Thursday, March 13, 2003

Okay, that storm lasted about 1-2 hours but that hail and thunder and lightning lasted for 15-20 minutes. Shut up! I know you're calling me a wuss in your head or even to those around you but for some reason I have this distorted thought that even though I am the shortest object in the city, the lightning will find me and strike me down. Yep, that's right!
I am thoroughly convinced that when researchers get to make up names for their drugs they create, they play a perverse game of scrabble where they pick out certain letters from the bag and then try to make a word out of it and it doesn't need to look like a real word since someone else will make it more readable when they create a trade name for the drug. I'm really annoyed at the cephalosporins. Hmmm...cephalo is close to word origin for brain or head or something up there and yet according to my book, only a few can actually get in there to kill bugs. But there's probably a different meaning for it. What what were they thinking when they created these names?!? Cefdinir, ceftibuten, cefuroxime axetil, cefixime...oh and of course every single one treats something different so it's not like I could classify these by generation (yep, there's 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation cephalosporins) and simply remember that 1st generation treats these diseases and 3rd generation cephs treat this other set of diseases. The one nice thing is that there are a couple of very generalized trends in terms of the type of bug (gram pos, gram neg, etc) but after awhile, even that becomes useless because of the exceptions to each rule. ugh! I'm going to make up a name for my fictional drug. Let's see...I pulled the letters zqrsioeac out of the bag...cazqioser...yep that's the name of my drug and it treats gram positive rods that only infect the heart, the thumbs, and the fibulas. Oh, I think I need to make up the name of this bug. Here we go: Caracella irritatusiae. It causes the thumbs to turn purple then fall off and once it hits the heart, then you can expect your fibulas to be reabsorbed. The drug is only effective before the thumbs fall off but once one thumb goes, then you're out of luck and if C. irritatusiae becomes resistant to cazqioser, then start writing out your will before you lose those thumbs because after the fibulas go, it's only a matter of time before you spontaneously combust. And that's all I have to say about that!
~me~ at 6:20 PM

Ohhhhh it's getting worse and now it's hailing too! What is going on?!?
~me~ at 2:56 PM

Oh noooo! It's raining and there's thunder and lightning and it's REALLY REALLY REALLY close to my home. And you know I don't like that at all!
~me~ at 2:53 PM

Wednesday, March 12, 2003

Owweeee! Remember in november when I had that mild gastritis? Well, for some reason, I developed a case of unprovoked heartburn like pain. I say unprovoked because the onset was after a relatively long period of nothingness (I hadn't eaten anything for a bit). Usually when I get heartburn it's after drinking and then it starts immediately after the drink (or during the next drink because I never wait too long before I have another drink (that sounds bad...). And it's usually done by now. Maybe a bit of water will help. I also took a pepcid but that hasn't kicked in yet. I can't stand the taste of liquid meds otherwise I would run out to the store and get some maalox or pepto. This sucks.
~me~ at 9:33 PM

Because I don't want to leave you in suspense any longer, I have the answer to my unknown for you. Yep, my patient was infected with Shigella and had dysentery. Hey, dysentery was one of the words I mentioned a few days ago since it was one of those words that sponsored the scary thought of the day. It was nonmotile, urease negative, citrate negative, didn't make gas or H2S and was a K/A (no time or desire to explain). I can't wait until friday afternoon. I think I'll go for a swim since it's getting a little warmer now. Or maybe I'll just read a normal book. Or rent a movie. I still haven't seen Amelie or My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I can't find a place that rents the chinese movie I want to see (Not one less). Well, have a good wednesday.
~me~ at 1:06 PM

Tuesday, March 11, 2003

Hellooo world! So do you want to hear about my 2nd day of unknown lab? What? No?!? Well, too bad! Just as I had guessed, I have an enteric. Well, the problem with this is that E. coli is going to be there (and it was) but I had 3 different colonies on my blood agar plate and only 2 on the MacConkey. So, Dr. B said they were all different so I did 3 gram stains. Now, here's my luck: I got tired of waiting for the gram stain action to be done so I went ahead and did an indole reaction on all 3 and none were positive. Because I was convinced I messed up, I did it again and this time 1 was positive - definitely E. coli. So as I'm still waiting for the gram stain to finish, I went ahead and prepared my biochemical tests. I just chose #3 since it was the biggest colony and easiest to scrape up. Well, it's a lucky thing I did because it turned out that colony #2 was a Staphylococcus! Yep, I had a gram positive coccus contamination (love those grape like clusters)...probably from breathing on my plate or something bizarre like that. So hopefully the results tomorrow will help me id my bug since it's the last day of the lab and all we have planned for that day is to fill in the sheet with our results and turn it in. While I was attempting to innoculate one of my tubes, Nader bumped me and so I had to redo it. Good thing it was a big colony. Right now, my only clues are that it's indole negative gram negative rod and we didn't have an oxidase test available and Dr. B let it slide that this must mean we don't have pseudomonas in our lab room samples. That knocks out only a few and I'm left with Proteus, Salmonella, and Shigella. 2 are motile, 2 produce gas, 2 make H2S, 1 has urease, and 2 are citrate positive so I can only wait and hope. I know you're all anticipating the result so I'll be sure to report.
~me~ at 3:11 PM

