Pretty as a penny, rollerskate skinny

Last week I went to the doctor for a physical. She recommended that I have some blood work done, so I made an appointment later in the week. I had to fast prior to having my blood drawn, so I was quite hungry while teaching the morning of the day I was supposed to go back.

Student: I'm so hungry.

Me: I am too, but you can't talk about food in here right now.

Student: Why not?

Me: Because I can't eat until 4:00 this afternoon.

Student: Why? Are you anorexic?

Me: Do I look anorexic?

Student: You could be just starting out.

Me: Aren't I a little old for that?

Student: It's never too late to start.

Handle for your heart, let's go home

Not all people who think they're going to be doctors make it into medical school. You should be grateful for that. I've finished grading my lab final, and have decided to give you a few reasons to feel that way. Here are the correct answers to some of the questions, coupled with some of my students' responses given in the following format: Correct Answer/They Wrote.

Below/Above
I don't know about you, but I'd like for my doctors to know the difference between these two things.

Left Atrium/Right Ventricle
As we all know, we have four chambers in our hearts. Even if you want to give this guy a pass on the left/right part of this, there's a huge difference between an atrium and a ventricle. Let's hope he never becomes an open heart surgeon.

Heart/Intestine
Even worse. Let's hope this guy doesn't become a heart surgeon either.

Diaphragm/Liver
One's a muscle that separates your abdominal and thoracic cavities. The other is an organ that detoxifies the blood. I can see it now. "We're sorry. We know your father came in for a liver transplant, but we replaced his diaphragm with the new liver instead. His blood might still get cleaned, but he'll never be able to go up an octave while singing again."

Spleen/Kidney
Another hypothetical conversation: "You're going to have to go on dialysis. You have a ruptured spleen. Let's get that sucker out of there since you only need one to survive anyway. What's that? You only have one to start with? Well I'll be doggoned. Glad you said something."

Pharynx/Ventral Nerve Cord
Let's just hope that he doesn't become a neurosurgeon.

Vagina/Bulbourethral Gland
Since the first is found in females, and the second is found in males, I can only assume that this guy is gay.

Cervix/Digestive Gland
When your gynecologist starts fiddling around with your digestive gland (which you don't have* because you're not a crayfish, grasshopper or starfish) it might be time to worry.

Ovary/Vas Deferens
When you're a female and your doctor tries to give you a vasectomy, it also might be cause for concern.

Granted, most of these were from a fetal pig dissection, and not a human (we don't have enough hookers and vagrants around campus to start doing that - at least not without someone noticing), but the anatomies are very similar, and if you're that far off now, I'm glad to do my part to keep you out of med school. The rest of you can thank me later. By sending Christmas presents.






*Ok, you do have some, but they have other names. Like Pancreas.

Well you can't see the stars in the city no, though the hospital lights sure are pretty yeah

Nurse: Do you have diabetes?
Me: No.
Nurse: Any history of heart disease?
Me: No.
Nurse: Renal failure?
Me: No.
Nurse: Incontinence?
Me: No.
Nurse: Any new rashes?
Me: No.
Nurse: Vision problems?
Me: No.
Nurse: Are you on any medications? Blood thinners? Anti-inflammatories?
Me: Nope. None of those.
Nurse: Good.
Me: Wow. That list makes me sound like I'm a healthy person or something.
Nurse: You are healthy. That's good. Now all I have to do is put in the needle for your I.V. and we'll be ready to take you back.
Me: Sounds good.

Nurse: You have nice veins.
Me: Yeah, I get told that a lot.
Nurse: Are you afraid of needles?
Me: It's not my favorite thing in the world to get stuck by one, but I can handle it o.k. Although, let's just say I wouldn't make a very good junkie.

All things considered, I was very at ease with getting another epidural injection for my back. The only part that gave me pause was when I was wheeled into the room for the procedure only to hear my doctor and one of his technicians talking about playing Dungeons and Dragons. They didn't turn me into a Wood Elf or a Left Handed Axe Wielding Dwarf though. Plus, I can walk better than I have in weeks, and I can bend my leg and back further than I've been able to since November, so I'll consider it a success for now.

I can feel it burning up inside me

As I mentioned previously, I finally received an injection for my back. It feels a lot better, but it's still not perfect. The doctor said it can take up to a full week for the steroids to take full effect, but I'm already walking better than I've been able to for the past two months.

