blood needs to stay in its place!

Bad things happen when blood doesn't stay in its vessels!
My granny had genetically high blood pressure from a young age and maybe some genetic weakness in her vessel walls as well.
This lead to aneurysms, 3...
The first one happened shortly after my mother was born, and she had emergency neurosurgery..this is risky now and even more so then!
Somehow she survived but was never the same. She also never bonded with my mother as she spent my moms 1st year of life in the hospital and rehab. I never knew or understood, I just thought my granny was mean! Really mean....hot sauce mean!
When I was 8, we were living in colorado with my paternal grandparents and I stayed up late one night reading...A call came in and I knew it was bad, so many hushed tones in the kitchen. My granny had an unknown abdominal aortic aneurysm and it ruptured during the night...Somehow she survived!
The final aneurysm was in her brain, I was 16.....
She was having regular checks by this point, having survived 2 very rare and severe events already.
My mother worked with my grandfather in their home and my sister was there. My mom and grandfather were in the office and Jenny and my granny were in the living room. My granny made a salad and was eating on the couch. Jenny said she got up and went to the bathroom. She seemed fine previously and didnt hint to any discomfort. Maybe she had a headache come on suddenly or nausea. Jenny grew worried and called attention to my grandfather and mom who then found her in the bathroom. There she had gotten sick and was collapsed. My mom said she seemed to have just a few seconds of awareness and fear in her eyes but then it was gone.
She was on a life support machine for a few days but it was clear the damage was severe and they pulled her off. She was able to donate a few tissues and was cremated.
I wish she could have kept her blood pressure under control and maybe stopped sneaking smokes here and there...although it might not have done much to help. It seemed she was destined for vessel instability. However one thing of note...the last 6 months of her life was the nicest I ever saw my granny be, did she know? She made my sisters and I afghan blankets and just was generally very very unusually pleasant, maybe she had some 6th sense about it.....
 

My heart tale

We are getting into the cardio section of A&P and it takes me back to my big heart scare!
I was having palpitations a lot and feeling really run down. One day while at the med group for something unrelated I started to have another run of palpitations so I decided to ask the dr about them. He really blew me off as I was young and not overweight, had no risk factors. I was so upset and refused to leave until he at least listened with his stethoscope.... He refused, but I wasn't going to leave. Finally another dr stepped in and ordered a EKG. It, no surprised came back abnormal. I was sent for a stress test and that was abnormal too! Then they sent me for a stress test with imaging, and to my horror it showed that at my hearts peak, there was a round area on my heart about the size of a dime that the dye did not perfuse too.
I was sent for an angiogram....I was terrified! They told me how 1 in 300 die on the table and if there was a problem with my heart they may just send me straight to the OR and crack my chest! Here I was with a little baby and I might be dying!!
I wrote Abby a letter the night before my operation, just in case I died and she would never know how much I loved her! That letter is still in the back of her baby book!
They took me back and I felt like I was an airplane on a tarmac, just in a long line of old people waiting for there angiogram procedures. Just a line of hospital beds...it was so odd. I got even more odd looks for being young and healthy looking....
I don't remember the procedure even though I was technically awake..to cough when they asked me too. Coughing clears the dye out faster, before it can irritate things.
They found no abnormalities and that was that!
I moved a month later and as it goes with the military, they lost my records for the 1st of 2 times. I never really had any more follow up.
When I exercise  or my heart skips beats sometimes I am struck by fear and just remember that little black circle where red should be...I hope I am ok

Im Back!

Time for A&P II

I am feeling a bit nervous this semester...taking this class and micro at the same time :/
I spend so much time to do the best I can (get an A) and I hope I can do that in both classes!
So we are jumping into the endocrine system and blood the last 2 weeks.
We talked about diabetes insipidus which is when the hypothalamus is not producing or the pituitary gland isn't releasing ADH (anti diuretic hormone) Also it can be caused by the kidneys being insensitive to the hormone.
I had this a couple of years ago and I peed excessively. I went to the doctor thinking I had a UTI and that was not the problem. They had me do a 24 hour urine catch and in that time I had over 6000 ML which is excessive!
They took me to an Italian cancer hospital for a brain MRI, they thought I may have had a tumor in my pituitary gland. There was no tumor altho my pituitary or hypothalamus (I cant remember which one) was slightly swollen and larger than normal. Over the next 6 weeks scans showed it continue to head back to a normal size and slowly the diabetes insipidus ceased as well.

