Tag: medicine
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Skin-di-VISUALS: Bloom syndrome
Bloom syndrome is an autosomal recessive genodermatosis in which mutations in the RECQL2 or RECQL3 genes. What results is an issue with DNA helicase, which is responsible for unwinding DNA during replication. Sometimes this is worded as problems with “sister chromatid exchange.” Children with bloom syndrome have short stature, characteristic facial features (a “bird beak”…
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Skin-di-VISUALS: IgA Gammopathies
CORE exams hate her! Remember this IgA association with this one simple trick.
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The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done, Part I
We step into the kitchen and I put my discharge paperwork along with paper bags full of new medications, Paxlovid among them, on the island. My belly is 8 months heavy, and I’m exhausted. We (my baby and I) have just been released after an overnight stay at the hospital. It’s late Spring, 2022. I…
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My Contribution
My son rests his head in tthe hollow where my arm meets my chest, as if it were made for him. As I kiss his forehead I feel the head radiating from his skull; he’s too warm. 103.2. My guess was off, only 101.4. No better than yesterday, I’m afraid. Worse, even. What will we…
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Second shift
Across the screen float up semi-transparent strings in poor focus. Floaters. A consequence of myopic vision and likely tired eyes as I stare blankly at the last clinic note from today. Getting notes done is easier at clinic than at home- the monitors are wide, the keyboards are crisp, and at my right there’s a…
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Requiem of a dream in residency
I don’t know when exactly my dream died. Sometime I wonder if it was ever really my dream, or if it indeed *was* my dream, and my questioning it’s validity as a way for me to cope with its untimely death. Before marching to dermatology I had the audacity to wonder what it would be…
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Night Feeding
A pretty kitty to keep me company in the predawn quiet. Charmion is a little surprised but not upset to have a friend at 3:30 AM. She sits on my folders, walks over my keyboard, and butts her head against my hand as I work. My computer hums softly, the keys a little sticky from…
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Mom Guilt
My toddlers cries are piercing their way through my closed bedroom door. She’s with a babysitter at the moment, and a very good one by my first impression. Cue severe Mom-Guilt. “You should be tending to her,” it says. BG’s cry tells me that she’s and in need of some snacks and a nap. We…
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The Friday Before V-Day
It’s the Friday before Valentine’s Day. I’m practicing my morning ritual of getting up at an obscene hour (4:30) and using the time to scroll through my phone in the blissful darkness of a quiet bedroom, with our sound machine droning in the background. My baby stirs next to me and makes little grunting sounds…
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Professionalism
I made the call when BG vomited for the third time the three ounces of formula we’d just given her: She’s not going to daycare tomorrow. Which mean that I need to call in sick. Residents don’t call in sick. And they especially don’t call in sick by proxy. But the thought of my daughter…
Med-Derm, MD 