Today Was Something New

Today I woke up extra early to get ready because I knew that I had a pretty long day ahead of me. I took a shower, got dressed, and met my proctor group at the center of the hall to head off to breakfast.

I went to breakfast and enjoyed a bowl of oatmeal, a muffin, and a bowl of fruit and some cranberry juice. I quickly ate dinner and walked outside the cafeteria to start heading to Med101. Once we got into class, we took a really quick individual quiz and took one with our respective group mates. Once all of that business was dealt with, Alex gave a detailed lecture on how ketones may affect the body in a patient with type I diabetes. Alex started off with giving background information on the pancreas. He said that the pancreas is able to create energy in the form of glucose, and rarely in the form of ketones. He soon went on to say that individuals with type I diabetes are in able to use glucose as forms of energy. Since this occurs, the pancreas begins secreting excessive amounts of ketones and releases them into the bloodstream. The major problem with that is that ketones are essentially from of acetone that contain acid. This leads to acid levels rising in the bloodstream which may have drastic consequences. Alex soon went on to explain how everything is released into the bloodstream. Alex mentioned potassium, water, and glucose entering and leaving the bloodstream at an extreme rate, a rate in fact, that would lead to the decrease of volume in the blood. With this occurring in the bloodstream, there may be very little blood circulating to the brain, lungs, heart and other really important parts of the body. Alex soon connecting this to a "patient" that had been taken to the hospital for a having a coma. Besides the coma, other problems were found. The patient had blood sugar levels above 500, was heavily breathing, had a really rapid heart beat and was found t show high acidity levels in the bloodstream. After all of this background information, Alex told the class to come up with a treatment for this patient. By the end of the exercise, the class decided to first make sure that the patients airway, breathing and circulation were in good condition. We soon decided that it was best to even out the levels of potassium in the bloodstream, which would take care of the acidity, and then we decided to give the patient insulin to lower the patient's really high sugar levels.

After this wonderful presentation, our class moved onto a wonderful discussion about the importance of consent and all of the different loopholes that are really common in issues with consent. My group sat in a circle and the discussion was facilitated by Alex and Jennifier, The discussion took over an hour and left my group members confused about the ethicality of revoking the right to decision making to patients, parents of patients, the elderly, children and children that are undergoing custody trials. the discussion showed me how complex and sensitive everything is and how important it is to take a few steps back to analyze such a complex situation and formulate the best possible decision for the patient.

After the group discussion. we went to our arete, learned some more, went to dinner, ate some more,a and went to our dorms to get ready for a really unexpected VSA party. It was so fun and I finally worked up the courage to dance with my friends instead of just standing around. I experienced something new today. I was really productive and was still able to have a lot of fun. I will try to do this more often while at my stay at Vandy for the two weeks that remain.