tongue diagnosis

Dr. Oz says if your tongue is pale, it means you're anemic because there isn't enough blood being made to color the tongue red.  Hm!

I like the idea of using the tongue to diagnose, and the Chinese have pretty much mastered it. I particularly like this site to do prelim self-assessments. :)

ode to google reader

Happy 12th birthday! 
Google, you are amazing.
You simplify life.


Okay so I wanted to mention if you aren't doing this already: use google reader to follow blogs! If you have gmail, Reader is located in the upper left hand corner as a link along with Calendar, Web, and Documents. You can follow people by clicking "follow" on their blog page, or by clicking on the "+ add a subscription" button and pasting the link in there (especially helpful if there is no "follow" button). 


It is such a great, convenient tool. It's so great. Did I mention it's great? I like it.


And in other news, 
the interesting tidbit of the day:
"Topical honey has been used successfully in a comprehensive treatment of diabetic ulcers when the patient cannot use topical antibiotics." The reason honey can be used as an antibiotic is because it is a saturated mixture of monosaccharides (mostly glucose and fructose) with a low water content. Most of the water molecules in it are associated with the sugars and thus few are available for microorganisms to grow in.


My tribute to wikipedia will come another day.  For now, I'd like to acknowledge its contribution to me getting through med school. Thanks Wiki! :)

Is there a doctor in the house?

I flew home on a red eye last night to this morning. On the first leg of my flight, a lady in the row behind me kind of passed out. All of a sudden there was a lot of commotion and the lady next to her was fanning her and trying to get her to respond- "Can you hear me? Where are you?" The flight attendants paged overhead asking if there was a doctor in the house to come back. A guy figured out quickly that she needed at least some saline, so he put an IV in her, kneeling right there in the aisle! Others were holding the bag in the air so it could drip. It was intense! After a little while, the lady's eyes were open again and she said "I'm fine I'm fine!" But the doc told the pilot she needed to go to a hospital, so we made an emergency landing in Salt Lake City, where the paramedics came to get her. I'm not totally sure what the problem was, mostly because I kept falling asleep, but that was definitely something I've never seen happen before. And I must say, the IV on the plane thing- quite badass. Tis motivation to be one who can do that.

Now I'm home for the week. I watched Dr. Oz for the first time today since my dad is a fan. It was a pretty interesting show and a great way to get medical info out to the public in an easy to understand way. :)

I'm rewatching some of our OMM videos right now and here's a good tip from lab 2:
If you are looking for ribs 11 & 12 on a supine patient, sink in your hands (fingers straight) just inferior to the costal margin and run your index finger posteriorly along the bottom of rib 10 as a guideline: your middle finger should run into (or roll over the tip of) rib 11. Same deal for 11 & 12. Alternately, lift the patient's back towards you with your arms slack and the ribs will sink through the tissue onto your fingers. Roll your fingers a little superior and inferior to really feel them. Use your finger pads for everything because they have more nerves/sensation than your finger tips.

Exam 2: Time to re-evaluate again

Okay, I actually failed my first fundamentals block exam pretty badly. New plan: study the lectures the night before and re-enforce by going to class!

We had our first blocks last week. That means, we had a full week of exams... as such:

Monday: OMM lab practical exam--> at 3 stations with 4 minutes each, 1) find 4 landmarks on the body, 2) do a soft tissue technique, 3) do a lymphatic drainage technique, and describe what you are doing.

Tuesday: Fundamentals exam from 8am-10:30am. 92 multiple choice questions and 12 histology slide identifications. I took a nap at 4:30am and I think knowing more actually impeded my performance because I second guessed myself on about 10 right answers and changed them to wrong ones. :(

Wednesday:  Doctoring practical exam. This was no biggie. We had to either find all the cardiac listening spots and areas you could take a pulse or describe and point out where all the lobes of the lung were, in 6 minutes.

Thursday: OMM theory exam in the morning and anatomy lab practical in the afternoon. The anatomy lab practical involved us going around the cadavers and ID'ing the pinned/tagged body part or what it does. There were 64 identifications and we had 1 timed minute at each station before rotating. There were always two people at each station and one would ID the red pins and one would ID the yellow ones, so we would all do 2 laps. I don't get why they don't tag things with pins all the time because it would be so much more effective to learn by seeing it in 3D!

It was a huge relief to finish all that... the weekend was a nice break. A highlight was going to the Mare Island Museum. The island has a ton of history! A Marine veteran showed us around and told us all the stories of what used to happen here. 44,000 people used to bus or ferry in every day to work on Mare Island in the Naval Shipyard. It was mostly civilians that were building ships and submarines for Uncle Sam in the war effort. A lot of things have changed (buildings gone or now out of use) but it was really interesting to see how things were in the heyday. Some of the old battle ships are still around too. 

So after the exams and the weekend, we are back to class for a few more days before fall break. I just wanted to throw out one interesting tidbit from studying today (I think I'm going to try to make this a consistent thing): 

Striated muscle cells in skeletal muscle and the heart can only undergo hypertrophy (cell swelling/increasing in size) because they have a limited capacity to divide (cannot undergo hyperplasia like smooth muscle cells). Therefore, the ripped bodies you see on weightlifters are not muscle cells multiplying but instead just getting larger, as a response to an increased workload. WHO KNEW! For more o' dat, you can read up in chapter 1 of Robbins Basic Pathology.

Cheers :)

People are amazing

I wanted to write last night but was exhausted. I am pretty sure I have a cold, but I am really glad we learned we learned sinus stuff in OMM lab yesterday to help relieve some of the symptoms :)

So while I've been out here, I think I've realized just how amazing the people in my life are. My dad has been in the hospital since last Sunday and my mom has been there every day to take care of him. Mom has been incredible through her support and dedication; I don't think I know anyone more willing to care for others so thoroughly. Dad has been such a fighter and still so dedicated to work, writing recommendation letters for people back in DC (because "it's hard to get a job sometimes") and making sure he takes care of his other work responsibilities. I also believe his first experience as a patient has allowed him to understand what it's like to be sick and how to appreciate life and others more. Sometimes I feel like it's a blessing for people to get really sick to realize those kinds of things and how amazing it is to be able to live a normal life. I often feel lucky that I had cancer at 21 because it helped me reframe how I view my own life and what I think is important. Since it was my bday yesterday, I thanked my parents for creating me... my dad gave me a weird look (granted, it was a weird phrase) but I just wanted them to know that I think they are incredible people and I'm thankful to be here and who I am because of them! I also think I don't tell them that I love them enough, but I hope they know I do.

My classmates and friends back home are also such amazing people. My wonderful roommate Tuwie threw me a surprise bday dessert get-together (I knew it was happening but not who was coming) last night which totally made my day. She and Jen sang a bday medley to me, which was super awesome. :) I also want to thank my sistas, friends, and other family who called, wrote, or wished me and the family well otherwise yesterday. Everyone has been so incredible and caring in the past few weeks and the support has been carrying me along through everything. Thank you more than I can say!