College Med Student

I remember this “rare medical condition” that was circulating awhile back.

I can’t actually believe this to be real but there is still no solid proof that it isn’t either.

Make your own decision.

Back in January Kotaku.com pointed out that research was underway in Phoenix to create a surgery-practice application using the Wiimote.

“One of the problems we’ve had over the years is we had no method to teach surgeons surgical skills without going into surgery,” said Dr. Mark Smith, a co-developer and a gynecological surgeon at Banner Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix. “We now have simulators that help them develop those skills. The problem is they are incredibly expensive — like a flight simulator for a pilot. This gives us a much less costly way to train these fine motor skills that the surgeons employ during surgery.”

WABC-TV in New York did a story on the Wii simulator, which includes video. News8 Austin, a Time-Warner cable news channel, also features a Q&A with Dr. Smith on its site.

2000 B.C. - Here, eat this root.

1000 A.D. - That root is heathen. Here, say this prayer.

1850 A.D. - That prayer is superstition. Here, drink this potion.

1940 A.D. - That potion is snake oil. Here, swallow this pill.

1985 A.D. - That pill is ineffective. Here, take this antibiotic.

2000 A.D. - That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.

Just a little piece of advice when you enter your local hospital, if you think you might be dying…make them aware or you could end up like this poor woman.

The most disturbing part of the video is of the other people in the room who don’t even bother to check on a person lying face down on a tile floor.

You can read the full story at CNN.com.

Click here for article

NEW YORK — A Filipino teenager who came to New York so doctors could perform surgery to untwist her severely clubbed feet took her first unaided steps Wednesday in pink-and-white sneakers — the first shoes she’s ever worn.

“I’m very happy,” Jingle Luis said with a smile. “It was exciting.”

The 15-year-old girl arrived at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx in May with her mother for surgery and follow-up treatment.

She had never been able to walk on her own because she was born with feet so clubbed they twisted backward and upside down, forcing her to hobble on the tops of her feet with the help of crutches.

On Wednesday, doctors took off her post-surgical casts and replaced them with special support braces.

Then came the moment she had waited a lifetime for: She slipped her feet into her first pair of shoes and took several long strides.

The surgery, which the hospital performed for free, involved inserting screws into the bones of her feet and turning them bit by bit to straighten them out.

When the pins were taken out, the feet were straight, but casts were put on for several weeks to keep them that way.

Dr. Terry Amaral, her surgeon, expects Jingle to wear the braces for about a year.

“This is a miracle. I am very thankful to God,” said Jingle’s mother, Jasmine Luis, who makes a living selling fish door-to-door. Jingle’s father is a corn farmer.

Jingle’s case came to the attention of Montefiore after a staff physician traveled to the Philippines in 2003 with a Christian relief mission.

While clubfoot is a relatively common deformity, occurring in about one in 1,000 births, children are usually treated in infancy with casts or braces that gradually bring the feet into correct alignment.

Amaral said Jingle’s condition was complicated by spina bifida, a birth defect that involves the incomplete development of the spinal cord or its coverings.

Doctors who saw Jingle as a baby thought her spina bifida would shorten her life span and prevent her from walking, so they did not treat the clubfoot, Amaral said.

But Jingle’s condition turned out to be relatively mild.

“She’s essentially a normal child,” Amaral said.

- AP

Ridiculous Remedies. The world is full of them and even to this day some of the worst are practiced by our own grandmothers. Thankfully my grandmother didn’t believe in any of these. Read the rest of this entry »

There is something so disturbing yet amazing about this video of John Graziano.

John Graziano was the passenger in Nick Hogan’s vehicle when it crashed in August of 2007.

No one knew the extent of the injuries but I think the video is proof enough.

Hopefully we’ll have more info on his condition soon.

I can’t even begin to understand how something like this happens.

Surgeons left a 10cm (4in) metal bar inside a teenager’s head.

Donovan McGowan lived with the piece of metal inside him for three months after an operation.

The 18-year-old suffered from blinding headaches and also had an unsightly lump on the side of his head.

Eventually, he demanded a scan and it was then doctors found the bar.

‘They said, “This is quite embarrassing but there is something metallic like a tube still in your head.”

It’s been more than embarrassing for me having to walk about with this lump,’ said Mr McGowan, from Glasgow.

