#medicine
I had to have a minor medical procedure today and the important thing is that they anesthetized me for it. I warned them up front that I do not wake up well from anesthesia, as in I wake up belligerent over my disorientation and ready to escape unfamiliar surroundings, and asked them to please make sure Sark was in the room when I woke up.
Highlights from today include:
- They did notmake sure Sark was in the room when I woke up
- Thehot second I had any amount of consciousness returned, I attempted to get out of the bed and was thwarted by the railing they left up and my technician repeatedly telling me to lie down, which I did not because I was CERTAIN that I needed to leave.
- I tried to remove my IV myself 15+ times in under 3 minutes and told the technician I could do it. I could not; I had asked the nurse who put it in to put extra tape on it so that I could not. I could also not remove the rest of the things they had me connected to, but only because I couldn’t figure out how, not for lack of trying
- I could not remember the technician’s face because my facial blindness is MUCH worse when tired, and I called him Steven several times, and Josh. His name was Andrew.
- My gown slipped down my shoulder in my struggles to escape, and the technician attempted to replace it and I told him “you’ve seen a boob, Steven.” His name was still Andrew, and the procedure space was an open outpatient area with other people
- I was instructed not to bend over or the anesthetic would ‘rush to my head’ to which I responded in outrage “WELL WHERE THE HELL IS IT NOW?”
- I asked everyone present “who the hell are you” and insisted the doctor tell me how to say her first name. They asked me if I remembered Sark when he arrived a minute later, and I stalled out entirely staring at him like a deer in headlights because I could not parse how he got there.
- When they brought Sark in, the technician asked him “Does she normally wake up like this” and Sark told him “Depends on when you wake her up.” which is very fair of him because he remembers that I was woken at 4am once by someone honking their horn repeatedly because they wanted to fight my neighbor, and I charged outside in pajamas across a field to go attack their car while shouting about how rude they were and that they could fight me. They did not want to fight me, if you were wondering.
- Sark told me they fetched him from the waiting room by saying “maybe you can come calm her down.”
- This all happened in approximately 5 minutes, before I had gotten control of myself and could remember Andrew’s name and shape.
- Andrew told me goodbye at the door and thanked me for being his most amusing patient today.
At least I managed to put my own clothes on and walk out the front door unassisted this time.
… “this time“?
Yeah the last time I was anesthetized, as soon as I was conscious I managed to actually make it out of the bed, naked and confused, and the doctor was like “well good luck with that” and left me squirming on the floor like an overturned turtle, shouting angrily at my mother that I could put my own clothes on while being entirely incapable of actually doing so. I remember being in the car afterward but not how I got there. I feel like this time was a vast improvement for me. Really taking a leap forward in dignity.
There are quite a few people reblogging this who are very angry on my behalf because the staff didn’t listen to me and have Sark in the room when I woke up, and while it is very valid to be angry at the medical community in general for not listening to patients, I feel I need to make it clear that Sark being in the room was not for my benefit, it was for theirs. I would have done nothing different. I absolutely would still have attempted freedom and been just as belligerent. Sark has absolutely no ability to calm me down in that state, but he would have made Andrew’s job easier for him, like some kind of rehabber that is better at handling the feral raccoon than the vet that’s just trying to do their job. Instead Andrew got to babysit my uncoordinated escape attempts personally, which I am positive he regretted enough to make up for not listening to me.
So, I looked in the comments, expecting to see discourse or historical background etc, but I found none. Therefore, I decided to learn more and add background. Apparently this machine was used because of polio because polio paralyzes your lungs. According to the wiki article on this bad boy, patients would spend two weeks in there sometimes. They still have these machines, though much, much more modern but they’re barely used at all anymore: “In 1959, there were 1,200 people using tank respirators in the United States, but by 2004 there were only 39. By 2014, there were only 10 people left with an iron lung.” (x)
I’ve read about one man who still lives in an iron lung. He taught himself how to breathe again by gulping down air, but it’s quite laborious because of the paralysis. His name is Paul Alexander, and he’s a lawyer. He’s 71 years old and has spent 65 years in an iron lung. Wild, right? He’s been working on a memoir that he was inspired to write by the recent resurgence of cases of polio caused by anti-vaccers.
Source:https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4414081 (can’t hyperlink because I’m on mobile, apologies)
It’s amazing to me to recognize that we only defeated polio in this past century - that my mother’s father had it (he got lucky, it only deformed his feet and thereby kept him out of a couple wars); my mother got the big vaccination that left her upper arm scarred; and by the time I was vaccinated, polio basically didn’t exist. My grandfather must have been born like around 1900, so - in the space of less than 75 years, this was no longer something that parents dreaded the possibility of every summer.
In the 1950s, my mother would go to the corner shop. The owners had a daughter a few years older than my mum. She lived in an iron lung in the back of the shop.
