Reflections of Explosions

I was 8 years old when the twin towers fell. I remember that day because up until that morning at school, I didn't even know what the twin towers were, and I pretty sure most of the adults in my town didn't either. I remember waiting in the classroom, practicing my times tables (I was nerd back then too) getting ready for our daily quiz because our teacher, Mr. Collins, was unusually late. When he walked in, he walked in somberly, and slowly. Somebody asked "Mr. Collins, why do you look so sad." Then he told us what had happened, and we were called to the gym for an assembly. I didn't understand why anybody could possibly do this, but what I didn't understand even more was why people were blaming Muslims...how could a religion hijack a plane and fly into office buildings in New York? When I got home from school that day, my parents reassured us that we were safe, and my dad made it a specific point to tell us that it was individuals that caused this attack, not a country, not a religion and that it was not a reflection of the world we live in.

Today, while I was studying for my GI physiology test, I had twitter up on my screen. The first tweet I saw was from CNN, "Explosions at Boston Marathon." When I read the word "explosion" I immediately thought of fireworks or firecrackers, because who would set off a bomb at the finish line of a marathon? Within seconds, new tweets came up that replaced the word "explosion" with "bomb" and then one "bomb" became two, injured became dead, pictures of debris in the streets became pictures of blood in the streets...I felt like an 8 year old again, watching in awe as the world exploded.

As the day passed, and as I continued to follow on twitter, I began to see pictures of people helping people, rather than pictures of carnage. Tweets and facebook posts from all over the world showing support for Boston steadily increased, offers for blood donations, restaurants opening their doors and people offering their couches and spare beds to complete strangers began to trend. This is a reflection of the world we live in. A really awful thing happened today because of the choices made by a few select individuals, these choices have changed people's lives and the world forever, much like 9/11. But I choose to see the world as a whole, because the number of good people will always outweigh the bad.

Bombings like this happen almost weekly in other countries, and I am not trying to belittle what has happened to day in Boston, but a bombing in Boston is no more tragic than a bombing in Baghdad. The people of Boston are as strong, generous and kind as the people in Baghdad. So as we mourn and try and reflect on this day, let us remember that people all over the world have felt the same confusion, sadness and loss as we do today and as we did on 9/11.

Let our prayers for Boston resonate throughout the world to all of those affected by senseless attacks on humanity.

Pain and Sleep

I am a very high functioning young adult with chronic pain. Seriously, how many people do you know with straight A's, who volunteer 10 hours per week, and ride a bike 16 hours a week who have chronic neurological pain? (If you do actually know somebody, please let me know, I would like to meet a this person.) I somehow manage to do things that most normal people, let alone people with chronic pain, can't do. To be honest, I have no idea how I can ride a bike, but somehow I do.

When you have chronic pain, you struggle to sleep, some people struggle to fall asleep, and some struggle to stay asleep. I am a member of the later group, I usually fall asleep within seconds of hitting the pillow, but I wake up about 4 hours later. My pain gets worse when my leg is still, so when I am awake my leg is in constant motion, but when I am in a deep sleep I don't move (like a normal human) and then my pain gets worse and I wake up in a grip of pain. On occasion, I actually sleep through the night, which means I get 9 hours of sleep. I usually go to bed around 10:30 and get up around 6:30-7:30 in order to maximize the potential amount of time I might be able to sleep. This tactic works pretty well because usually out of the 9 hours I spend in bed, I am asleep for 7 of them, meaning on average I get more sleep than my peers. So, strangely, chronic pain probably makes it so I actually sleep more....weird, huh?

My idea to write this post came from this article: "Extended Sleep Reduces Pain Sensitivity" And, as the title suggests, sleeping more means less pain. So, maybe the reason I am able to do all this stuff is that I actually experience less pain than my fellow nerve pain suffers because I sleep more? It is a possibility.  And, even if you don't have chronic pain, sleeping more may help you recover faster from that flu shot, dental procedure or surgery pending in your life. In the world of cycling, those who train hard and sleep a lot are generally the fastest. So if you don't have chronic pain, and are not predicting pain, sleeping might in the very least make you a faster cyclist.

On another note, I crashed riding in the ice/snow yesterday on a corner and sprained my thumb pretty badly. It isn't broken, but I think there is some ligament damage, hopefully the doctor will give me the verdict tomorrow. The worst part is that exams start next week, and it is my dominant hand. Maybe sleep will make it hurt less?

