In 2010 I shared this picture via Youth Journalism International of a skeleton in our faculty dressed up for the Fifa World Cup. (Click the link and scroll down to the middle-left.)
Today we had a rather long clinical skills session for our anaesthesiology block.
This little guy met us there. I laughed:
Earlier this week I saw this fun experience occurring right before my eyes. And for once I had a camera on hand and snapped away shamelessly:
There were three kids from my campus who were collecting some boxes and things (for what I don’t know). Problem one was that for everything to fit, only two of them could sit in the car. The other problem was that everything couldn’t fit- they needed the roof. But they didn’t have rope to tie it.
So they made a plan. Without a helmet. I hope they didn’t get a fine, because considering I haven’t heard of an accident I assume they arrived at their destination safely. Perhaps their destination was somewhere on campus.
Anyway, I laughed.
Because today is a study day (and I would like to study, for once), today is a quick post.
One of the chapters in Dermatology is about ectoparasite infections of the skin. These include crabs (Pthirus Pubis) and fleas (yes, humans can get fleas).
And, just to show how relevant these are, here is your daily dose of fun, in two portions.
A patient presents to hospital with an acute, non-specific condition. The doctor decides to take bloods, among which an FBC and U&E. The Little Medical Student gets the job of drawing the bloods.
A few hours later a lab technician calls in a flat spin. The patient’s Potassium is dangerously high. The doctors immediately commence potassium-lowering therapy.
However, a short while later the patient deteriorates. By some miracle, the patient survives when it is noted on a follow-up specimen that the patient’s Potassium is now dangerously low. Yet the therapy given would not have been able to lower Potassium so drastically.
We started pathology today. This is an EDTA tube, which is what we use for a full blood count. EDTA prevents clotting by binding calcium. The purple tubes we use, though, also have added potassium.
When the Little (Inexperienced) Med Student drew blood, he/she accidentally allowed the vacuum purple top tube to guzzle all the blood. Not wanting to poke another hole in the sick patient, Med Student unscrewed the purple top tube and poured some blood into the yellow top tube (SST: Serum Separator Tube), which is used to test U&E, such as Potassium. And because the EDTA tube contained Potassium, the blood now has a false high potassium.
This apparently happens regularly. To be honest, the thought had never occurred to me before.
Also titled: Doctors Have No Imagination
Or: How do doctors manage to have an apetite?
This is not a judgemental post. It is just an example of why I think doctors have deep-seated love-hate relationships with food.
When you have scarlet fever, you get a strawberry tongue:
Babies born to mothers with Syphilis can get Blueberry Muffin Syndrome:
Upper gastrointestinal bleeding can lead to coffee ground vomiting (and this is just a picture of real coffee grounds, because apparently nobody has ever been intrigued enough by their coffee-ground vomitus to photograph it):
And lastly, Granuloma Inguinale (an STI caused by Callymatobacterium Granulomatis) causes a characteristic beefy-red ulcer. And no, I won’t post a picture of that.
I’m not really anti-valentine or pro-valentine, but I thought this was hilarious. It’s from PostSecret. As someone who deals with STIs almost daily, my first bit of relationship advice will always be A-B-C: Abstain, Be Faithful, Condomise.
Edit: 12-18 February is STI/Condom awareness week. So quite fitting in the end.
Medical Students quickly become desensitised. It is a coping mechanism and it works well – not the least because it makes us laugh. Nevertheless, it’s no wonder people think we are weird.
Case in point:
Clinical Partner and I discuss our feelings on autopsies.
He says,
“Wow… doing that autopsy on the pregnant woman was like having one of those Russian dolls”.
It's apparently an iPhone game. I just like the font.
Little Brother (still) says the darndest things.
A while ago I posted the following as a status:
Practising Derms surgery on pig. Yummy!
But in my home language, “derms” means “guts”.
So, Little Brother tells The Family that Big Sister is removing pork gut for med school. Nomnomnom indeed!
The funniest thing is that a few hours later, one of my non-medical friends, ten years Little Brother’s senior, made the same mistake.
And people ask me why I love my country’s many languages…
Oink - look at the face!
Here is a fun “did-you-know”:
In 1928, scientist Albert Szent-Györgyi, working at Cambridge University, discovered an unknown compound in some foods. He was sure it was a sugar, but not sure which sugar. Confessing his ignorance while sticking to the common nomenclature of sugar, he called it “ignose”.
When he submitted his paper to the Biochemical Journal, the editor suggested a change of name.
The humourous scientist returned it with the name… “godnose”
Allegedly the frustrated editor changed it to hexuronic acid, from whence it eventually became ascorbic acid as we know Vitamin C today.
