A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
One of my proudest moments was when a cardiologist looked at my ECG and asked if he could show it in his course the next day. Unfortunately I can't remember what he saw, and the arrythmia that led me to consult went away once I quit a major source of stress.
once I quit a major source of stress.
Job? Like 95% of my mental problems disappeared right after quitting that job...
Postgrad studies. 💀 I'll take a job any day over that hell!
I had an eye infection after getting some dirty water in my eye in a cave in Croatia. They did all sorts of tests because they couldn't believe it wasn't something way more serious. My eyeball was so swollen I couln't move it or even blink. It was the talk of the eye clinic.
My mom has some kind of acid reflux issue. To diagnose, they had her swallow some radioactive thing and x-rayed her. It was so bad the doctor called in a whole flock of med students to watch the radioactive tracer yo-yo in her esophagus.
I had a doctor call in students to look at a huge ball on my neck while I was waiting in the ER for my diagnosis. They shoveled my into different devices 3 times, at one point I saw 7 people crammed into the CT diagnostic room which was obviously made for not more than 3. Turned out I was an excellent example for a (at that point merely assumed) Stage 1 Lymphoma.
Happened about 8 years ago, am healthy now (thank you fellow german taxpayers 👍). Btw, don't hesitate to ask for THC in the hospital if you suffer brutal Nausea & Emesis during chemo, it really helped me.
If it was an x-ray, isn't it a little weird to use a radioactive probe (or contrast agent)? I thought that for GI things it is usually a just contrast agent that absorbs x-rays really well... barium or some shit.
It was probably a contrast agent like you said, I don't have any kind of medical background, I just know that it lit up under imaging and the med nerds thought it was interesting, lol.
You're correct, it's a barium solution. I've drank it myself, it's moderately gross.
It isn't great when a doctor goes to fetch their colleague to have a look while examinig you. But of course that after all the same boring stuff, they are excited about something unusual. I heard about an ophthalmologist who, out of all her carreer, was most excited about solving someone's issues by finding crabs in their eyebrows.
As someone who is in the medical field, I am so sorry when I do that, but it is so much fun. You get to please a colleague, get intrigued and fascinated in a pair, and tell the patient that whatever their problem was is now known! Most of the time it also means you can actually start to help the patient, which is always nice, rather than doing more investigations.
eyebrow crabs?!! doctors are a different breed, that's nightmare fuel to me.
Two things you don't want to hear from your doctor. "Oh wow..." and "Oh no..."
"huh"
"hmmm.."
"uhhhhhhhhh"
I got an, “I’d never seen that before,” from a surgeon. Who is a specialist in her field focusing explicitly on the procedure she performed on me. 🙃
You should get a commission for training and research use for that.
And "may I allow my students to see this?"
And my response "is it especially rare, especially bad, or both? Either way, sure."
Hopefully it's "none of the above, very common, but this is the first one we saw today, and we're in a hurry"
me in the ER when a neurology professor and her gaggle of students came to examine me after the ER doc called them up. it was giving House.
“Well, the good news is you get to have a disease named after you…”
Also "oops"
My husband recently broke his foot (second time in 5 years). While at the doctor they discovered he has an extra bone in some parts of his leg, then they’re looking at things on the x-ray and asking if all these various parts hurt because apparently his leg is all kinds of fucked up from high school sports.