Monday, March 10, 2003

Today was the first and very short day of the unknown lab in micro. Yep, I got myself a stool sample (really brown gravy with poopy type bacteria) to analyze for a pathogenic specimen. All we did today was streak for isolation, something I suck at but since E. coli is usually a normal inhabitant of the intestines, I'm keeping that as the normal flora but potential culprit. Tomorrow I have to gram stain to hopefully prove my suspicion that I have a gram negative rod belonging to the Enterobacteriaceae (yeah, you read it correctly) family of bugs. So I'll face my other problem...trying to prepare a motility tube. I can't quite stab fast enough or straight enough when it comes to those. I wonder what I have...I guess I could take my book with me to help me along. I also get to learn about the SCOPE exam we have next month. We do a series of focused histories and physicals and then quick write ups of a bunch of standardized patients...wait, does that mean I have to come up with a differential on my own? Hmmm...I guess I better refresh my memory on those abdominal diseases. By the way, in case I didn't write it before, my oral report to the 4th year went very well so at least I've got one skill for next year. I'm so excited about figuring out what bug is in my gravy!
~me~ at 10:44 PM

One more scary thought. It was recently reported in a journal article that streptococcus is gaining resistance to the only drugs currently available and in a few short years, will be resistant to all the drugs we currently have which means strep throat=death. While it wasn't stated how much this has to do with fools who don't take the full antibiotic course, it probably doesn't help matters. And group A beta hemolytic strep throat infections can lead to rheumatic heart disease in susceptible individuals (those with preexisting structural heart defects, drug addicts, etc). Okay I'm done.
~me~ at 12:49 PM

Here's some pictures that my uncle chuck sent me of his new grandson Evan. Carly (one of those 17 cousins I have and Evan's aunty) took the pictures (or maybe Lee, her husband, took them). The slideshow isn't working right and I don't have time to fix it so if you're using explorer, a couple of the pictures might not load at all. Sorry but oh well...
And now for something unrelated. My favorite notetakers have got to be Isolde and Ben. They always have funny stuff written in their notes. Like Isolde's notes on Clostridia...As I said before, home canned foods, when not heated high enough with a pressure cooker, can be a great source of botulism well she wrote in her noteset "The good doctor (the lecturer) noted that in labs and hospitals they use autoclaves to kill the spores. And I have to ask, what exactly are they canning in the hospital labs???" Yeah, I'm sure you don't find it as funny as I do but I don't care. Ben made light of the fact that many other notetakers like to create summary boxes within their notesets so he created summary boxes of his own with irrelevant info and smart ass comments. Hey, if you had to read these notes, you would be laughing too.
~me~ at 11:50 AM

Sunday, March 09, 2003

I took a look at my schedule for next year. My spring break is in february because that's when mardi gras will be next year. At least we get the entire week off but it still sort of sucks...I guess it's just one of those things I need to get used to. Anyone know what Ivy day is? I'm guessing it's one of those special tulane things. Here's a scary thought. Vegetables kept in a ziplock bag aren't necessarily safe since clostridium botulinum can grow in there (like when you press out all that air) if it was already on those yummy veggies. And by pushing out all that air, you make it a bit more anaerobic...just what C. botulinum loves. If you haven't figured it out yet, C. botulinum is the bacteria that produces the toxin to cause botulism. So if you begin canning your own food, heat those suckers up real hot (they hate that) before you seal em in or you'll be dead after you eat that food months later. Okay, you have some time to get to the hospital. And yet there are those people out there who use the botulinum toxin to appear younger by paralyzing those facial muscles (botox). So, if iraq has botulinum toxin, who's to say they're not using it to please the people who don't want to look old? I mean, Saddam Hussein doesn't look too wrinkly...he could be a botox addict.
~me~ at 11:00 PM

So I found out the name of Erinn's baby. His name is Evan Agustin Carrillo (i think that's how you spell it). Apparently she had to go pain reliever free since her labor progressed very quickly yet the next day she still freaked when they came to draw blood. All I can say is my cousin is far braver than I since I would demand drugs. But hey, I guess if you're speedy, then there's no chance. Yea, I get to find cute baby stuff for someone. I'm going to attempt to find non gender stereotype stuff but it's hard to do when my favorite color is blue.
~me~ at 12:46 PM