, please help my neurons to dig up the lost memories of pharmacology from the depths of my mind. Specifically, the antibiotics, antivirals, antifungals, and anti-cancer drugs, as I’m thinking those are the ones that will be the focus of my exam on Friday. If I could get the toxicities back, as well as mechanisms, and all the mnemonics I made up for them, that’d be great.
Also, if it’s not too much trouble, all of microbiology would be awesome. If not, I’d like the major bacteria and viruses, specifically upper respiratory tract infections, pneumonias, diarrhea bugs, and urinary tract infections.
I’m really willing to make it worth your while, God.
Michael Paulus’s gallery of cartoon character skeletons is not to be missed.
In the spirit of conservation, recycling, and urine fetishes comes Repronex, a drug that comes from the concentrated urine of post-menopausal women. It’s used to stimulate the release of FSH and LH, two pituitary hormones important for sex hormone release and maintenance of most things sexual in the body.
Apparently it’s been around for quite some time, but, like my used car, it’s new to me.
Also in the “abusing nature for all it’s worth category”: Miacalcin, a salmon version of our body’s natural hormone, calcitonin. (The salmon version is much more potent than the human version. Go figger.)
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Now that we’re in endocrine, we’ve been talking about prolactin and other hormones that cause milk release, or, as the professor calls it, “milk letdown.”
My classmate Peter loved the phrase, just with a different definition: Milk letdown. When you have milk, you expect it to be really good, and it’s just okay.
Another interesting fact: the name galaxy (ex: our Milky Way) comes from the root galac-, which means milk. See picture below.
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I was just randomly listening to some Ella Fitzgerald, and realized that she says “dyspeptic” in her song, Bewitched.
Ella, you are even cooler than I thought you were already.
Note: do not read this whilst eating, thinking about eating, or just having eaten.
This was, by far, the most disgusting week of medical school, and Monday may just be the most disgusting day of my life. I’m not ready to proclaim this until I’ve been through the hell that is residency, but it’s gotta be top 5 at least.
Monday we started off with our intestinal tapeworms and nematodes (roundworms/helminths) GI lecture. This included whipworm, which causes, OHMYFREAKINGGOD, rectal prolapse (don’t click that!). We also learned about all the other fun ones, including ascaris (I wouldn’t click that one either), which can lay 200,000 eggs every day inside your stomach.
So that’s always a pleasant talk, I’m sure. Next, since I’m an anatomy TA, and we’re starting the pelvis, we have to pre-dissect the bodies for the students. This involves separating the abdomen from the pelvis and legs, and then hemi-section–separating each egg, by cutting down the middle. Along with vessels and nerves and muscles, you have to tie off the large intestine and cut it, so you can separate the top from the bottom. When you die, unfortunately your poop doesn’t magically disappear. It says right in the body. And, say, if you’ve never done this whole “hemi-secting” thing before, and you and your friend are sawing through a hip bone, you might just accidentally saw through a bit of bowel.
Yes, Monday not only did I see prolapsed rectums, but I got to clean a ton of shit out of a dead person’s rectum. This was, by far, the most traumatizing thing in medical school. We hit the bowel in two places, so we had to basically remove all the feces from the body and throw it away. No, they do not pay us enough.
And then, to wrap things up, for our GI test on Monday, I was studying Hirschsprung’s disease. This keeps you from pooping, because some of your nerve cells don’t make it down all the way to the end of your intestines, so feces can build up. I also learned, according to a review book, that the poop can build up so much… that you poop out your mouth. There’s a South Park episode where this happens, but it’s just that much grosser that it actually does.
And yes, I’m paying $50,000 a year for this wonderful life.