I learned how to tape it via youTube...it worked!

Advantage of Being a Woman in Science

I went to an amazing lecture yesterday given by Dr. Jeffrey Mogil, a pain scientist from McGill. He lecture was titled "Mice are People too: Social Modulation of and by Pain in Rodents and Humans."

As you can imagine, the lecture was about mice, and how they perceive pain. Turns out that they actually have similar facial expressions that infants do (eye narrowing and cheek bulge) and then of course things like wiggling their whiskers and ears which we has tiny humans either do not have or cannot do. He then went to on to divulge the social interactions of pain, when we are in pain with the presence of somebody we do not know, we experience an analgesic effect, or the stranger effect. This hold true for both mice and humans apparently. Conversely  when we experience pain with the presence of a friend, there is increase in the amount of pain we experience, which is known as the empathy effect. This was all pretty interesting, and actually made sense for me. I definitely feel less pain when I am in socially new or uncomfortable environments  which I suppose goes back evolutionary to the feeling that this new person might try to eat you, and you do not want to show any weakness in front of them. 

The most interesting part of that lecture though was the fact that Dr. Mogil's group found that men, or the smell of males (any species other than mice) also exerted a analgesic effect. This means that the presence of a man, or a man's T-shirt in the room will cause mice to become stressed out of fear of predation. This effect only lasts for about 30 mins, but during that 30 minutes these mice show lower amounts of pain, and then after 30 minutes they apparently realize that the male is not a threat and the effect wears off. It hasn't been proven in humans yet, but the effect was shown stronger in female mice than in male mice, and there is a good likelihood that it is also true in humans.

So how does this relate to the title of my post? Well, if the presence of a male stresses out the mice, then it actually throws off the accuracy of a lot of our experiments. Even when we euthanize a mouse to harvest its DRG neurons for analysis, if there is a male doing the euthanasia or in the room at the time, it could skew our results. This is even more pertinent when we do behaviour testing, especially for sensitivity and pain perception testing. Basically, in this one circumstance  it is better to be female scientist than a male scientist. 

If Dr. Mogil's theories also hold true for humans, this gives us a unique perspective for medicine. Perhaps, women truly do make better doctors or more perform more accurate patient assessment because the patient's pain would not be skewed by the examiner ..unless of course the doctor has never met the patient before and then you would have the stranger effect take place. 

Para-Cycling?

When I showed up for training at 8:30 am this morning, there were more people around than usual. Then in passing by, I saw my coach who told me the national team para-cycling coaches were running a mini-camp. I knew they were coming sometime in March, but I didn't know when.

The head coach at the cycling centre, SB, is also the para-cycling coach and he coaches a few of the HP para-Olympians. We have chatted a bit about my situation before, and we couldn't come to the conclusion if I was classifiable or not, and he wanted me to meet with the coaches when they came down (ie today). SB had a family emergency to attend to, and because he was gone I thought my chance of meeting with the para coaches was gone. I guess today was my lucky day!

The development coach ran through a few things with me, like the heel to toe walking tests, running your foot down your shin...you know, all of those neuro tests. I did them before and after riding. He said that riding or exercise brings more symptoms out in people, and if that happens, they have a good case for classifying. It happened to me. So, it looks like I might have a chance at classifying either C4 or C5 (hopefully not C5 because most people in that category have only upper are impairments which really has no affect on your ability to put power into the pedals).

The next step is to do some testing with a physiotherapist immediately after a hard workout. Maybe, just maybe, I will classify.

Global Health

Welcome to my Medical Mondays Post!

I'm pretty exhausted today after spending my entire day at the Children's Hospital and then going to class...I don't understand how doctors actually make through the day. I guess now is as good a time as any to start improving my stamina and work on looking enthusiastic about everything and my all day happy face.

Anyway, in two weeks time, I will be heading over to Montreal to attend MonWHO, a World Health Organization Simulation conference. I went last year with my previous university, and this year I obtained funding for myself and 5 other students from Calgary to fly out to Montreal to spend 3 days debating, learning and sometimes fighting about global health issues. The theme of this year's conference is "Corruption in Health Care Systems," and I am the Transparency International delegate, which should prove to be a very interesting and involved role. I am also pretty excited about being able to see some of my friends from Guelph who are going and whom I haven't seen in almost year.

