In the church bulletin this morning, as the last hymn of the service before coffee and snacks:
Blue Hymn Book, #503: Fight the food fight
Now that’s my kind of church 
November 16, 2008
Church Bulletin Blooper
November 15, 2008
Movember 15th – Halfway!
Here is the updated photo diary for the past week! For anybody new to the Movember thing: Find out about Movember, read how I decided to participate, and if you are able, please donate!
Photo Diary:
. YOU DID!!
November 13, 2008
Medical Variety Night 2008
Tomorrow is opening night!!! Medical Variety Night is an annual show put on by the Queen’s medical students for our professors, the hospital staff, and any interested members of the Kingston community. The show displays some legitimate talent, along with a healthy dose of nerdy medical humour and spoofs of our professors!
Our dress rehearsal tonight went smoothly, with just a few hiccups. Not brave enough to perform, I’m helping out with the backstage crew.
November 10, 2008
Observership: Family Medicine
I spent the afternoon today in a clinic downtown observing a Family Doctor! What a meaningful way to remind oneself about what’s waiting at the end of all this studying, and also why it’s so important to learn everything that we’re being taught! During my observership I:
- Listened to a premie baby’s heart rate: SO fast!!! It becomes nearly impossible to distinguish the individual heart sounds.
- Looked into a little girl’s ear – she was so brave and sat very still! Unfortunately she has had multiple ear infections recently, and so maybe she is getting used to strange big people poking scopes into her ears.
- Saw a bite that may have been from a tick, although it didn’t look characteristic of tick bites
- Learned the technique for giving a flu shot. This time I was just watching, but the doctor warned me that next time he wants me to try it … scary.
- Observed a few well-baby check-ups to monitor growth and development. One was with a VERY hyper two-year-old. He was literally climbing the walls !
- Listened as the doctor explained to a patient that he would need to start taking medication for his blood pressure… and learned something from the very difficult discussion that follows a diagnosis of hypertension about exercising and eating right
Family Medicine is a neat speciality because you really get to know your patients, and, well, their families ! Seems obvious eh? But increasingly I’m realizing how rare an opportunity that is in medicine. There’s also a lot of variety in Family Meds, both in the types of patients that you care for, and the types of complaints that they may have. But perhaps what I find most attractive about Family Meds, is that you get to have those longer conversations with your patients where you answer random questions that they have about their health, and work through issues that really matter to them. There is a true partnership at play.
Anyway, what an illuminating day! I rounded it off by going to an art show put on my classmates, then some quick swing dancing, before I now must buckle down to some work.
November 8, 2008
Movember 8th
One week ago, when it all began, I challenged you to come up with $50 before I would share the gruesome Movember photo blog. By Tuesday morning you had succeeded in my challenge. By this Saturday morning you have surpassed my challenge seven-fold!!! WOW 
!!! You are all fantastic! A mega-big thank-you to everyone who has donated so far.
For anybody new to the Movember thing: Find out about Movember, read how I decided to participate, and if you are able, please donate!
Let’s keep those donations coming in!! This next week, having learned the prostate anatomy we’ll be talking about prostate diseases like cancer and benign prostatic hyperplasia. Since you did so fantastically well this week, my next challenge is to increase the total by $100. If you can do so by next weekend, then I promise to keep the hairs growing and the pictures coming 
!
One juicy new piece of information: due to multiple requests, the animal on my upper lip will in fact be tamed into a handlebar mustache….. hmmm… lovely.
And now, as promised, the updated photo blog.
Photo Diary
November 4, 2008
Do You Know Where Your Prostate is At?
As Movember is already a few days underway, I’m starting a series of posts to learn about men’s health issues. In case you’re just joining the bandwagon: find out about Movember, read how I decided to participate, and if you are able, please donate! Thank you so much to those of you who have already donated!!
Before we start talking about prostate cancer, prostate hyperplasia, or anything else, you’ve got to ask yourself: do you know where your prostate is at?
If you happen to be a woman, then don’t worry too much about it because you don’t have one! The prostate is a male-only organ located within the pelvis. Have a look at the diagram above of a normal prostate. Try to identify the following anatomical relationships:
- Centrally in the picture: the prostate
- Above the prostate: the urinary bladder
- Below: the pelvic diaphragm, which divides the pelvis from the perineum
- Anterior (left-side of the picture): the pubic bone – part of the bony pelvis
- Posterior (right-side of the picture): the rectum
- Running straight through the prostate: the urethra
That last bullet point is crucial! The urethra is a tube that conducts urine and semen to the exterior. Before passing through the penis, it first travels straight through the prostate gland. We’ll see in a future post how this arrangement means that prostate disease can have detrimental effects on urination.
