Tri-3, Wk9, Day 169 - Monday :)

I have a Microbiology Test tomorrow and a presentation to do with a few of my classmates for Professional Development. We're supposed to provide a presentation such as we might give to a bank in the hopes of obtaining a $200,000 loan to start a new chiropractic business.

Today's Class Summary

1. Public Health

• I'm thinking this teacher may have had a rough weekend because he sounded a bit morose today. I guess we all have those kinds of days from time to time. This will be the last semester of teacher for Dr. Anand who first started around 1974. Looooong tenure! :)

2. Pathology I

• This is a tough class and I would sound really smart if I knew everything being taught. We're still covering hemodynamic disorders.
• We covered a lot dealing with Thrombosis. To paraphrase one of our powerpoint slides, "Arterial thrombosis is the most common cause of death in the Western industrialized countries. Most often, thrombosis occurs in the coronary arteries, leading to myocardial infarction (#1 cause of death). However, it may also occur in the heart or carotid system, causing stroke (#2 cause of death)"
• A thrombosis is a coagulation of blood somewhere in a blood vessel. One *very* interesting factoid thrown our way was that a blood clot (which, is basically a synonym for thrombosis) is that a blockage consisting of a blood clot can grow from half a millimeter to 2.5 centimeters within about 20 minutes - that's fast!
• Another very interesting thing talked about today was how endothelial injury is the most prevalent mechanism by which blood clots form. Now, the term, endothelial, simply refers to the type of cell which lines our blood vessels. Under those cells is what's called a basement membrane which, among other things is made up of collagen. The way our blood vessels work is that if a blood vessel is punctured and blood starts flowing out of any hole in the vessel wall, then a mechanism is set up such that when platelet cells flowing in our blood plasma come in contact with the collagen in the basement membrane, then a coagulation cascade starts to occur which essentially plugs the hold in our blood vessel.
• But, what if there isn't a hole in the blood vessel. another way this clotting process can start is if the cells lining the blood vessel get worn away somehow. Then, the basement membrane would be exposed and, as expected, platelets that come in contact w/ the membranous layer of the vessel would start to clot where ever the missing endothelial cell used to be.

3. Diversified II Lab

• We practiced all our adjusting moves again today. I'm going to have to get a lot more practice in so I know the techniques better.

4. Logan Basic I

• We had our first class with a second teacher who teaches Basic. We learned a lot of very interesting things about scoliosis. When you view a person's spine from the spine there are supposed to be curves in the spine. It's a brilliant design and how it's supposed to be. But, if you view a person head on or from the back then the spine should be lined up straight. If the spine is not lined up straight when viewed from the front or back but rather curved then we refer to that as a scoliosis.
• Scoliosis is a very serious condition and, if it's bad enough, can be life threatening and require surgery to correct simply to keep the patient alive. Most of the time, scoliosis is not so serious as to require immediate surgical intervention.
• The difference in the way MDs and DCs view scoliosis is rather astounding. According to this class, an MD will deem scoliosis as having an idiopathic cause, that is a fancy way of saying, there is no cause. An MD will also refer to many lesser scoliosis as being within a "normal variance" which is to say, enough people have curves to their spine which shouldn't be there but, since enough people have this condition then it's simply a normal variance.
• I'm thinking .... a lot of people have cavities also but I would hate to be under the care of a dentist who simply told me that the cavity was a normal variance and not to worry about it!
• An MD considers stopping the progression of the scoliosis a success while a DC considers reducing the scoliosis a success.
• Having said all this, these generalizations probably don't apply to everyone in either health care profession because the DC who was teaching the class has several MDs as patients including a few surgeons who get care to help avoid carpal tunnel syndrome.

5. Physiology

• We finished up Adrenal glands by seeing a few pictures of pts with Cushings & Addison's dz then completed a ppt on Parathyroid Glands then started in on the Pancreas.
• A bit of good news - we won't be tested this latest chapter until next week. Several of the students cheered out loud because it would be a huge stretch to get everything memorized by the end of this week.

For tonight, I still need to study for Micro and complete a ppt presentation for tomorrow.

Today's pic is of scoliosis.