As they were preparing me for the procedure, the nurse asked if I had any questions about anything. I said that I did have one strange request. I wanted a picture of the needle in my back. She said that she thought they could give me one. They did.



The black line in the lower left corner is the needle. Awesome.

Highway to the danger zone

As part of my ongoing medical treatment for my back injury, I had to get another MRI done this week. This time the doctor wanted it done with contrast. That's where they take images before and after injecting a contrasting agent so they can look at scar tissue too. It should give the doctor a better idea of what we're dealing with here.

The best part about getting an MRI with contrast done? Being able to go around for the rest of the day saying, "I've got gadolinium running through my veins."

Tell me that doesn't make a guy sound tough.

He's the one they call Dr. Feelgood

Thanksgiving was good. I left town for about five days and basically did nothing but hang out with my family and eat my mom's good cooking. I feel like a huge slacker for not doing anything work related (other than a meeting with my outside committee member for a few hours), but I suppose that's what holidays are all about.

I know that it's a time when you're supposed to consider everything you're thankful for, and there's a lot I am thankful for, but I had an experience that reminded me about how much I hate doctors.

I was out in the yard raking leaves, and in an attempt to get my kids away from the playstation, told my ten year old son to come outside and help. As luck would have it, just as we were about to call it quits, a huge gust of wind came up and blew something into his eye. We went inside and flushed it out with water for about 15 minutes, and gave him some eyedrops to flush everything out. I looked in his eye, and couldn't see anything, but he kept saying that hurt really bad so I took him to the emergency room.

Of course, it wouldn't be a true trip to the ER without having to wait for a really long time once you were in a room, even when there's nobody else around. I thought about Flieswithoutwings' old rule about taking one rubber glove for every five minutes the doctor makes you wait, but decided that I didn't really want to transport that many gloves back to Las Vegas with me at the end of the weekend.

Eventually, the doctor came in took a look at my son's eye and declared, "Oh yeah, he scratched it pretty good alright."

I replied, "Oh really, because that's not the eye that's bothering him."

He then looked at the other eye and declared that it too was scratched up. Thanks Dr. Why don't you tell me something that I don't already know?

It just annoys me that I'll have to end up paying this guy hundreds of dollars when it's something that probably could have been taken care of with a bottle of Visine and a twenty minute nap for my son. I guess I should just be happy that nothing happened to my son's vision, but who wants to be happy when there's something to gripe about?

I've never had to knock on wood, but I know someone who has, it makes me wonder if I should

A few days ago I did something to my foot. I have no idea what I did to it, but it started hurting one afternoon and got to the point where I could hardly walk. The next day showed no improvement and so I decided to go to the doctor and have it looked at. The doctor was very helpful. She came in the room and asked me what I had done:

Me: "I don't know, it just started hurting yesterday and now I can hardly walk."
Her: "Take your shoes off and walk around for me."
Me: "Ok."

Then I started limping around the room.

Her: "It looks like you can't walk very well on it. Can you stand on your tip-toes?"
Me: "No."
Her: "Can you try?"
Me: "Ok."

Then I made a feeble attempt to stand on my toes, and failed.

Her: "It doesn't look like you can do that either. Well, I can't really tell you what's wrong. It may be a fracture of one of your metatarsels, but usually that's on the top of the foot. I'll have to send you out for X-rays to make sure you haven't broken anything. Get that done and we'll go from there. Until then I'll give you an anti-inflammatory to take."

I'm glad we had to go through the motions so that I could prove to her that I really couldn't walk very well, or stand on my toes. Certainly there was a chance I didn't know what I was talking about when I told her that I couldn't do those things.

It's times like these that I'm confident that I'm at least as capable as at least 90% of the doctors out there. I could have told you that you wouldn't be able to tell anything just by looking at it, but I can't just prescribe myself an X-ray now can I? I can read a flow chart of symptoms as well an anybody, but instead I get to pay $40 to find out something I already know: there's something wrong with my foot, but we can't tell what it is.

I got X-rays the next day, but still haven't seen the results. My foot feels a little better, so I'm optimistic that it's not a fracture. A friend of mine thinks it's plantar fasciatus, but I'm hoping it's just a deep bruise instead.

One thing is certain though: I hate getting old.

An apple a day?