Vaccinate your fucking kids.Reminder that children were in these iron lungs. Children who just wanted their mums and dads, or wanted to cuddle their precious stuffed toy, but couldn’t because of the nature of these machines. Crying because they don’t want to go in this big scary tank, but if they don’t go in the iron lung they would die.
And there’d be hospital wards of these.
This BBC documentary is an excellent one to watch, first as just as a history into the polio vaccine’s creation and why it was important, but also to get a glimpse of the iron lungs in action - 6:58 is when you can see footage of children in these things.
The polio vaccine exists so children wouldn’t have to have a machine breathe for them. All vaccines exist because we don’t want people to suffer. Please vaccinate and get vaccinated.
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Horseshoe kidney with ureters and bladder. / Riñón en herradura con ureteres y vejiga.
The horseshoe kidney is the most common type of renal fusion anomaly. It consists of two distinct functioning kidneys on each side of the midline, connected at the lower poles by an isthmus of functioning renal parenchyma or fibrous tissue that crosses the midline of the body. //// El riñón en herradura es el tipo más común de anomalía de fusión renal. Consiste en dos riñones funcionales distintos a cada lado de la línea media, conectados en los polos inferiores por un istmo de parénquima renal funcional o tejido fibroso que cruza la línea media del cuerpo.
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Cholesterol Gallstones / Cálculos biliares de colesterol
The most common type of gallstone, called a cholesterol gallstone, often appears yellow in color. These gallstones are composed mainly of undissolved cholesterol, but may contain other components/// El tipo más común de cálculos biliares, llamado cálculo biliar de colesterol, a menudo aparece de color amarillo. Estos cálculos biliares están compuestos principalmente por colesterol no disuelto, pero pueden contener otros componentes.
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Guys….! Happy new Year!!! Best wishes to all my followers…. Soon…. New content…
Chicos…! Feliz nuevo año!!Los mejores deseos a todos mis seguidores….Pronto..Nuevo contenido
….
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Nature to illuminate research
Here you can see fireflies, a type of beetle that glows.
Bioluminescence is the production and emission of light from enzymes called luciferases. In nature, many organisms such as jellyfish and fireflies ‘glow’ using these enzymes.
In scientific research, bioluminescent proteins are used to monitor changes to cells.
In the bottom images around 7000 bacterial colonies have been printed on an agar plate.The bacteria have been genetically engineered to display the bioluminescent enzyme from the firefly Photinus pyralis.
The images were taken with a sensitive camera which can detect the light output from luciferase in each colony. The light output of different types of luciferase can be analysed to discover which ones have enhanced characteristics that could be used in research.
Image credits: Terry Priest, s58y, Cassandra Stowe
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Plant power
Healthy plants, including crops and trees, are vital for our future. They are fundamental to our food, environment, economy and social wellbeing.
Plant scientists are finding new ways to solve some of our biggest challenges, such as protecting our forests, finding new fuel sources and ensuring that we have enough food for a growing population.
Did you know that ¼ of all medicines contain materials taken from plants?
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![cranquis:thuc:The Dedicated Doctor [infographic]No doubt about it, becoming a physician is har](https://64.media.tumblr.com/1c8797d5094eea77bd148fd10fe5cf38/tumblr_mlapd3sjOf1qzjvqlo1_r1_640.png "cranquis:thuc:The Dedicated Doctor [infographic]No doubt about it, becoming a physician is har")
thuc:
The Dedicated Doctor [infographic]
No doubt about it, becoming a physician is hard work and a long road. Healthcare reform is here so…
An inspirational infographic by the Alpha Infographicist thuc.
One not-so-inspiring comment, though: yes, more doctors are needed, yes, more spots are opening up in med schools, more jobs will be available for med school graduates, more patients are going to become insured under Obamacare — BUT since jack-squat is being done about proportionally improving reimbursement for all those doctors (new and old) and alleviating the massive debt which med students have to incur in order to become underpaid doctors, it’s still going to be tough to keep those doctors in business. Because it IS a business.
/rant
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Trephination, or trepanning, is the oldest surgical procedure in the history of humankind. It’s so old that our earliest archeological evidence of the practice dates back to the Neolithic age. Cave paintings depict the procedure as an effort to relieve a type of demonic possession that we would now label epilepsy or a variety of other mental maladies. It was also used to removed broken bits of skull after trauma, and drain blood pooling between the skull and dura matter. The crazy thing about the prehistoric use of puncturing-a-hole-in-your-freaking-skull was that most of the wounds show signs of healing, indicating that these people most often survived the procedure. Other archeological evidence suggests that these people would wear the fragment of skull removed as a charm.
We still trephinate people today, typically to relieve the effects of severe head trauma and for craniectomy (unfortunately if you have this done today they won’t give you the bone to wear as a charm. I figure if I’m letting them crack open my skull the least they could do is give me a souvenir).
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