Tuesday

Today, our explorations were taken further into the realm of Gastroenterology, where I was able to witness another PEG, two endoscopies, one colonoscopy, an autopsy, and a plethora of random facts.  The patients who needed the endoscopies checked out fine, except for one woman who had signs of Crohn's disease.  Because of the complexity of the scientific terms involved in internal medicine, I was not able to understand alot of what Dr. Demarco was saying during the consultations, but during the procedures that were done, words were not needed, as Dr. Demarco pointed out every single problem during all the procedures.  Signs of Crohn's, ulceration and other topics came up frequently during the procedures, giving me first hand experience on how to spot harmful things to the colon/small bowel; none of this, however, was nearly as informative as the autopsy I was able to sit in on.  Students from Southwestern Medical School (in Dallas) came to Baylor to analyze some cases of topics such as death from influenza and such, where slides were shown of the organs of those who died and everything from their bodies that could point to a reasonable cause of death.  Although the actual bodies were not there, the presentations on the autopsies of extremely rare cases taught me things I could have never have known without following Dr. Demarco. During the endoscopy at the end of the day, Dr. Demarco informed us that the anesthesiologist would be using the same anesthesia that Michael Jackson died from, where the body tries to metabolize the high concentration of lipids quickly, causing the patient to fall asleep; if too much anesthesia is given, the patient will have a hard time absorbing all the energy and will most likely die from loss of blood sugar. Dr. Demarco has even more procedures tomorrow, and I can't wait for what is in store for us.