I was an interesting and somewhat frightful experience! I didnt get to ask a lot of questions or have a great understanding of what was going on. My PCM was general and the Italian neurologist was pretty hard to understand at times!

A update to my previous post!

I wrote a blog about hydrocephalus and then today while perusing the news I found a story about a texas baby named baby Klaus. He is 11 months old and has severe hydrocephalus. For some reason no neurosurgeons would help this family and now his head has swollen 130% larger than it should!
Finally a physician has stepped in to help this poor baby and so far since installing a shunt, his head has shrunk 12 inches.
It is tragic, they fear he may be blind, deaf and disabled, but as the dr poignantly says in the video at the bottom of the news story, you never give up on a babies brain!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/11/29/2010-11-29_doctors_in_texas_rally_to_save_baby_klaus_born_with_massive_head_due_to_excess_f.html

Its megamind baby!

That is what my 4 year old exclaimed when she saw this picture from my A&P textbook! I don't know who megamind is, she tells me its a movie.
This adorable little one however has hydrocephalus, which is an abnormal accumulation of cerebral spinal fluid in the brain. It is a condition that one can be born with or acquired later on at some point in life. It can be life threatening, and damaging to the brain. In newborns the skull is not fused so there is some room for the fluid building up. At this point a shunt can be inserted to drain excess fluid out of the skull. In adults it can be very dangerous because the skull is fused and can lead to brain damage much faster from the excess pressure buildup.
I had a friend in high school who had a shunt placed as an infant because he was born with hydrocephalus. He was lucky and had no deficits as a result. He was very smart and ran cross country. Once his shunt became infected and had to be hospitalized, he did recover though. I know he had said he had to have surgery to revise his shunt when he hit puberty and grew several inches. I am guessing the shunt didn't grow with him!

 

Home stretch!

Just a handful of weeks left in class, I am ready for a break! This class has been such a marathon and its not over, one more semester to go! I try not to think to much about that fact. I truly think of this much like a marathon, if I think about how far I have left to go, I wont make it to that final mile!
Its so much work to study for an A, exhausting actually, but that is the goal I gave set for myself and have been accomplishing.

We have a test on the central nervous system in a few days so I am in full study mode, as soon as I finish this psych paper, and algebra test! Such a balancing act, and I suck at it!

We have gotten to see Katie now twice and it is so amazing. I am so very grateful for this opportunity, and so glad I chose to come to this college. Not many at my level of education get the chance to see something so cool.

She is 91 years old and seems so far to be in fantastic shape! I wonder how she died and marvel at the muscles and organs that carried her through 9 years short of a century!
I caught myself on the first night, resting my fingers on top of her hand while Molly was showing us something. Much like I would if I was comforting her or something. I know she doesn't need comforting anymore but it seemed only right, for what she is giving us! I looked at her hand, age spots and so grandmotherly. I get way over sentimental sometimes but I thought this hand must have held little hands across the street and cooked food for loved ones. So much, someone does in 91 years.
I imagine she was wonderful and did amazing things, even if it isn't true, because I don't want to think anything less.
   

My first Stitches!

I can think its cool,  now that it doesn't hurt so bad.....

2 stitches

I had a very normal flesh colored round mole there, for as long as I could remember. This summer it started getting red and itchy and sometimes painful. Then it suddenly deflated! Thats the only way I can describe it, it looked empty. At my checkup I told the doc about it, and he decided since it had been changing and irritated, that we should remove it.

I had a punch biopsy, which basically consisted of them taking a little cookie cutter to my leg. She then stitched up the spot that they cookie cuttered the mole out of, and wahlaa!
It hurt more than I expected, and the stitches bled more than I expected but I did stand in line for 45 minutes to vote after that appt. (when I was supposed to be laying on the couch taking it easy for a little bit) There are some things that must not be ignored however!

They called with the results, No suspicious cells! However she did say it was actively growing deeper in a non cancerous way.....No wonder it was irritating! I wonder if the pathologist could see cells in differing stages of mitosis or something, to make that call!