medical definitions – Page 2

Better Him Than Me

1/29/18

I think I’ve mentioned before that I do not watch TV doctor-shows. Because the shows are so ridiculously unreal.

They, those responsible for the show’s existence, take a subject that is otherwise entertaining, good, shocking, and a lot of other adjectives thrown in for good measure, and they apply their license. Literary license, that oft sought after quality of lying. As is often said, the only truth is that everybody lies (I specifically did not reference House for this quote because House is not the origin of this saying).

Some of the ones that I am acquainted with include The Doctor, Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, Marcus Welby, MD, M*A*S*H and MASH (yes they are different), Doogie Howser, MD, St. Elsewhere, House, The Resident. There are many, many others. The one thing that they all have in common is fiction. There isn’t an ounce of truth in any of them. They stage sanitized scenes, use actors, write scripts with sanitized language, and add drama. They have to or they wouldn’t have an audience of 1.

I was recently introduced to a new, social media version of TV doctor-show. ZDoggMD. I’ll give you 2 links to his work that I did watch and enjoy. One for entertainment (1) and the other to illustrate what I’m trying to convey here without my having to actually watch one of the above-mentioned pieces of crap (2). I only qualify this with the following.

ZDogg does a pretty good job of critiquing The Resident (I’ve never seen the show BTW), he just doesn’t go far enough and actually gives checks (his metaphor for “that’s OK” as opposed to an X for “that’s a fail”) where I would not.

But the times, they do change. I watched a few ZDogg YouTube productions and laughed my ass off.

Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave’s 35 years of experience in The Reality Medical Show.

Weary

1. A lot like sepsis, an entertaining spoof of It’s starting to look A Lot Like Christmas; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6q5FGoaxg8

2. A real doctor watches The Resident, a critique of the newest doctor show, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRzLXH52Vr4

Munchhausen by Internet

12/27/15

I have mentioned Münchhausen Syndrome which is a psychiatric factitious disorder (somatoform disorder) wherein those affected feign disease, illness, injury or psychological trauma to draw attention, sympathy or reassurance to themselves. Münchhausen Syndrome by Proxy refers to the abuse of another person, typically a child, in order to seek attention or sympathy for the abuser using feigned illness or injury of the other person or child to gain the attention.

But, the high tech version is out and this is the digital age!

Münchhausen by Internet is a pattern of behavior akin to Münchhausen Syndrome in which the Internet user seeks attention by feigning illnesses in on-line venues such as chat rooms, message boards, web sites and Internet Relay Chat (IRC).

And Facebook. One case describes a woman that had 72 Facebook accounts to present her factitious cancer with many subscribers/friends duped into donations.

Careful what you say on Facebook. You might end up with a syndrome.

Keeping you abreast of the newest of medical findings, your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

The original Münchhausen Syndrome post.

Gonadotropenia

7/2017

My mentor in graduate school did his best to talk me out of going to medical school. He would say, “You are going to have to learn Latin and memorize a bunch of drug names and stuff. You should stay in academia and pursue a career that is interesting.”

Learn Latin I did, kind of. Latin is easy. You can break down the word into parts and a lot of the parts are interchangeable. So once you learn a part, you know part of a lot of other words. Make sense? For Example, hypo appended to the front of a word means low. Like hypotension or low blood pressure. gonado refers to the sexual organs or gonads, specifically the ovaries in women or the testicles in men. tropo means to develop or enhance the effect of something and enia means low or an insufficient amount of something. See, clear as mud.

I like to make my own diagnoses, rather make up my own diagnoses.

Gonadotropenia. This applies to someone that needs to grow some balls and quit whining. This was prompted by a patient that called the ambulance to come to the ED because of a sore throat, for the third time this week.

From your 30 years weary Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.

New Definitions

7/2017

New additions to Dorlands Medical Dictionary

Constipation
noun | con·sti·pa·tion |kän-stə-ˈpā-shən|
First known use; 15th century

1 :Passage of unusually hard dry lumps of stool with bowel movements.
2 :Having an unusually high load of stool contained in the colon (commonly referred to as being full of shit).
3 :Coming to the emergency department for abdominal pain and spending about $10,000 to be told that you need a $2 laxative.

Placebo
noun |pla·ce·bo |plə-ˈsē-(ˌ)bō|
Origin and Etymology; Latin, I shall please

1 :A pharmacologically inert preparation prescribed more for the mental relief of the patient than for its actual effect on a disorder
2 :An inert or innocuous substance used especially in controlled experiments testing the efficacy of another substance (as a drug)
3 :Something tending to soothe
4 :A fictitious diagnosis that justifies this visit to the emergency department at 2:27 am on a Sunday night/Monday morning for something that has been present for 6 months and for which there is no physical or chemical abnormality resulting in a normal physical exam and laboratory testing.

1 :A disease marked by brief paroxysmal attacks of chest pain precipitated by deficient oxygenation of the heart muscles
2 :A respectful method of not having to go to jail when you get stopped for speeding home after a few too many at your local watering hole
3 :The best way to get a field trip to someplace that has a bunch of young, cute women that will attend to you for several hours when you are in prison for life for murder

Laceration
noun |lac·er·a·tion |la-sə-ˈrā-shən|
First known use 1597

1 :A deep cut or tear of the flesh
2 :What happens when your 240 lb 6-year-old bumps his knee on the coffee table reaching for the remote to change the TV to the cartoon channel after you told him to come inside because it was too hot to play outside

From your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.