Medical School

Adventures in Medical School

[academicssay]

[legogradstudent]

Throwing a paper together just days before a conference, the grad student rides a turbulent wave of shame and exhilaration.

[mednerds]

How an Atrial Septal Defect closure device actually works

Source: georgedrln 

[fawfulydoo]

weezer

[fawfulydoo]

[themedicalstate]

Your brainstem wiggles when you rub your eyes

[heardatmedschool]

Student 1: What did the pituitary say to the thyroid when it didn’t want to work?

Student 2: ...

Student 1: Tshhhh.

[shewhoworshipscarlin]

Traveling medicine chest, 1870, England.

[academicssay]

[ihearthisto]

🌐✨ Happy Star Wars Day ✨🌐 May the Fourth be with you! i♡histo Star Wars histology from top left, clockwise: 1. The Graafian follicle Death Star In a galaxy far, far away an intergalactic superweapon is halted in metaphase II of meiosis amid a surge in Luteinizing Hormone. 2. Jabba the Corpus Albicans “makingsa lee ka bok pateesa… beeska chata wnow kong bantha poodoo” (translation) “you may have been a good friend..but now you are bantha fodder” The corpus albicans is a structure in the ovary that is formed when the corpus luteum regresses. 3. Tusken Raider in the Liver Despite what you see here, Tusken Raiders are not native to the human liver. If you think that, then you are making a wookie mistake.

The image is actually a portal triad and demonstrates the major structures that enter and leave the liver: hepatic artery, hepatic portal vein and bile duct. 4. The Empire Strikes Back (at the Liver) Liver histology is definitely where it’s At-At! A region of connective tissue among the hepatocytes in the liver. — Images by @ihearthisto, @drjohnrajala, @zenonich and @hopkins_gi_path respectively

[themedicalstate]

“He who studies medicine without books sails an uncharted sea, but he who studies medicine without patients does not go to sea at all.”

— William Osler M.D. (via mednerds)

[academicssay]

Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life as a tenure-track academic due to overproduction of doctoral graduates compounded by institutional overreliance on precarious academic employment

[mednerds]

Head and Neck Dissection

Coloured lithograph by J. Roux, 1822. Tiedemann, Friedrich, 1781-1861.

[themedicalstate]

Animated Anatomies

Animated Anatomies was curated by Valeria Finucci and Maurizio Rippa-Bonati with the assistance of Rachel Ingold and Meg Brown.

Animated Anatomies explores the visually stunning and technically complex genre of printed texts and illustrations known as anatomical flap books. These publications invite the viewer to participate in virtual autopsies, through the process of unfolding their movable leaves, simulating the act of human dissection. This exhibit traces the flap book genre beginning with early examples from the sixteenth century, to the colorful “golden age” of complex flaps of the nineteenth century, and finally to the common children’s pop-up anatomy books of today.

This display includes volumes from Duke’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, the Duke Medical Center Library & Archives History of Medicine Collection and from the private collections of the curators of the exhibit, Professor Valeria Finucci, Director of Duke’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and Professor Maurizio Rippa-Bonati, historian of medicine at the University of Padua.

Animated Anatomies is an exhibit on display in the Perkins Gallery, Perkins Library,  Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, from April 6-July 17, 2011, and in the History of Medicine Gallery in the Medical Center and Archives Library from April 13-July 17, 2011.

Source: Duke University Libraries

[themedicalstate]

Anatomical Works Sculpted in Crystal and Glass

Santa Fe-based sculptor and jewelry designer Debra Baxter combines glass, bronze, crystal, wood, and found objects to create ghostly sculptures of human forms. 

For many of her recent works Baxter shares with Roq Larue Gallery that she drew inspiration from the phenomenon of the “Ghost Heart.” In this medical procedure, a heart is cleansed of all of its blood cells and then injected with hundreds of millions of new blood steam cells which cause the heart to begin beating again. Baxter is interested in how this concept explores the complexity of existence, walking the line between life and death.  

1. Catch Your Breath, 2021

2. Love Side, 2019

3. Cross My Heart (1), 2019

4. Cross My Heart (2), 2019

5. Love Hard, 2021

6. Holding Onto Black Metal, 2020

7. Heart of Gold, 2019

8. Ghost Hand, 2019

9. Silver Heart, 2019

You can see more of her sculpted artworks on her website and Instagram.

[sarcasticbabywhispererjess]

I find it frustrating when I see people, particularly healthcare workers, focusing on the death rates from COVID not being THAT high. They compare it to the Spanish flu. It's not only about mortality (deaths), but morbidity (long-haulers with what appear to be life-long health issues related to the virus). Additionally, there are have been and are going to continue to be deaths that I would still attribute to COVID even though the people that died did not have COVID... these are the people that are not able to receive the proper care because hospitals are overwhelmed with COVID patients. A person that is perfectly healthy, but gets in a horrible car accident and there are no ICU beds available for that person because all the super sick unvaccinated COVID patients are taking up all the beds... if they die, that's still a COVID death. If someone has cancer and they need life-saving brain surgery, but their surgery keeps getting canceled or rescheduled because there isn't a bed available for them to recover in after surgery and they pass away... that's a COVID death.

Now, those deaths don't get counted in the statistics (fair), but maybe we need another set of numbers that include these deaths.

[womaninterrupted]

This is too accurate.

[rh-of-the-andromeda-galaxy]

hey, it’s covid gothic!

[malus-syl-vestris-deactivated20]

You can't be too careful. Covid is very dangerous and cases are spiking, which is why we've cut quarantine time to a ridiculously short period and employers want you back to work ASAP even if you're still contagious

[populationpensive]

Cautionary

A while back I had a COVID patient transferred to us from an OSH because they developed an interesting and complex complication from their COVID infection.

This person ended up developing retroperitoneal hematomas from lumbar arterial hemorrhages, presumably from endothelial damage and apoptosis from COVID. It should be known that this person was unvaccinated but had no other comorbidities associated with "bad" COVID infection. Also no other reason to explain the hemorrhaged (trauma, clotting factor problem, etc).

I admitted this person and they were a hot mess when they came in: on 3 pressors (while I was adding a 4th), hemorrhaging in the belly after one failed IR attempt to stop the bleeding, and gradually developing abdominal compartment syndrome from the massive about of blood in their belly. I spent the first 7 hours of my shift with this patient only because they were too unstable to go to imaging or IR without a provider present in case they coded. Literally followed them around with the box of blood product and just handing the nurse more blood. It was ridiculous.

They ended up going for an ex/lap and are doing better now. Long road ahead for recovery but they are alive.

I'm sharing this because I'm wondering if other people caring for COVID patients have seen hemorrhaging? We are all accustomed to the risk of clotting with COVID patients, but this was my first who was bleeding out. What were your experiences? How often do you see this?