The rod was left behind during an operation at Southern General Hospital, Glasgow, in March after he was hit by a car.

A hospital spokesman apologised and said it was an ‘unfortunate error’. The ex-football steward, who gave up his job because of the pain, may now seek compensation from the trust.

It’s one thing to leave a sponge or swab inside a large wound and then stitch it up. But a 4 inch metal bar, how do you miss that?
And after such a serious surgery which would probably require follow-up visits, did the the doctor not see that something was wrong with the patient after 3 months?

I’d say this kid has one heck of a case.

Sanju Bhagat’s stomach was once so swollen he looked nine months pregnant and could barely breathe.

Living in the city of Nagpur, India, Bhagat said he’d felt self-conscious his whole life about his big belly. But one night in June 1999, his problem erupted into something much larger than cosmetic worry.

An ambulance rushed the 36-year-old farmer to the hospital. Doctors thought he might have a giant tumor, so they decided to operate and remove the source of the bulge in his belly.

“Basically, the tumor was so big that it was pressing on his diaphragm and that’s why he was very breathless,” said Dr. Ajay Mehta of Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai. “Because of the sheer size of the tumor, it makes it difficult [to operate]. We anticipated a lot of problems.”

Mehta said that he can usually spot a tumor just after he begins an operation. But while operating on Bhagat, Mehta saw something he had never encountered. As he cut deeper into Bhagat’s stomach, gallons of fluid spilled out — and then something extraordinary happened.

“To my surprise and horror, I could shake hands with somebody inside,” he said. “It was a bit shocking for me.”

Removing the Mutated Body

One doctor recalled that day in the operating room.

“He just put his hand inside and he said there are a lot of bones inside,” she said. “First, one limb came out, then another limb came out. Then some part of genitalia, then some part of hair, some limbs, jaws, limbs, hair.”

Inside Bhagat’s stomach was a strange, half-formed creature that had feet and hands that were very developed. Its fingernails were quite long.

“We were horrified. We were confused and amazed,” Mehta said.

A Mutated Body Within a Body

At first glance, it may look as if Bhagat had given birth. Actually, Mehta had removed the mutated body of Bhagat’s twin brother from his stomach. Bhagat, they discovered, had one of the world’s most bizarre medical conditions — fetus in fetu. It is an extremely rare abnormality that occurs when a fetus gets trapped inside its twin. The trapped fetus can survive as a parasite even past birth by forming an umbilical cordlike structure that leaches its twin’s blood supply until it grows so large that it starts to harm the host, at which point doctors usually intervene.

According to Mehta, there are fewer than 90 cases of fetus in fetu recorded in medical literature.

- source ABC News

I know this sounds strange but the only “Med” show I can watch is Scrubs.

Mostly because its more of a fictional piece of the medical field.

But the popularity of shows like Bones, ER and House just mystify me.

I can’t get into them even though I feel like I should.

But I guess its kind of like a painter not wanting to watch Bob Ross paint happy little trees.

You’d think after four years of college I would be pretty smart.

And then this guy comes along and ruins everything.

Wish I’d thought of it…

The doctor on his morning round was a tired man with a hang-over.

Upon finding patient on bed # 7 dead, he took out a note-pad from his huge coat pocket and wrote down instructions for the boys to carry the body to the mortuary.

The time was 8 AM.

However while writing down instructions for the boys to carry the body to the mortuary he wrote ‘Patient on bed # 8 died at 7 AM.

The boys arrived at bed No. 8, removed the patient ruthlessly and threw the ‘body’ on the stretcher when the patient started protesting, “Hey. It’s not me!!”

“Shut up man” said the guys.” You seem to think you know better than the doctor himself!!”

Most science papers written by students are effortless pieces of drivel only done to pass some sort of assignment, but then there are some that simply shine due to the topic of the paper.

Here are some of the most bizarre ones I could find:

1. Farting as a Defense Against Unspeakable Dread

(Dr. M. Sidoli; Washington DC; 1998)

“When feeling endangered, Peter used his bodily smell and farts to envelop himself in a protective cloud”

According to it’s author, “this paper describes some features of the behaviour of a severely disturbed adopted latency boy. Peter was born premature, suffered several early hospitalizations and surgical operations, and at 2 months of age was removed from his mother’s care by Social Services for neglect and abandonment. When feeling endangered, Peter had developed a defensive olfactive container using his bodily smell and farts to envelop himself in a protective cloud of familiarity against the dread of falling apart, and to hold his personality together.”

