Orgasm.

Have I hooked your interest with that post title?

There are so many things I want to tell you! One day I will. Until then, here's a ridiculous story that one of my friends shared with me:

ENT at UCSF where he did his residency was sort of a dumping ground for patients that had vague symptoms that could sort of be related to the ENT area. Bob had had a week of patients with weird complaints but the Friday patient topped it all. A woman of 27 years came into his clinic asking to have her tonsils "put back in." She said that she had had her tonsils removed 4 years previously because of chronic tonsillitis.

Dumbfounded, Bob asked her why she wanted them put back in. Her reply was, "I have not had an orgasm since I had my tonsils out and so I need to have the surgery reversed." Even to this day Bob said that he was so surprised by her response that all he could do was laugh (uproariously unfortunately).

Needless to say the referral was to Psychiatry not to the OR suite.

Babies are so weird!

We were talking about pediatric sickle cell anemia, and my professor showed this picture while he talked about prenatal screening. I thought it was incredible and eerie.

Pretty...Infectious?

We're STILL doing infectious disease (though we have recently graduated from bacterial infections to virology), and although most of the time is spent on the terrible things that these pathogens can do (seriously, I don't ever want to see another genital ulcer) not a lot of time is spent ... admiring them. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't want everyone going around and getting a virus or something just because I think they are pretty! But for sure, something should be said about the shape of things, no?

Here we have a picture of Treponema pallidum- the culprit for syphilis. This bug is a type of bacteria called a spirochete: thin, slender, helically coiled organisms. (Even it's description is beautiful!) But, just a word of advice: don't get the syph. Unless you are particularly fond of rashes and ulcers. Gross!




The adenovirus. This little guy is the cause of some pretty severe respiratory and enteric distress, usually in close populations of young adults (cough, college, cough). But I kind of think that it looks like a firecracker that's sending off sparks.



For some reason, I feel like biology really likes to use crowns in their descriptions of things (corona radiata, anyone?) and so I thought I'd include Coronavirus into the mix. Remember the SARS epidemic? That was a type of our royal majesty. Also, along with the rhinovirus it's one of the major causes of the common cold. So make sure to say hi to it for me this winter!



That's all for now, because really, I should be studying. What should YOU be doing right now?

<3,
F


(All pictures/info from Dr. S and V's lectures.)