The 'schmerz

It's that time again, folks! Today I'm linking up with DJ at Medicine: A Love Story to share more med-love antics. Click on the icon below to visit her blog and learn how to take part as a blogger, or at least see what everyone else has to say about today's topic.

The prompt: What's the most interesting medical fact you've learned vicariously?

 
Since Dr. D and I are going on five years of the medically graphic over-sharing dinner conversations (four years of med school and over half of intern year), there isn't much that shocks me anymore. Oh, to be again the wide-eyed innocent who nearly spit out her cereal after moving the Sunday morning paper only to uncover a textbook page full of diseased penises (penisi? I really feel like that should be penisi... can someone with some clout in med linguistics get on that?).

If you've been with me from the beginning of this blog--just Mom? okay, cool, no worries--then you may recall me blogging about a few medical facts that I learned and deemed traumatic enough to warrant infliction upon others. Like discovering that I didn't drink enough urine as an embryo, or that death-breath is a thing, or even what it's like to inhale the smell of burned flesh.

But I think that out of all of the medical knowledge I've unwittingly amassed, my favorite factoids tend to be the ones regarding medical terminology. I'm a fan of words. Always have been. Give me a medical phrase that sounds like a Harry Potter spell, and I will be entertained for hours. Seriously, hours, if not days.

So imagine my glee when D came home one day and said, "You know what's a fun word?

"Mittelschmerz."

Um, yes. Yes it is. Particularly when attempting to say it three times quickly, a la Beetlejuice. I loved this new word! I took to that sucker like a toddler who just learned her first curse word, and he let me walk around the house jabbering about it for a solid half hour before telling me what it actually meant. Why didn't I inquire about the meaning, you ask? Because I. love. words. and I was too distracted.

Too bad it means "the abdominal pains occurring between menstrual periods." Way to take a fun word and assign it to something that is NO JOKE, Germans.

Stanky

Sitting in Starbucks this afternoon, salivating over inspiring pictures on wedding and fashion blogs, my daydream of bow-ties and peonies was interrupted when Dr. D (who is a hostage of Step 1 Boards cramming--but more on that later) leaned over with his pathology textbook and pointed at a diagram.

Here comes another lesson in med cred, I thought, preparing myself for something either very bizarre or very gross. It was the latter:

Today I learned that when a person has cirrhosis (or severe scarring) of the liver, one of the signs is fetor hepaticus. What might that be, you ask? Well, according to the textbook's description, fetor hepaticus--which already doesn't sound too good--is a particular odor on the patient's breath. Oh, but not just any odor...

"The smell of a freshly opened corpse."

Aw, HECK NO.

First of all, bummer for whoever already knows what that smells like and is consequently capable of identifying that smell on someone's breath. Second of all, why are we talking about corpses like they're a can of caviar? Freshly opened, seriously? Third of all, what unfortunate soul has been dealt the extremely ill-fated hand of being the person who decides how to categorize the odors of sick people's breaths? "Ah yes, in this one I get notes of sweetness, perhaps honey-like... this one has more of an acidic hint... and thi---OH EM GEE YOUR BREATH SMELLS LIKE DEATH. THE FRESHLY DECAPITATED KIND."

I think I'll be less self-conscious about garlic breath from now on... at least now I know it can always be worse.

Drink it up

This is going to be a short one today, not because I don't have a lot to say (as I carefully eye the mounting list of blog topics I've been amassing), but because I think that this topic deserves a glaring spotlight to highlight how astounding it truly is. Excess words would diminish its impact, so I'm just going to jump right in to what I learned last night...

Huddled around a small table at one of our favorite malty, hoppy beverage establishments with a group of friends from med school and its program-cousins (MD/PhD and Vet Med), this gem of knowledge regarding the miracle of life was shared with me:

In order to develop a healthy set of lungs, among other vital organs, fetuses must drink a sufficient amount of amniotic fluid. Okay, whatever... even pre-babies have to get their drink on somehow, I guess, I mean they probably get pretty thirsty because it's got to be really warm in--WAIT, amniotic fluid is FETUS PEE?!


...and here you were thinking that the first time in your life you'd be faced with drinking your own urine would be when you got stranded on some desert island. No such luck.

I'm now weirdly comforted by the fact that I have a lower-than-normal lung capacity. Even in the womb, I must have realized that what I was doing was gross.

Medical Matrimony 101: Lesson 1

In the scheme of things, my marriage to Dr. D is in its infancy. However, I’d like to think that over the past two years (which, by the way, has anyone read or heard anything recently about time moving roughly 2.54 times faster than usual? Because, hot dang!), I’ve learned quite a bit about being married to a medical student.

I thought it might be fun to share this wisdom with you all, because even if you aren’t a med student/professional, or married to one, you might at least know one… or maybe you will someday? At the very least, if you find yourself in a bar near a hospital and it’s after 10pm, the knowledge I impart to you now may come in handy.

So, first lesson:

Watch Grey’s Anatomy.

Stop rolling your eyes. No really, stop—they might get stuck that way. Okay, not really. Dr. D tells me that’s a lie… unless you're taking anti-psychotics. See how helpful it is to know a med student?

But seriously, folks, for those of you who find yourselves in the midst of a gaggle (it’s a word, look it up) of med students, it may be advantageous to have a six-season arsenal of Grey’s Anatomy plot line knowledge at your disposal, as I do. Why?

• You can (sort of) speak their language. At the very least, you’ll know to make a frowny face when you hear them say that a patient had a “cardiomyopathy,” and you won’t embarrass yourself by casually commenting “Oh yeah? That’s cool” when they tell you they witnessed a patient go asystolic. (<--Not ringing any bells? How about “beeeeeeeeeeeeeep…”? Yeah, now you’ve got it.)

• You’ll understand what they mean when they tell you exactly where they are in their journey from lowly med student to big-shot doctor, because whatever term they use (intern, resident, chief resident, attending, chief of surgery, etc.), you’ll be able to equate it to a character: “Oh, you’re an intern about to take your medical board exam? Man, hope you don’t pull a Karev a bomb that sucker!” Season 2, baby.

Okay, fine. Maybe you just don’t have a stomach for all the romantic storylines and double entendres, or perhaps you can’t suspend disbelief long enough to go along with the fact that all of the doctors’ sleeping around with each other hasn’t given them all some sort of disease—fast forward through those parts and KEEP WATCHING because…

• You can gain some serious “med cred” (how stoked am I that I just came up with that?!) by knowing about some of the more ridiculous conditions that are featured on the show, especially if the med student/doctor you’re talking to doesn’t know that it was a plotline on Grey’s. Because believe it or not, most of the medical cases on the show are based—sometimes more loosely than others—on real medicine. For example, those of you who watch the show might remember the dude who kept eating cotton balls and other medical supplies when the doctors' backs were turned… I dare you to bring up Pica Disorder in casual conversation with a med student. Minds will be blown.

Class dismissed.