Blog #6

Encounter

So I volunteer at the Emergency Department with a friend of mine. It's a very busy place. I see different kinds of people and illnesses--people come in due to intoxication, few come in due to psychosis, and others come in due to pain. You witness a lot of different things. 

But, on a hot day, I went to volunteer there and as I was cleaning a bed, a nurse walked up to me and asked if I could go fetch water for a pt after. I responded yes and after I got done, I went to this patient and gave it to her. Then, I moved from room to room asking if they needed an extra blanket, extra pillow, water, or food including the room of the patient I had just given water. She said she wanted more water. And, of course, I went again to get her water. Then, she sat up and I asked if she was okay and she said: "yeah, just pregnant," I smirked. Two minutes later, she opened the curtains and asked for more water. At this moment, I thought this was a normal, regular routine because her body needs extra fluid since she's pregnant. So, I got her some more water. Three minutes later, she asked for some water. Now, it seemed to me like this is more than just being thirsty. And, so I went to her and asked if she needed the doctor, but she refused. I thought about telling the nurse about her excessive thirst, which is viewed as a good thing, but I thought I was getting ahead of myself. 

And, so my friend and I decided to hide upstairs [because we couldn't be seen with our phones] to use our phones in figuring out why this pt has an excessive thirst. So I looked up "excessive thirst while pregnant" and I opened the first site, and it talks about gestational diabetes. Some women develop this diabetes only during the pregnancy [hence the word "gestation" in gestational diabetes]. It happens when the hormones during pregnancy, how the body makes insulin that breaks down sugar in food & how the body utilizes it. So, one of the signs of this diabetes is excessive thirst, blurred vision, frequent urination, etc. So we assessed the symptoms: Blurred vision explains the glasses but frequent urination and excessive thirst are normal during pregnancy. So we concluded that she was suffering from gestational diabetes, and so did more research and it showed that this illness may cause premature labor. From my understanding, premature babies tend to have few RBC which is essential to carry and transport O2 throughout the body. Which means that having few RBC means having few B cells produced in the bone marrow, that leads to a premature immune system, which leads to reduced innate and adaptive immunity. So premature babies have few phagocytotic cells that are necessary to kill pathogens and lower production of chemokines which activates T cells & lowers ability to fight bacteria and viruses; making the baby immune to sepsis and respiratory infections. A few minutes later, we went back downstairs to the ED just to find out that there was nothing majorly wrong with this pt and my friend & I just over-thought the situation. Later that night, she was discharged. My friend and I just laughed it off and tidied up the room the pt got discharged from. Even though we had the wrong diagnosis, we learned something new that day. 

*pt = patient*

*RBC = red blood cells*

*O2 = oxygen*

Cartoon of the week LOL

Google images

References

1. Biolegend. Web log post. Biolegend. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2016.
2. "Gestational Diabetes." Gestational Diabetes. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2016.
3. Melville, Jacqueline M., and Timothy J. M. Moss. "The Immune Consequences of Preterm Birth." Front. Neurosci. Frontiers in Neuroscience 7 (2013): n. pag. Web.