The other night I was talking to a friend. She had been sick all week, and was just starting to get over it. She made a comment about how I never seem to get sick, which is true. I rarely come down with anything worse than a cold (knock on wood). Rather, I seem to end up having to go to the doctor about weird stuff, or more serious issues. Here are a few examples:

• Severed tendon in my index finger - a plastic surgeon was able to stitch it back together without too much scarring.
• Lymphangitis - the location of this was what scared me, even though it ended up not being a big deal. (I'll let you use your imagination, you'll probably get it right).
• Back surgery - to remove a lobe of a bulging disk that was compressing my sciatic nerve. I couldn't walk right for two months prior to the surgery, and it took nearly a year to recover.
• High amounts of calcium oxalate in my urine - they never did figure out where that was coming from. Even after seeing two specialists, but it most likely led to the next one.
• Kidney stones - at least that's what they think it was. It's the reason I had to go to the doctor a couple of weeks ago. All the tests came back negative, but the doctor thinks it's because I got lucky and passed a very small one that didn't hurt as bad as a normal one would. Still not something I'd like to go through again, regardless of what it was.

All things considered, I think I'd take a cold or a flu over any of that.

Bacon anyone?

In case you're wondering what exactly it is that I do all week, I make students do this type of stuff to different organisms ;-)

Some of these people are your future doctors. It's better that they get their practice in on something like this first, don't you think?

Proven wrong?

I had to go to the doctor the other day. My friend went with me to make sure that I got there o.k. As we were sitting in the waiting area, we noticed that a girl who was waiting to be seen was eating an apple.

My friend: "I guess that means it's not true what they say."

Side Effects

A friend of mine had to go to the doctor yesterday due to a cold that's beginning to develop into bronchitis. The doctor ended up prescribing a few different medications, and we were looking at some of the possible side effects:

• Mood changes
• Swollen legs and/or feet
• Muscle aches
• Vomiting that looks like coffee grounds
• Black, tarry stools
• Changes in menstrual cycle

The last one prompted my friend to say, "Now if I get my period tomorrow I'm going to be more than a little freaked out."

I don't blame him, I would be too.

So Sorry Carol

I got a horrible phone call today. My ex-wife called to tell me that her mother had gone to the hospital because her appendix burst, but while they were removing it they found that she had cancer in her stomach lining. It's very advanced. The doctors said there was nothing they could do to save her and will basically send her home to die. They told her that she probably only had a few weeks to live, and that chemotherapy would possibly prolong her life, but that she would suffer a lot more and it wouldn't be enough to help her beat the cancer so she's not even going to try it.

I don't know how to react. I haven't spoken to her in more than a year because I feel a little awkward talking to my ex-wife's family members. It's not that they hate me or anything like that, in fact I think most of them were upset at my ex when we split up, but I don't feel like it's my place to call them all the time and fill them in on what I've been up to. But the simple fact is, she was my mother-in-law for 8 years, and perhaps more importantly, my kids' grandma. I don't know how to prepare them for the fact that they are going to lose her, and soon. They're old enough to understand death, but I don't know how well equipped they are going to be to deal with this loss.

The thing that makes me the saddest is knowing that there have been a lot of missed opportunities for my kids to get close to their grandmother. For reasons that I don't intend to get into here, my ex-wife and her mother have not always been on the best of terms. As a result, they haven't spent a lot of time together even though they've been living in the same city for the past couple of years. It's been a sore point between me and my ex because I've felt that even though she and her mom have had their differences, that she shouldn't let those come in between her mom and our kids. She's almost always agreed with me on that, but still has rarely taken the kids over there to visit. Now it's too late for my kids to form some of the happy memories that they could have had. I hope that they don't hold it against us as they get older.

The one positive thing that I can get from all of this is that it's bringing their family back together. There are ten kids in that family, and some of them haven't spoken to each other for ten years or more. I think that they're all coming back to spend as much time with their mom as they can before she goes. I know that if she feels that her family is whole again then at least she will die happy. I certainly hope that's the case.

My ex told me today that she had been meaning to call her mom to tell her that all was forgiven. Now she wishes she had, because it would have seemed more sincere then. I'd encourage anyone reading this to make sure that your loved ones know that you love them. Life is too short to hold grudges. If there is someone dear in your life who you're harboring resentment towards, find it in your heart to forgive them, and let them know that you have, while you still have that chance. Not everyone gets a few weeks warning to set things straight.

