Weekend Wisdom

Things I learned this weekend:

• Illinois weather likes to play me for a fool.  It's mocking me with its stupid, non-corporeal face.  Two days ago, I tucked away most of my sweaters and relished the 70 degree weather in my holey jeans, and now?  It's pouring.  And freezing.

• One of Dr. D's fellow classmates is the next Bob Ross.  For serious.  And he's giving us this painting!

• I think maybe Dr. D doesn't think billiard chalk to the nipple is as entertaining as the rest of us do. 

 

• My name could have been so much more awesome.

I also learned that my friends like to read my blog in secret, avoiding the comment form at all costs, only to reference it off-handedly over weekend pizza.  Creepers.

Hope you all had an equally enlightening weekend!

Lithe of the Thung

"Mah thung huths."

Choosing to break the studious quiet surrounding our collective couch + textbook lounging this evening, I decide I just can't take it any more. I must be quite a sight to the startled Dr. D, with my tongue extended to its fullest length, looking down at it accusingly (while simultaneously cross-eyed).

"I'm sorry?"

I'm not really able to tell whether his response is out of empathy or misunderstanding, so I trudge on with my chief complaint.

"Ih huths. Iss gah uh bump." Thinking it might help illustrate my point, I dance the tip of my tongue around a bit and then point to the small swollen bump on the end. "Wha iss ih?"

Let's pause a moment to remember that Dr. D has only just started his second rotation in his third year of med school, and ob-gyn probably hasn't taught him a whole lot about tongue maladies at this point. And then let's remember that non-medical types tend to ignore the reality that future doctors have to actually go to many years of school before they are experts, and therefore we expect med students to know everything. Thus, the wife confronting her med student husband with a irritated, wagging tongue and growing ever-expectant of an explanation.

"Oooh... I don't know. But I hate those things."

Slightly disappointed, but appreciative of the honesty (since he very easily could have said "Oh no! Tonguitis!" and I would have freaked), I put my tongue back in my mouth and try to focus on not running the irritated bump along the back of my teeth as I have been for the past hour. Resolved to get to the bottom of this, and fresh out of my Dr. D lifeline, I turn to the next best thing: Google.

This is one of those searches that you kind of have to agonize over the proper phrasing before hitting the search button, lest you find yourself facing horrific pictures of bumpy, diseased tongues.

I decided on "what is it called when a bump on your tongue gets swollen?" and managed to avoid seeing any STD-laden mouths, thank you very much.

So, friends, I present you with what I learned today:

When one of those little bumps on your tongue (called fungiform papillae--they are NOT "taste buds") gets swollen and irritated, it's called "Transient Lingual Papillitis." But of course it's abbreviated to TLP because who in their right mind has the time to say anything in its entirety any more?

TLP is usually caused by some sort of accidental trauma to the area, like biting, scraping, or rubbing---or in my case, probably when I stabbed my tongue with a crispy samosa at lunch today---and they last a day or two. (In my best "fast disclaimer at the end of a drug commercial" voice: Ifsymptomspersistlongerthanoneweekpleaseconsultyourdoctor.) Also, TLP tends to get further irritated when people end up mindlessly messing around with the bump in their mouths, which I just realized I'm doing right now. Dangit.

And get this: apparently TLP is more commonly known as "lie bumps." I've never heard of this before, have you? I guess it's a wives' tale that a person gets one of these bumps after they've been telling lies. Subsequently, I'm kind of annoyed by the phrase "wives' tale," which seems to imply that wives are frequently giving misguided and false information--how am I only just now thinking about this? Now my tongue is irritated and I'm annoyed by patriarchy.

What a night.

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.

Teeth aren't bones

Last night, in the hour-long lull between Dr. D’s furious Step 1 Boards cramming and the blissful head-meets-pillow moment, my husband and I were cozied up on our living room couch, sharing our days’ events.

As we discussed the general overarching themes of the day (Dr. D’s being “cancer sucks” and mine being “having a 36-inch inseam also sucks, but not as much as cancer”), my diatribe about designers being too cheap to use additional fabric to make extra-long jeggings was interrupted by the obnoxious, fingers-on-chalkboard sound of our dog’s teeth on his bone.

“…and I have no idea why I seem to be the only one with this problem, because obviously models must have long—how in the holy HECK does he still have teeth left in his mouth?!”

I picked up one end of the bone (dog still firmly attached to the other end, mind you) and Dr. D and I watched, transfixed and uneasy, as J-dog euphorically continued to gnaw his teeth rhythmically over the bone with a grinding errrrrrrrk! errrrrrrrk! sound.

One of the many reasons I love Dr. D is that I can usually rely on him for an answer to any of my questions having to do with science… sometimes they’re real answers, sometimes made up—I’m okay either way because I figure I’ll either learn or be entertained. So, I asked him, “How come he’s not chipping any teeth? Are dog’s bones really that much stronger than this cow/pig/horse/whatever’s bone?”

Dr. D has this kind of half-smile, squinty look he gives me when I say something ridiculous and he’s trying to figure out whether or not I really meant it. He quickly saw that I did: “You do realize teeth aren’t bones, right?”

…Wrong.

World. Rocked.

How have I gone nearly 25 years under the misguided assumption that teeth are just itty bitty bones that are lodged in our noggins? Shouldn’t I have learned this in a Magic School Bus episode or something? Honestly, the only time I ever really remember learning about teeth in school was in my (Texas) 2^nd grade class when representatives from Crest toothpaste came in to talk to us about the importance of using Kid’s Crest to keep away cavities. I must have been too engrossed in the free samples and the awesomeness that was Crest Sparkleman to hear the part of their lecture about teeth not being gosh darn bones.

At first I was freaked out that I might be the only person on earth who wasn’t aware of the whole teeth-aren’t-bones thing, but a quick google search was enough to set my mind at ease—I didn’t even have to completely type in “are teeth bones” because it auto-filled for me. Phew.

Anyway, if you’ve got some time and you really want to bone-up (hah!) on what makes a tooth a tooth and not a bone, you might want to conduct a search of your own… or you could just look at this diagram I found and note that nowhere on it does it say “bone.” Go figure.

In related news, did you know that it’s possible to get a tooth tattoo? More importantly, did you know you can get a tattooth (term coined by Dr. D) of Simon Cowell?

You know you want to.