The midterm yesterday went well. It was less challenging then what I expected which is good, I guess. I'm pretty sure I got a A. Office hours definitely helped reinforce the material from lecture. So I'm patting myself on the back for trekking out to his office the last two weeks.
After the midterm, around 6, I attended a Women in Medicine panel on campus. It was put on by a medical sorority so a lot of the women were alums, which is great. I met the first medical student I know who has gone straight from undergrad to medical school, no gap year. I asked her when she took her MCATS and she said April of Junior year, which is the latest you can take it if you want to get straight in. She got a 34. Yikes, I can not imagine taking that in two months, nor can I imagine doing that well. She's 25 now, in her first year of residency - family medicine, I believe. She had her first child third year in Med school. Props to her. All of the women on the panel were married, and most had children. It was pretty motivational. The take home message from the panel was not to rush, everything will fall into place. They emphasized that they know it's hard for us to to believe that now but in the end, there is no rush. Hmmm. I'm trying to let that sink in. That thought is battling with my parent's urging to figure out what I want to do and do it quickly.
Halfway through the panel, my stomach started hurting like crazy. Sigh, this is what midterms do to me: stress, indigestion, sleep deprivation and the worst: canker sores from the sleep deprivation. It's usually only one or two sores, but that's enough pain, thank you. Except for the stomach ache, the usual symptoms weren't as prevalent this time around because I managed my studying and time better.
Today was pretty low-key, nothing particularly interesting. My physiology professor is canceling class again. 3rd time this quarter. It makes me completely sad, because the reason for the cancellation is because his wife is going into surgery. I would give up all potential canceled class days for all my undergrad and grad years for his wife to be in better health. But I can only hope that the surgery goes well. Of course he remained perfectly positive and happy in office hour today.
Neato facto from our discussion:
Carbon Monoxide poisoning is a result of Hemoglobulin's high affinity for that gas (compared to oxygen), causing the amount of oxygen delivered to our tissues to be almost none (only .3ml per 100ml of blood from non-Hb bound dissolved oxygen). This doesn't get sensed by the baroreceptors in our carotid sinus or our aortic arch because blood pressure remains the same, making carbon monoxide a silent killer. Ooo, deadly.
The drop in oxygen doesn't get picked up by the chemoreceptors either. Chemoreceptors suck at registering the functional oxygen level in the blood because they only detect a tiny bit of oxygen that dissolves in the plasma. They're useless at detecting drops in hemoglobin oxygen saturation.
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ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. I wonder if other warm-blooded, aerobic organisms are this susceptible to this form of poisoning. It seems like they would because there aren't many places in nature with concentrated carbon monoxide.