A healthy prostate functions to produce fluid secretions for the semen. Sperm that are secreted with prostatic fluid are more mobile and survive longer, illustrating the importance of the prostate to fertility.
November 1, 2008
Movember 1st
Here goes ! Find out about Movember, read how I decided to participate, and if you are able, please donate!
I’ll be posting the first horrific set of mug shots into the photo diary next weekend… but only if YOU manage to donate a total of at least $50 by that time.
Photo Diary:
Mov. 1 (clean shaven)
October 31, 2008
Cardiovascular Exam
I’ve realized that I probably give a rather skewed impression of medical school through what I’ve been posting to these pages. Not everything that we learn is clinical skills! In fact, most of the time we’re sitting in our dungeon classroom for hours on end just trying desperately to stay awake. That’s what medical school is really about. Or, at least the first phase.
But of course, that brief Thursday afternoon when we dress up all fancy and head down to the Clinical Education Centre to play doctor is the absolute high of the week. Thus it is also mostly what I blog about! This post will be no exception.
Today we learned the cardiovascular exam, with the help of both volunteer patients and standardized patients (actors/actresses who have been trained to present like a patient with a particular condition). I’m glad that we had patients helping us, because the cardiovascular exam requires quite a bit of disrobing, and would have been awkward to perform on classmates to say the least.
The basics of a cardiovascular exam are visual inspection, palpation, and finally auscultation. That is: you look at the superficial anatomy of the heart and the great vessels; you feel for pulses, heaves, lifts, or thrills; and finally you listen for the heart sounds, murmurs, or bruits. I found it surprising just how much information can be gleaned about the heart without any more equipment than your hands and a stethoscope.
Of course, mostly what we learned today was the motions of executing the rituals of a cardiovascular exam -where to palpate, where to listen, and how to communicate effectively with the patient. What’s still lacking, I feel, is a good appreciation of the findings! I’m probably not going to be able to hear and identify a carotid bruit, until I’ve actually met and examined a patient with a carotid bruit! Seems obvious eh?
October 28, 2008
Movember
I have a question for you !! Yes, you! If you’re reading this, chances are that you’re not some random reader but that you know who I am.
So you’ll probably know that I like to stay nicely clean-shaven. In fact, I’m quite scrupulous about it. Shaving must occur once a day, sometimes twice if I plan to go out in the evening. Before you say it, I do realize how unnecessarily compulsive that is – I don’t think anybody’s facial hair grows quite that fast! But then, understanding my obsessive nature, you’ll appreciate even more the sacrifice that I’m thinking of making.
Here’s the question: would you pay (and how much) to see me grow a moustache?
Movember is the month formerly known as November. During this month, men register with cleanly-shaven faces on Movember 1st, and then make a pact not to shave their mo’s for the rest of the month. The whole event is a fundraiser for prostate cancer research. To learn more about the awesomeness of Movember, or to join the rage yourself, visit The Official Movember Website.
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer threat in men. In fact, one in seven men will get it sometime during their lifetime. Just think about that for a minute… I’m sure that you have at least seven close male friends. One of them is statistically bound to get prostate cancer.
The average life expectancy for men in Canada is five years younger than that for women. Part of the explanation for this, is a lack of awareness about the health issues that males face in particular. How much do you know about prostate cancer? How much does your father know? So the goal of Movember is not only to raise money, but to raise awareness in all people about the health issues that men face.
WordPress has this really cool new polling feature that I wanted to try out. Before committing to Movember, I wanted to get a sense of whether there would be people (i.e. YOU!) backing me up ! For those readers living far away, I’d do my best to include you with regular photo-updates here, and lots of information posted! Please respond honestly:
October 25, 2008
Eyes Wide Open
So a couple days ago I sat down to my computer to write a blog post about learning the retina exam. It was only to discover that I couldn’t read the words on the screen… and well, that was the end of that. You see, my pupils were still dilated because in the course of learning the exam, we had been practising on each other. The retina exam becomes vastly easier if you use eyedrops to dilate the pupils, so a few of us had to take a hit for the team.
The screening retina exam is actually way cool ! It’s got to be one of the most exciting moments during a general physical. Using a tool called an ophthalmoscope, you peer through the pupil (like looking through a keyhole) to the retina in the back of the eye. What you’re hoping to see is a nice pink looking retina, a yellow circle called the optic disk at the fundus of the eye, which is where the nerves bundle together to go back into the brain, and arteries coursing peripherally. Here’s what a normal looking retina looks like:
Perhaps the most interesting part of a retinal exam is considering the path of the light. To achieve the above view, light travels from the lamp in the ophthalmoscope, through the lens of the patient’s eye, bounces off their retina, passes through the patient’s lens again, passes through your own lens, and finally hits your own retina. Amazing!
If anybody reading this wants an eye exam, I’m just dying to get some practice ! Do let me know,