2. Pressures Produced When Penguins Poo — Calculations on Avian Defecation

(V. Breno Meyer-Rochow and J. Gal; International University of Bremen and Lorand Eotvos University of Hungary; 2005)

“They get up, move to the edge of the nest, turn around, bend over… and shoot”

Ever wondered how far a penguin can fire waste from its anus? Wonder no more. Victor Breno Meyer-Rochow of International University, Bremen, and Jozsef Gal of Lorand Eotvos University, Hungary, used the basic principles of physics to calculate the pressure that builds up inside a penguin. Dr. Meyer-Rochow explained that the research began in 1993, when he led the first, and so far only, Jamaican expedition to the Antarctic. Later, while showing students pictures of faeces-lined penguin nests, he was asked how the elaborate displays were created. “They get up, move to the edge of the nest, turn around, bend over - and shoot,” he said. That’s when he got the idea to calculate the pressure produced by penguin poo.

3. Safe and Painless Manipulation of Penile Zipper Entrapment

(Satish Chandra Mishra; Charak Palika Hospital; 2005)

“A quick, simple and non-traumatic approach to penile zipper entrapment”

Author Satish Chandra Mishra, about his enlightening paper: “Entrapment of penile foreskin is quite a distressing situation for the child and the parents and can be a frustrating management problem. Any overzealous intervention would simply worsen the situation. Also, attempts to cut open the zip fastener are time taking and may not be either helpful or feasible in all the situations. The approach to the zipper manipulation should be quick, simple, non-traumatic and reproducible irrespective of the age of the child, mechanism and site of entrapment, presence of the local edema and zipper size or design.”

4. Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans

(S. Ghirlanda, L. Jansson, M. Enquist; Stockholm University; 2002)

“The animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences”

Authors at the Stockholm University explain it: “We trained chickens to react to an average human female face but not to an average male face (or vice-versa). In a subsequent test, the animals showed preferences for faces consistent with human sexual preferences (obtained from university students). This suggests that human preferences arise from general properties of nervous systems, rather than from face-specific adaptations. We discuss this result in the light of current debate on the meaning of sexual signals, and suggest further tests of existing hypotheses about the origin of sexual preferences.”

5. The Effect of Country Music on Suicide

(S. Stack and J. Gundlach; Wayne State University and Auburn University; 1992)

“The greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate”

According to the authors, Steven Stack and Jim Gundlach, the paper “assesses the link between country music and metropolitan suicide rates. Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. The existence of a country music subculture is thought to reinforce the link between country music and suicide. Our model explains 51% of the variance in urban white suicide rates.”

You gotta keep your sense of humor as a Med Student with all the studying, tests, reading, classes, and just generally having no life.

Medical Student: Living on massive amounts of caffeine, sugar and ramen noodles while forgoing sleep to become a better health professional.

Med Students Do It Sleep Deprived

Gastroenterology: It Takes Guts

The Fastest Way To A Man’s Heart Is Through His Vena Cava

Nothing Raises Eyebrows Like Frontalis

Priapism: A Painfully Hard Topic

Orthopedists Work Themselves To The Bone

Rezzzzzzisdent

Your Epidermis Is Showing

Mammography: A Titillating Science

Surgeons Do It On The Table

Usually I wouldn’t say disease can make the world a better place.

But this site I found gives pretty good examples of diseases (albeit fake ones) that would indeed make the world a better place.

Maybe better isn’t the word for it?

Funnier…definitely.

Thanks for stopping by at CollegeMedStudent.com, a site that is bound and determined to at least make you giggle or nod your head in relate-able experiences.

Everyone I know seems to have similar stories when dealing with the whole med school thing and what these stories usually have in common is that they are funny.

Everyone has heard about the “foreign object” in the x-ray or the accidentally removed testicle incident and this is the perfect place for telling these fantastic/disturbing stories.

So if you have one or would like to throw in your 2 cents, drop me a line at my email DeeOhSee@gmail.com (D-O-C,  get it? lol) or leave me a comment here.

I can’t wait to hear what everyone else has seen, witnessed or been through.