Last week I was circulating a kidney transplant.  I had my head down
over my paperwork when I happened to notice unexpected movement out of
the corner of my eye.  I looked up to see a surgical resident rifling
through our warming cabinet for blankets.  What grabbed my attention
was that she wasn't one of the residents who had been in my room, and
she ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

 I don't post often enough.  I know that.  If I hadn't been informed of the LJ strike today I might just have not posted today and participated by accident.  I'm not sure I understand the purpose of the Strike, but it seems to me that in order for the strike to work the users would have to get everybody to not view LJ.

This is me not not posting.

I've always had a problem with the mythological concept of bailiwick (or sphere of control).  Why do so many (mostly ancient) religions have a pantheon of deities each of which holds sway over only a small portion of the universe.  If the gods are all powerful and are constantly getting in each others' way why don't they all just do everything.  I' ( Read more... )

Most everyone is familiar with the classical conditioning experiments conducted by Ivan Pavlov in the 1890s and 1900s.  The phrase "Pavlov's Dog" has made its way into modern vernacular in reference to anyone (or anything) that automatically performs an action in response to a specific stimulus.

To summarize: Pavlov noticed that animals began ( Read more... )

On Saturday I worked out with  ( Read more... )

Last week I went to interview a patient before her surgery as I
usually do.  She was an obese woman in her fifties with all the
potential complications that could go along with her unhealthy body
mass.  She had diabetes, high blood pressure, and peripheral vascular
disease in addition to a few others.  All these conditions had
compounded one and other ( Read more... )

I believe that I'm going to change my normal pattern and give the
moral of the story at the beginning:  You are always safer if you
assume that the directions you find on the internet simply will not
work as advertised.

As an example I submit this link: 
http://www.break.com/index/how-to-make-glow-in-the-dark-mountain-dew.html

I couldn't help but try ( Read more... )

On Monday night I overheard one side of a telephone conversation.  I
wasn't eavesdropping; the person I couldn't help but hear was standing
right next to me.  He's a neurosurgeon, but for the life of me I
couldn't figure out to whom he was talking.  I sure hope it wasn't a
patient or patient's family:

"I don't know how they can tell the difference.   ( Read more... )

 Its not often that I hear the full back-story on the trauma cases I
see in the OR.  That's one of the few things I liked about the ER and
one of the main reasons that I don't contribute to this blog as often
as I used to.  Mostly what I hear receiving a patient in surgery is
mechanism of injury: car vs. Pedestrian, fall 30 feet, GSW, etc.
It's usually ( Read more... )