Milk - In Balls

I've never heard of anyone ever saying that milking the prostate will 'make man parts larger' but I have heard of it feeling good - thanks American Pie!


Here's the start to the story:

A 27 year old male came in withe the chief complaint of testicular pain. On exam he had extremely enlarged, red/purple testicles. There was active drainage, he was febrile and tachycardic, and the infection had spread to his lower abdomen and thighs. It was basically a surgical emergency.

Go ahead an click the link and read the whole thing.  I have no idea what went through this guy's head when his girlfriend suggested that.  Too bad it wasn't, "gee maybe I should Google that to see if it's legit" or "I should call my medical buddy to see if this is for real" or "wow interesting, I should look that up in a book at the library."


I feel bad for him, but that was a STUPID move.


[Via Happy Hospitalist]

Applied Science

Diversity Programs

Just recently medical students here at the Sanford School of Medicine were sent out summer opportunities for minorities.  I think the language specifically was under-represented minorities.  It seemed like a pretty sweet gig, and being one of the only minorities in our medical school class, I inquired about the opportunity in an email.


For those who don't know me personally, I consider myself an Asian-American.  Evidently, these minority programs are not for us, because:

Asian-Americans which are Americans of Asian descent (included in this group are Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Cambodian/Khmer, Pakistani Americans and others whose national origin is from the Asian continent) are not under- represented minorities.

This leads me to believe that other Asian-Americans and I are either over-represented or perfectly-represented minorities (I am of course assuming this, by process of elimination) .  Dang it!  Why are we so good at stuff?

Awesome Pharmacology Quote

After re-watching one of the pharmacology lectures online, I heard this gem.


"Cut yourself under the tongue someday and see how fast your mouth fills with blood."


You should try it!

More Vaccinations

Bill Maher, a man who battles conspiracy theories and intelligent design.  I have enjoyed his movies and I like that he battles some of the crazy things that people believe in.  But one thing that he has dropped the ball on, is vaccinations.  He has even told many people to avoid getting vaccines all together.  This is just crazy talk.


Dr. Michael Shermer writes him an open letter:

However, I believe that when it comes to alternative medicine in general and vaccinations in particular you have fallen prey to the same cognitive biases and conspiratorial thinking that you have so astutely identified in others. In fact, the very principle of how vaccinations work is additional proof (as if we needed more) against the creationists that evolution happened and that natural selection is real: vaccinations work by tricking the body’s immune system into thinking that it has already had the disease for which the vaccination was given. Our immune system “adapts” to the invading pathogens and “evolves” to fight them, such that when it encounters a biologically similar pathogen (which itself may have evolved) it has in its armory the weapons needed to fight it. This is why many of us born in the 1950s and before may already have some immunity against the H1N1 flu because of its genetic similarity to earlier influenza viruses, and why many of those born after really should get vaccinated.


Vaccinations are not 100% effective, nor are they risk free. But the benefits far outweigh the risks, and when communities in the U.S. and the U.K. in recent years have foregone vaccinations in large numbers, herd immunity is lost and communicable diseases have come roaring back. This is yet another example of evolution at work, but in this case it is working against us. (See ScienceBasedMedicine.org for numerous articles answering every one of the objections to vaccinations.)

To which Bill Maher responds, on his website blog. I have to admit, at first his article seemed like a pretty good response. Until I read Dr. Novella's reaction to it.

Bill Maher has been getting a lot of heat lately and seems to be getting a bit defensive. He was particularly stung by Michael Shermer’s open letter in which Dr. Shermer thought it necessary to give Maher a basic lesson in germ theory.


Unfortunately, Maher has responded not by thoughtfully engaging his critics, but with a rambling defensive diatribe in which he simultaneously protests the criticism pointed his way while repeating and amplifying the pseudoscientific nonsense that garnered criticism in the first place.

If you want to get a good feel for how CRAZY this vaccine debate is getting, I really recommend reading these three articles. It amazes me how much science and hard work goes into understanding the vaccines, how they work, and their side effects (as one of our professors at the medical school has done extensive work with vaccines and human immunity) yet fine people who question vaccines.

Alarm Clock

I find that every school year I go through cycles.  Almost as the season changes.  In some parts of late spring - early summer I can wake up when I need to with no alarm clock at all.  This time of the year late fall - early winter I find myself completely sleeping through alarms.  This morning I sprung awake 10 minutes before class started having slept through two alarm clocks.  I don't even remember pushing snooze.  Even weirder, Hunnbun called me at 8 am and I remember talking to her - kinda.  I have no idea what causes it, but I am going to blame it on the short amount of sun light.  


Does anyone else have this problem?

A Different Kind of Busy

Not too long ago I was down at a local bar relieving some stress.  The second year of medical school is "nothing to shake a stick at" as one professor would say.  So, I need to be with some friends and have a few drinks once in a while to help me get my head back in the game - so to speak.  

At the bar, I ran into some Pre-Med friends of mine.  Both of them were doing great, and wanted to know how I was doing and how medical school was going.  It was only a couple years ago I was in their shoes.  Wondering if I would get into medical school, and what medical school is really like.  Sure you read all of these stories that say it's so busy, and it's harder than undergrad.  But you constantly feel the need to see if you can get a clearer answer from a med student.  When I ran into medical students when I was a pre-med, and I wanted to be in their shoes.  To do what they were doing, to feel the stress they were feeling, to be learning what they were learning, and to be happy about it.  I could tell these guys had those feelings too.  

I told them it was busy.  The second year was beating me down, and sometimes it was a little hard to put my head back into the books.  After I got done with my "feel sorry for me, I'm so busy story" both looked at me a little disgusted and said, "we don't feel sorry for you at all."  

After two short years I had forgotten what it was like to be in their shoes.  Knowing what you want to do for the rest of your life, but still one HUGE hurdle away.  Not knowing if you'd be getting into medical school, or have to re-apply the next year, or find a new career - one you're do not have the same passion for as medicine.  Dying to be in a medical student's shoes, to be as busy as they are, and learning medicine instead of taking classes you could not care less about.  I was a little ashamed to be on my whiny busy soap box, when these guys clearly had bigger worries than I.  I had forgotten.

I told them they were completely right, and that was silly of me to be whining to them.  So we moved on and they asked, "How can med school be so ridiculously busy?  As seniors in undergrad we feel like we can juggle a billion things, we're busier than anyone on campus, yet medical students always seem so run down from being busy. How can this be?"

It's a different kind of busy.  Most medical students are Type-A people.  We get things done, we are efficient, and we can juggle a busy schedule.  That's what helped get us here in the first place.  By the time you become a senior undergrad you've mastered the schedule juggling business.  I could juggle volunteering, class, homework, a part-time job, a girlfriend, hang out with a lot of friends, extra-curricular activities - more than two organizations at a time usually, research projects, and have time to still do some hobbies.  Yet, I am run down in medical school.  

The classes below me, and the classes that came before are probably full of students who did exactly those things in their final year of undergrad.  When we get to medical school it's a different feeling all together.  When I juggled all of those things in undergrad, it made me feel energized and I was pumped that I could do so much things in one day.  I was a moving task-completing machine.  In medical school you do not get that same feeling.  And I compared it to this scenario for them: you know when you have a long finals week with a lot of exans?  When you start preparing for that final test and you feel like you cannot sit in one place any longer or look at a book any longer.  You start to feel trapped and you just can't wait to be done with finals week so you can move on.  That's how all of medical school feels - so far.  

We're busy, but not in a good way.