Asian Moms Video

Sooooooo not pc, but so funny...
Things Asian Moms Say
"you're so fat!" ..."you're so skinny! eat more! eat more!"
Ah...good ol' asian culture.
(And mom, if you're reading this, I'm thankful you're not like this!)

Reminiscing about Sierra Leone

When a friend asked what Sierra Leone was like...it brought back good memories:

It's like going through a dream

after i came back, it all seemed so surreal.

Depends on what you're talking about. city or country.

In freetown it was very crowded, tin roof cement houses, tiny dirt roads or very badly paved roads.

A lot of taxis and terrible traffic that it took hrs to go down a few miles. A lot of makeshift stores on the side of the road, people walking around skimming past the cars.

Country was very different. rainy season - very green, beautiful. and dry in the dry season - like the typical savannah. mud huts with straw roof. villages. now they have some paved highways

but used to be dirt road first time i went - and the dirt is red (just like they say in the movie), so driving long distances means you end up completely red.

women traveling long distances for water sometimes if they don't have a well. carry incredible amounts of things on their head. children playing around. women with kids in front of them and behind them and on side of them while they cook/crush rice/work

Wish I could go back.

Animals: Make Me Warm and Make Me Shiver

This is so lovely!  And if you don't read Chinese...well, these pictures are worth thousands of words:
 (and others...)
http://news.backchina.com/viewnews-179184-gb2312.html

The itsy, bitsy spider climbed up the Pakistani tree (yikes!):

National Geographics

Belated New Years (Chinese)

Haha, this is hilarious: http://www.someecards.com/chinese-new-year-cards/happy-chinese-new-year-to-someone-im-pretty-sure-is-chinese

Internal medicine memorable moments

• Ascites, 18L out
• Enormous pulmonary artery aneurysm
• D-transposition of the great arteries (post Glenn and MBTS)
• Guy from WWI times
• Wellen's syndrome on EKG
• Nicest old man ever - I just want him to be my grandfather!
• Patient almost presented as CPC case - 2yr dyspnea with multiple skin abscesses 
• Answer: ANCA negative Wegener's w/o renal involvement (per me)
• Small cell lung cancer, SIADH, metastasized to brain
• Gastric adenocarcinoma with duodenal inflammation
• Doing Epley maneuver ironically induced nystagmus
• Young man with ejection fraction of 20%, ESRD, DKA glucose of 1200 (HbA1c 12.5)
• Hearing crisp, metallic S1 of bicuspid metal valves
• Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy patient: according to nurse, "He's nice, but kind of a dick. He's a nice dick. Is that possible?"  Hearing the systolic murmur increase with valsalva was a bonus.
• Severe mitral stenosis with 7cm left atrium (size of ventricles combined!)
• Hearing S3, S4, and even some diastolic rumble (above)

Largest Pulmonary Artery Aneurysm EVER!

Today we saw the catheter/CT of the largest pulmonary artery aneurysm ever! It was about the size of the aneurysm here ...POST operation to reduce it:

It was caused by congenital stenosis of the pulmonary artery.  How unfortunate!  But apparently it's risk of rupture is low compared to the danger of blocking off the coronary artery that it's pushing up against.  Also, there's a kink in it, so it might cause problems with heart failure.

It was hilarious watching the attending ask the intern what it was.  Actually, we were all confused what was going on in the catheterization.  For the most part, we all recognized the right ventricle, but nobody could figure out what the huge chamber it was going up to was.  Haha.  Crazy!

I Delivered a Baby!

So exciting!!! I finally delivered a baby!  Since I was so upset I didn't get to deliver a baby on my ob/gyn rotation, I scheduled to be "on call" for delivering babies over my switch weekend.  And it was totally worth it!  The first baby, I actually didn't make it there on time.  Sighs...I was still snoozing at home.  But then I got to deliver this beautiful baby girl!  So pretty/cute!  Wow, it really amazes me how hard you have to pull on the head to get the shoulders out.  Man.  You'd think they'd get nerve damage from all that pulling - oh wait, sometimes they do.

I actually got to deliver 1/2 of another baby.  Yup, the head came out, and the shoulders were a tad big for the tiny pelvis, so the resident shoved me out of the way and started doing ob magic.  Thankfully, the baby was cooperative and came out fine.  Phew.  It was a messy one, mixed with blood, mucous, and stool.

Man, I thought I had my life figured out.  Thought I'd go into pediatrics.  But now after doing these deliveries, and encountering these awesome residents, it made me reconsider my career path again.  I thought there were so many signs against me doing Ob/Gyn.  But now, I'm wavering again.  Sighs...I think I might have to see how I like surgery before I make my final decision.

1 in 5 die before age 5

Its incredible that almost 1 out of 5 kids on Sierra Leone die before reaching the age of 5! With most of the deaths caused by preventable causes. Sighs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PjHVzvUbsg&feature=youtube_gdata_player