The main reason that I was actually able to get funding to go, is because next fall, we will be hosting the first conference of its kind in Western Canada. We are calling it CalWHO, which coincidentally sounds like "Yahoo" which is actually the traditional Calgary Stampede exclamatory phrase (it is not "yehaw" like everybody thinks). Myself and my friend U are the co-Executive Directors, founders and first ever presidents of CalWHO. Before Christmas we had an application process to select 4 more students to form our core secretariat responsible for putting on CalWHO next fall. So while we are headed to Montreal to attend the conference (and eat awesome food, potentially go shopping and maybe hit up one of Montreal's famous night clubs), we are mostly there to learn everything about the conference so that we can recreate it here in Calgary.

This is a massive under taking, as it will be the first student led conference in my faculty and one of two in the entire university (the other is hosted by the faculty of education students, most of whom already have at least 1 degree). I am a bit scared....but at this moment,  I am just really excited to go to Montreal and spend a weekend trying to solve problems that affect the health of people world wide.

Also, happy March from Calgary! I love Canadian weather! (Said no one ever.)

Insanity

I can't even begin to describe the past two weeks. Two weeks ago today my computer crashed. That week, I had 3 midterms, a lab report, a presentation, all of my summer studentship funding applications were due, mice habituation and nerve conduction training. Like most university students, my life is on my computer and no, it wasn't backed up.

I made it through all of my midterms even though I was missing all of my notes. I majorly crammed for everything, and I wish I knew how I did on my stats exam...but some of the questions didn't have any correct answers...

 I spent 6 hours on Feb 17th doing baseline functional behavior testing on my mice, and then this past week was reading week. Usually people take some much needed time to fulfill Canadian stereotypes by going skiing, playing pickup hockey, sledding, or chilling with friends during reading week. I wrote an organic chem final on the 20th, then spent all day on Friday operating on my mice, and finally, after 12 days without a computer go my laptop back. I was at school by 8 am yesterday to inject my mice, then I went to training, then I wrote an essay...then I discovered my computer is not fully fixed. Today, I was at school by 7:45 am to inject my mice, then I had get over to grandmother's house by 10 to take her to church, then after church I discovered her car had a flat tire, and I had to deal with that, then it was back to injecting mice, and then back to calling Dell about my computer and then back to essay writing.

I'm so exhausted...reading break was not a break.

The good news is that I am less afraid of mice now, and my suturing skills have improved. By the time I get to medschool I will be a needle driver rock star. Speaking of which, this weekend was MMI interviews at my school, I have never been around so many nervous people before. I had to walk by their little gathering in the medical school before their interview to get to my locker and I felt I was the only one who had missed seeing the headless horseman. I hope I don't look that next year...

Medical Extremes

I think this is my 4th  Medical Monday blog post, and thought I would write about an interesting medical contrast that I experienced today, which I feel really reflects on my own personal experience as a patient. If you are thinking I'm going to tell you about some really cool medical condition, then you should probably navigate yourself away from this page and check this out instead.

This afternoon I spent time in the emergency department of our city's children's hospital as part of the Pediatric Emergency Medicine Research Team, but prior to that I spent the morning volunteering in the palliative/respite care area of the very same hospital. I went from an area that was focused on ensuring that kids who have terminal illness have the best times of their lives while they still can, to an area that was focused on getting kids in and out of the department as fast as possible.

The energy between the two places was extremely different, and while you may not expect this, the doctors, nurses and parents who are taking care of kids in respite care (none of the kids currently under palliative care are actively dying) were way more cheerful, happy, fun loving and honestly just more kid friendly. People were focused on enjoying life, and making sure the kids laughed more than they cried. But in emerg, it is the exact opposite. Nobody is focused on making a kid smile, rather just figuring out what is wrong with them, treating them and moving on to the next patient. We expect that when we set foot in an ER, a doctor will asses us, treat us with modern medicine and then send us home cured of what ever aliment brought us to the door.

As I stood and waited for the bus to take me back to school today (by waiting I mean pacing, I'm a pacer) I began to think about these comparisons and how I have started to shift my own expectations of what medicine can do for me. I'm palliative, not in the dying sense, but in the sense that there is basically nothing anybody can do that will "fix" me, only make the pain a little less intense. Yet, I still expect that a doctor will be able to "fix" me, on the outside I portray that what I am looking for is a diagnosis and curative treatment. But deep down, I'm not. There isn't a cure, there isn't away to fix the pain I have all night and all day. The only thing I require from medicine now is for it to help me live the best life that I can, for it to help me give everyday %110.