25.09.21 7.11pm

Finished the obstetrics chapter of Step 2 CK today. Not long to go now!

“Would you still like me if you knew I actually liked cardiology?”

💬 Have you ever worked at the ICU? • Done with 5 night shifts at the ICU! 🥳 It’s been a great learning experience, with an unstable case of lower GI bleed, two cases of tracheostomy bleeds (bleeding through a tube in the trachea), a typical case of supraventricular tachycardia (a rapid arrhythmia that needed that we “reset” the heart with a medication called adenosine), all whilst dealing with the bread and butter of ICU (shocks, sedation issues, DKAs, etc). It definitely gave me a boost of confidence, and reminded me that I am capable of managing these cases. • Now with that done, it’s time for a cozy day at home, a relaxing weekend with my family, and my last interviews at the start of next week!

From my studygram

Healthcare workers are no longer heroes, they are haunted.

09.24.21 | it’s friday!! I’m so happy 😭 it has been a tough week because our “break” is going through lectures, attending SGDs, and fulfilling requirements 🥲 we just have no break we are literally burned out. good thing though, it’s med week next week and I bought a karaoke video 😆 happy weekend! 💜

25.09.2021

Preparing for the first card final in med college, late night revision with my friend.

After thirty years of intensive research, we can now answer many of the questions posed earlier. The recycle rate of a human being is around sixteen hours. After sixteen hours of being awake, the brain begins to fail. Humans need more than seven hours of sleep each night to maintain cognitive performance. After ten days of just seven hours of sleep, the brain is as dysfunctional as it would be after going without sleep for twenty-four hours. Three full nights of recovery sleep (i.e., more nights than a weekend) are insufficient to restore performance back to normal levels after a week of short sleeping. Finally, the human mind cannot accurately sense how sleep-deprived it is when sleep-deprived.

Matthew Walker PhD, Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams

As it gets warmer more and more of us are gonna start spending time outside again, so please look after your skin! it’s your protective barrier against everything that doesn’t belong in you body, as well as an organ where numerous important processes take place; and skin cancer isn’t picky - no level of melanin can protect you 100%.

Skin cancer is one of the most dangerous cancers, and it’s on the rise - it’s especially tricky in folks with a darker complexion, as the myth that a dark complexion = enough protection against the sun is still going strong. Most often, malignant melanoma (the super bad, invasive skin cancer) is found too late - so try to monitor your sun moles and look for any changes in shape, size, coloration (get a professional dermatologist’s opinion if you notice a change!); In this way, you can catch any bad changes in time. But the golden rule remains: prevention, PREVENTION, PREVENTION

Wear your SPF, make sure there’s also UVA and UVB protection, if you can, get quality sunglasses (your eyes can get cancer from the sun too!), and please don’t stay in direct sunlight between 10am and at least 4pm - shade is your friend, clothes (covering up) are your best friend :)

Also make sure you’re staying hydrated and getting in all the vitamins and healthy fats, as they play a big role in maintaining and restoring your skin health!

08.07.2021

“Know that you can start late, look different, be uncertain and still succeed.” -Misty Copeland

Library days, waking up to sunshine and sunsets after a tiring day 🌻

There’s happiness and then there’s realizing that the last ten pages of a scientific paper are just the bibliography.

mugs. are. back. at one of my fav coffee shops and it’s unreal how happy I am!

Also- taking votes, should I go to sleep when I’m planning on getting up at 3:30 AM for a flight? current leaning is just stay up because… well otherwise I’d just take a short nap

A Story of Two Chest X-Rays

One patient with a vaccine and one patient without. Version 2—for the crowd that wants specifics without violating patient privacy (these are published cases).

The top picture is of a 47-year-old man who received the Pfizer vaccine and developed COVID19 2 weeks after. He was overweight (BMI = 29), but without any known comorbidities. He had a runny nose, mild body aches, mild cough. His chest X-ray is relatively normal.

The bottom picture is a 50-year-old active female patient without obesity and not on medications. Her chest X-ray shows diffuse opacities, consolidations in both lungs with lung damage (all the fluffy white), and a pattern that looks like the worst feared complication of COVID19—acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). She needed intubation, mechanical ventilation, and ECMO (extra-corporal membrane oxygenation) – the most life support we can offer.

The mRNA vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease and death— even with the Delta variant. ICUs are starting to fill up with COVID19 patients again. This post was to emphasize that the vaccines are ~95% effective at preventing case 2 from happening. Of course, there are also mild cases of COVID in unvaccinated individuals.

Black lung tissue on the X-Ray is where the oxygen you breathe in gets into the blood. All the fluffy white is where the oxygen cannot get into your blood because of infection/inflammation, that’s essentially what ARDS is and the goal of mechanical ventilation/ECMO is to protect that damaged lung tissue and get the oxygen into your bloodstream and to your brain, heart and other organs.

Source: Jesse O’Shea M.D. Follow here: jesseosheamd.

26.08.2021

One of my closest friends is moving to İstanbul this week for her university and I’ve been running around helping her. On a personal note, there is still sometime until my school will open so I’ve been mostly sleeping and reading my old notes.

09.26.21 | nursing and med school turned me into a night person 🤧 I can hardly maintain my focus in the morning so I put my phone away from me (not within reach), and put a relaxing fireplace on to make studying fun 😭

I plan to finish early so I can cross reference with the book (maybe make flashcards or summary notes?) and squeeze in reading schwartz’s principles of surgery for my report tomorrow.

I hope you guys had a fun weekend at least 😭 can’t wait for tonight’s new ep of hometown cha cha cha 💜

um, excuse me? this is a library on campus and i can read here anytime i want? i'm gonna need a minute

07.18.21. i've realized that i'm most productive in the morning, but i have to be at work at 9am sharp. solution: waking up early, dragging my limp, uncaffeinated body to the library, and trying to work on postbacc apps for an hour before work. being an adult... wouldn't recommend.

Anatomical studies and drawings by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), known as one of the pivotal figures in the development of Western art, was also one of the most original and perceptive anatomists of his or any other era. Although he spent over 25 years investigating the workings of the human body, only a few friends and associates had any intimation of the extent of his medical research. He never taught the subject and never published any of his findings. 

Source: Leonardo Da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man (by Martin Clayton and Ronald Philo); Royal Collection Trust

A man from London has become the second person in the world to be cured of HIV, doctors say.

Adam Castillejo is still free of the virus more than 30 months after stopping anti-retroviral therapy.

He was not cured by the HIV drugs, however, but by a stem-cell treatment he received for a cancer he also had.

— September 3rd 2021, 11:20 pm.

hi everyone, it’s been a while ツ 

a little life update: i recently just started my second year of college in leapmed and aaaah it’s so tiring (saturday classes suck), but i love what we’re learning so it’s all worth it. also, the med school admission test is just a few months away and i don’t know if i have enough time to study for it. oh and lastly, i redecorated my room! what do you think? :)

thanks for following me on here guys, it’s always lovely to meet new friends ♡︎