TRI-4, Wk9, Day 242 - Friday

Got a B on my Fundamentals of Diagnostic Imaging Midterm Exam!!! WooHoo! Yahoo! Yippie! :D

I figured I scored in the B to C range on my last two midterms and Fund Dx was a good one to get the higher range grade on because it's a 4 credit hour class as compared to 2 hours for my philosophy class. My philosophy grade hasn't been posted yet but I'm pretty darned happy with where I'm sitting right now for midterms. I've got more A's & B's than C's and that's always a good thing :)

I'm not including my Neuromusculoskeletal Diagnosis (NMS Dx) class because I intentionally blew off the first test to help maintain my sanity but, I will have to be held accountable for our remaining test. (the lowest test grade in that class is thrown out)

Two of my C's are actually C+'s so, I've got a great chance of pushing those up to B's. I haven't actually figured this out yet but, I think there's a chance of making the Dean's List.

Heck... I just put my grades down on a spreadsheet & to bring them up to a 3.5 to get on the Dean's List will require a considerable amount of improvement but, it is possible. One of my four credit hour classes will have to become an A and that could happen with NMS or Path, with Path probably being the most likely candidate.

I did get a nice comment by a fellow chiropractor who has been practicing for 41 years and he reminded me of something I've heard several times before but kind of forgot about. He mentioned how he still loves to go to work every day.

For some reason, I seem to have chiropractic type monologues constantly running through my head. I'm either talking in my head to prospective students about going to Logan or future patients or general talks about health and various aspects of chiropractic. At least my daydreaming as become much more productive than it used to be. (I admit, the lottery billboards I see on the way to school can still throw me off on a tangent) ;)

I have to get focused here and have a plan for studying for boards. Here's a kicker - the week after boards we have FOUR exams! Yikes! Two of those exams are for Nutrition and Pathology and I figured I can parlay my boards studying to coincide with those upcoming exams. The other two exams are for NMS and Basic. With NMS, I need to get a 3.5 or B+ out of the class to have a chance at the Dean's List. That's a completely diagnostic type of class so the material won't be specifically related to Part I boards ...although, there is a fair amount of Spinal Anatomy & Neurology associated with that class so maybe there is some overlap. Basic is like two classes in one. We have the lab portion where we learn Basic adjusting and the x-ray portion which currently involves x-ray marking. I've already got a B in that class and need to move that grade up to at least a B+. I think I can put up a white background on my computer monitor and use that as a light box for reading my x-rays ....

I was also thinking about going to the review sessions at Logan tomorrow and possibly going to a hotel afterwards just to have someplace different as well as a place to totally focus on studying.

For tonight, I think I'm going to prep for our third Pathology exam.

In honor of the fine grade I got in Fund Dx, today's picture is an x-ray of an upper thoracic region. Currently, I'm aware of four non-skeletal diseases one may glean from an x-ray; prostate cancer, pancoast tumor, Paget's dz and Abdominal Aortic Aneurysms. This x-ray reminded me of the pancoast tumor which would appear in the apex of the lungs. Normally, air shows up as black on an x-ray as is the case with today's picture. In the case of a pancoast tumor the upper portion of the lung(s) would appear white.

Come to think of it, various problems with the thyroid, such as a thyroid tumor could be diagnosed as well. If you look behind the upper thoracic vertebrae, you'll notice a column of lighter gray, that's the trachea and it's a lighter gray due to the air in the windpipe. I've seen x-rays where that gray column was deviated and there's got to be a reason for the deviation. Due to the proximity of the deviation, a lesion of the thyroid would be reasonable hypothesis for the deviation. The x-ray I saw was from an Emergency Room where the obvious deviation was missed and, the patient did have a thyroid tumor.

One thing I've learned about x-rays is that if you're the doctor reading the x-ray then you are responsible for everything on that x-ray. So, if a patient has cancer or any other dz that can be seen on an x-ray it needs to be caught or else the doc can be sued for malpractice.

I guess that kind of addresses the comment I get sometimes from people who don't think we'll use all the traditional doctor type classes we have to take to be a chiropractor because if you don't know about all the diseases that are out there then you're certainly not going to catch it on an x-ray. Also, if a chiro comes across any other dz during a routine physical then there is a legal obligation to refer the pt out if necessary.

Btw - if a transverse process is missing on an x-ray, it could be a congenital condition but it may also be a metastatic cancer which has eaten away at the TP, again, another reason to refer out. I guess I knew more than I thought. ;)