Cardiopulmonary Week

This week, we are covering pulmonary vascular disease. Our PBL case is a continuation of a case we had last year about a woman who got deep vein thrombosis (DVT), which is a blood clot in the large veins of the legs. You may have heard about DVT in the news. People who are immobilized (ex. bedridden or sitting for hours on an airplane) are at higher risk of getting them. The danger of DVTs is that pieces of the clot can break off and travel to the lungs (i.e., form a pulmonary embolism). Pulmonary embolisms can kill people if they're massive enough. This year, of course, our patient's problems are more complicated. But it's still cool to get a patient that we already "know" from before.

We had another pharm seminar yesterday, and today we had an anatomy session on the embryology of the heart. The actual lab part was mainly a review of the thorax anatomy that we learned last year, which was really helpful. This year I have a much better idea about what I am looking at in anatomy. I really like that we keep doing anatomy second year like this, because it helps to keep it fresh. For FCM, we had patient presentations again. One of my group members who was supposed to present was out sick, so we got out early.

I had clinic in the afternoon. The weather is still not so great, but most of the patients showed up anyway. There is this one older patient whom I've seen several times in clinic, and she came in today. She's always entertaining. Today she was telling me about how she is in such good shape for her age, and what she does to be in such good shape. Then she started telling me that if I follow her rules, I will be in just as good of shape when I get to be her age. She really is in pretty good shape, but it's still funny to hear her talk about it like that.