Thursday, November 14, 2002

The pharm "test" is going to be 10 questions long and only 6 of them cover current material. Hmmm...somehow I think the word "test" needs to be limited to exams of at least 30 questions. But since the pharm dept basically adds up all the points at the end of the year (no exam is weighted more than the others), I guess it wouldn't matter and I suppose after the 100 question long path exam, I should be glad that I only need to answer 10 more questions. Last path exam was 37 pages long and wasted tons of paper because they felt the need to use large font and only print on one side of the paper and you figure there's 150 of us taking this test and they may have printed extras just to be sure they had enough. Why?!? All I know is that last time, I just wanted to be done with the damn thing before I even got halfway through...it was that agonizing! It wasn't even a matter of how much time do I have left to answer the 60 more questions I have left. Well, I need to get some high yield review in and then dream of pathology slides and info....more like a nightmare
~me~ at 11:31 PM

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

After learning about urine and the nasties that can be in it, I find myself looking at my pee for the cloudiness or change in color (normal and pathologic) that we learned about. Supposedly pee is darker in the morning but mine isn't...maybe cause I drink too much water. But according to the water balance disturbances lecture, I can drink up to 6 gallons of water/day and be fine. Sort of like how as long as I don't drink 100 cups of coffee in 1 hour or 142,000 (or some insanely high number) cups of red koolaid, I won't die of caffeine overdose or cancer, respectively. But the point of this post is to announce that I will be going to my first NBA game ever (or the 1st that I'll be able to remember). The School of Medicine and the Hornets came up with some weird deal to allow 5 students from each med school class to form a team and scrimmage each other (T1vs T2 and T3 vs T4) for 10 minutes before the actual game starts on the court in front of hornets fans. And then 5 additional people from each class will be selected to be cheerleaders and all 40 students will be able to use the hornets locker room to change and I guess the advertised thrill is possibly running into the players in the locker room. Since I don't follow the nba, I don't know if I should be excited about possibly meeting a hornets player or not but since they had to relocate, I'm guessing it's not that big of a deal. Especially since they're playing the Toronto raptors...canadians can play basketball? I'm just kidding. I'm sure all those players are from california. But so far 200 students have bought tickets (including myself). So if for some bizarre reason the hornets game on dec 4th is broadcast in your area, look for me. I'll try to wear something noticeable. Who knows, maybe I'll be one of the lucky 10 from my class to go behind the scenes and be surrounded by very very tall people. back to the kidneys...
~me~ at 11:22 PM

The Kidneys...ah those mysterious organs that are not easily seen or palpated yet play such a huge crazy role in our bodies. My one friend, overwhelmed by these magical organs, says that she's almost resentful that she has two of them and that if kidneys were people, they'd be the type of people who mean well but end up doing more damage than good. And I agree. What makes congestive heart failure worse? the kidneys. What makes acidosis/alkalosis worse? the kidneys What organ will kill you in the end? The kidneys. What is the disgusting ingredient in chili? Kidney beans. Okay, not quite anatomy but true all the same. Here's an example of kidney craziness. Hyperkalemia (too much potassium (K) in the blood) causes metabolic acidosis (too much acid in the body) because the kidneys try to correct for this hyperkalemia problem by dumping excess K into the urine. Here's the tricky part. That K is exchanged for a proton (ie a unit of acid) which over time creates the acidosis. But wait, there's more! See, the well meaning kidneys say, "Oh no! now We need to fix this new problem we just created!" and does so by dumping protons (acid units) into the urine but because there's this exchange process, for every unit of acid dumped into the urine, a unit of K is reabsorbed into the blood causing, you guessed it, hyperkalemia. If you paid attention throughout this pathophysiology lesson, you would remember that Hyperkalemia was the ORIGINAL problem! So did the kidneys help? Hard to say my friend...hard to say. And there's still so much more that needs to be researched about these magical beans that some of the lectures we had consisted of hypotheses. Like the magic elves that work in renal tubular cells. Hey, it was in the class notes so it must be a true hypothesis. So I guess acute renal failure is cause the elves go on strike and chronic renal failure is cause the elves are getting old and dying off and since the younger generation of magic elves just doesn't have the same goals/work ethic, there's no one to replace the retiring/dying elves. What a sad world.
~me~ at 2:39 PM

Monday, November 11, 2002

I just realized that I didn't tell you about my first ever blood drawing experience. Well, I got the needle in the vein just fine but when it came to changing tubes, I accidently pulled back on the filled tube too much and the needle came out of Prashant's arm. So the lab tech lady made me do it again on the same arm! So poor prashant had two holes in the same vein only millimeters apart. And this time I went too far deep. So then it was prashant's turn to poke me. They told we we're not supposed to use the 2 side superficial veins cause they collapse easily yet every time in the past few years that I've had blood drawn, they've used those veins. Anyway, Prashant was able to find the good vein and he seemed to go in at too shallow of an angle since it fel like he was only poking my skin and didn't get into my vein. So he tried again on the same arm (as directed by the scary lady) and again no success cause the angle didn't seem right to me (yea, I watched...I always do). So then the scary lady comes over and takes the needle away and the pain began. She started digging around IN MY ARM with the needle and at one point, I SWEAR she stabbed my muscle! But she definitely hit a bundle of nerve fibers cause I had this moment of instant pain then it passed after she moved on to jab something else in my arm. Then thankfully she gave up and I guess I'm used to the lab folks putting a pad of gauze over the needle as they pull it out cause she didn't do that and all I saw was a BIG bubble of blood pooling on my arm. Oh all right it was only 5 millimeters in diameter at best but it was bigger than I've seen in awhile coming out of me (including the multiple times I've managed to injure myself these past 3 months). And so I said, "um..." and she said, "that's nothing." And then still didn't give me something to sop it up. Prashant finally did something and then I got a bandaid but the damage had been done and as a result, I've had a big bruise (3 cm x 1 cm) on my left arm. And the first day and a half my arm was sore. She made me nervous. Apparently she bruised other folks in my class as well in her search for veins.
Yesterday we won our first flag football game...the sorority girls failed to show up. So our next game is this next sunday and we play the T3s...again. If we win, we play for the championship in the game right after. Since the sorority didn't show, we decided to play around for awhile and on my brief stint on the offensive line, Jess tried to get past me and Terri and so I moved over a bit to block her and she elbowed me in my left arm. Later she said she didn't see me there. Now, I know I'm short and smaller but that hurt! And incidently, so did my arm. And you guessed it, I have a new bruise on my left arm...same arm as the needle induced bruise. It hurt for me to lie on my left side, which sucks since I usually go to sleep on that side. And it still hurts a little. If I had significant mucosal bleeding, I might think I had von Willebrand's disease and then I'd need DDVAP to make me better but I don't so I'll be fine. And since I'm female, there's really no possibility that I have Hemophilia A, B or C. But perhaps if I had Factor V Leiden...darn, I can't remember what to do to treat that one. I guess I better get back to work. It's raining...hard. I hope it stops by tomorrow.
~me~ at 9:13 PM

Sunday, November 10, 2002

I am now more convinced than ever that artichokes are weapons of death...at least for a hemophiliac. When I at the store, I saw these big artichokes and decided to buy one. Well, those damn things apparently have little spike like things on the tips of the leaves and I discovered that when I went to grab one with my whole hand. And now while unloading groceries, I grabbed the bag with the cabbage in it (cause sav a center doesn't sell kale) and drew blood when I realized that the artichoke was in the bag too. Like I said, it's a weapon! Carry on...
~me~ at 3:12 PM