Ladies and Gentlemen . . . Your Future Doctors

Like most graduate students, I make my living as a teaching assistant. Right now I am teaching a few lab sections a week of an introductory biology lab. I enjoy what I do. Sometimes the material gets a little old after you've gone over it so many times, but I like interacting with the students, especially when I feel like I have done something to get them excited about studying biology. As you might imagine, many of the freshman students who are majoring in biology have high hopes of getting into medical or dental school. Some will actually make it, although I don't actually know what the percentages are.

Sometimes it can be frustrating though. Too many people have problems letting go of their preconceived notions. I don't remember how the subject came up, but at some point during one of my labs this week we got on the topic of evolution. One of my students, who happens to be a very religious guy, started to roll his eyes when I said something about it.

"What, don't you believe in evolution?" I asked.

"I believe in evolution to an extent. Do I believe we came from monkeys? No way."

"How about a common ancestor between us and them?" I needed to point this out since nobody who is a proponent of evolution has ever said that we come from monkeys, just that somewhere along the line a speciation event occurred and we have been diverging ever since.

"No, I think that's all a bunch of crap."

I'm paraphrasing now, but I let him know that the official stance of his religion (which also happens to be my religion) was that we are to be concerned about living our lives in a way which pleases God, to bring others to Christ, and to leave the science to the scientists (emphasis added).

What I should have mentioned was something along the lines of how he can expect to be a good doctor if he is willing to ignore evidence because it disagrees with his personal beliefs. I'm sorry, but people have been trying to disprove evolution for over 150 years. That's the nature of science. Anytime someone comes up with a new idea, other scientists try their hardest to disprove that idea. It is hard for me to understand how people who are in the field of biology can still have doubts about anything that has been under that much scrutiny in the scientific literature, and is still backed by all the evidence. I realize that this student is only a freshman, but it's still frustrating to me.

This is the thing that gets me: I think everyone will agree that bacteria eventually gain resistance to antibiotics, insects eventually gain resistance to pesticides. Is this not natural selection? You're telling me that organisms can't adapt to changing environments when they have yet to find a cure for AIDS because the virus is able to evolve too fast? I think that my student would even agree that in these scenarios, evolution is taking place, which brings me to my next gripe. How can you believe in evolution "to an extent?" Either it happens or it doesn't. It's the same process occuring whether it's on a small scale (such as bacteria gaining resistance to antibiotics), or on a large scale (such as one species experiencing disruptive selection eventually resulting in a speciation event).

Did the people who placed Galileo into lifelong imprisonment for heresty believe in heliocentrism to an extent? I can't imagine some Catholic bishop in the 1600's saying "I believe that Venus and Saturn, and maybe a few stars could orbit the sun, but not the earth. I think that's a bunch of crap." Of course not. The sun and everything else orbited the earth. End of story. Of course, it turns out they were wrong, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who still believes that the earth doesn't orbit the sun (although, there is a society somewhere in Nevada that still believes that the earth is flat and shaped like a disk, surrounded by what is known as 'the outer ice.' I believe their name is The Flat Earth Society. You could probably look them up if you're interested, but I'm too lazy to look up that information to give to you right now). So why are people so reluctant to believe that evolution is a possibility? Does it necessarily mean that if evolution occurs there is no God? I don't think so. I believe that if anyone could use evolution to create man, that God certainly could.

Just because a lot of scientists tend to be atheist or agnostic doesn't mean that we all are. I just don't believe that the Bible is literal in every sense. I don't believe that the earth was created in 6 days. I don't believe that the earth is only 6000 years old. I believe that dinosaurs actually existed and that the fossils we find are real and weren't placed here by the devil to lead people astray (you may laugh at that one, but my ex-mother-in-law actually told me that once).

I wonder about the direction our country is going in when we still have groups trying to have creationism (or nowadays Intelligent Design) taught in public schools as a viable alternative. Is it not a step backwards once you start ignoring all the evidence for something, just because you want to believe something else? What is my student going to do when he's a doctor and is presented with evidence that goes against one of his personal beliefs? Will he just ignore it and risk his patient's life? Is that part of the reason why so many doctors misdiagnose their patients? (I have another opinion on that one, but that will have to wait for another time as this is quite a bit longer than I intended and I still have work to do tonight).

I still have hope for this student. He's a smart guy, and will probably learn a lot more on the subject before he graduates. I was the same way when I started out (actually, I was just unsure what to believe). I'm sure he'll come around. I'm glad I did.