Student’s rendition of how cancers start. From Twitter.
Fletch
In our Neoplasia I: Nomenclature lecture today, I talked about the movie Fletch as it related to tumor nomenclature. I double checked an Fletch is on Netflix again! Yay!
I couldn’t find the exact scene I wanted to show you guys (the one where Fletch says “He has melanoma…carcinoma…some kind of noma“), probably because it wasn’t nearly as funny as the rest of the film. But I did find a couple good clips, in case you need a laugh. Here they are.
Clip 1: Dr. Rosenpenis
This is just silly, stupid humor, but actually, that’s exactly why I like it.
Clip 2: Autopsy assistant
This is great because it’s exactly how I felt at my first autopsy. I could tolerate the sight of the body, and even the sound (barely) of the bone saw – but the smell…oh man, the pathologist in this scene is spot-on: you just never get used to the smell.
New Transfusion Medicine Kahoot posted
Transfusion game to test your knowledge
Here’s the game we played at the end of class today – it’s a good way to make sure you understand the principles we talked about and can put them together in a real-life (well, virtual-life) setting.
Venus Williams discusses her disease
Venus Williams announced she had Sjogren’s syndrome back in 2011. She discusses her experiences with the disease in this YouTube video as well as this CNN interview. She is most definitely not letting the disease define her. She just hosted this year’s Met Gala and is as gorgeous and strong as ever.
What’s it like to have scleroderma?
Tomorrow we’ll talk about the systemic sclerosis, or scleroderma.
The New York Times has a nice recurring feature called “Patient Voices” in which several patients with a particular disease talk about how that disease has affected their lives. Here is a Patient Voice article on scleroderma. It’s a bunch of short stories (a couple minutes each), narrated by the patients themselves, accompanied by a series of photos of the patient. I highly recommend you listen to some of these. I identified with “The Mom with Frozen Fingers;” you may wish to start with “Losing his color” which is narrated by a 26 year old man. I think you’ll probably find yourself listening to more than one.
There are others Patient Voices segments on lupus and Sjogren syndrome too.
Selena Gomez and others talk about lupus
Selena Gomez has been battling lupus for many years. She’s been open about her diagnosis and has talked very candidly about the toll it’s taken on her.
Here are some articles and videos, if you want to read/watch more:
- She has a documentary called “My Mind and Me” on Apple TV. Here’s a short trailer.
- Here’s a fairly recent Today Show article/video in which she talks about her health.
- Here is an older ABC article in which Selena and other patients talk about what it is really like to have lupus.
In 2017, she underwent a kidney transplant for complications related to her disease. Her disease course is more severe than it is for many patients with the disease; kidney transplants are typically used only after other, less dangerous treatments fail.
Quiz 2 information
As I mentioned last week, tomorrow’s Quiz 2 will NOT be given in class!
It is a take-home, open-book, talk-with-each-other if you want quiz, posted on Canvas. It has 10 multiple-choice, single-answer questions, each worth 1 point, and it covers all the lecture material from 5/27 through and including the slides we will cover today.
It will be open from Monday, June 8 at noon until Wednesday, June 10 at 11:59 pm. You can take the quiz at any time during that period.
You’ll have 20 minutes to complete it once you start (people with accommodations have time adjusted accordingly). Please complete and submit it by 11:59 pm Wednesday.
Any questions, let me know!
Schedule tweak for Monday, June 8
We’ve been doing some in-class Kahoot questions, no-stakes, no points, just to reinforce the points I want to make sure I get across to you. And you guys have been doing REALLY WELL, I just want to say! It’s impressive 🙂
Adding in those Kahoot questions has been good, I think – but it also takes up a part of our lecture time, and we’re just a little behind (we got through most of Autoimmune diseases today, but there are still 10 slides left).
In order to keep our schedule organized and on time, I’d like to finish the rest of the Autoimmune Diseases slides on Monday, June 8, then go through a few in-class Kahoot questions on Autoimmune Diseases, and then turn Quiz 2 into a take-home, open-book quiz. I’m going to see how the Canvas quiz options work – and if that seems like a good option, we’ll use that platform. Otherwise, I’ll use Google forms.
That way we’ll be on track to do Transfusion Medicine on Wednesday without missing anything.
By the way, I’ve been posting the short in-class Kahoots both on our Kahoots page and on our Schedule page, in case you want to go back and look at them.
Please let me know if you have any questions!
MHC receptors and genes can be confusing
We talked a little bit about MHC I and II receptors in our Immunology Overview lecture. I intentionally kept our discussion pretty basic, because my goal in this lecture is just to get you up to speed with concepts you’ll need to understand for later lectures.
But there are so many things about MHC receptors and genes that can be confusing – and I wanted to share some things with you that took me a long time to understand, just in case you have the same questions.
For example, I was confused as a med student as to what each MHC gene produced. Okay, so there are three class I MHC genes (A, B, and C). Does each of gene encode a particular part of the MHC class I molecule?
Turns out, the answer is no! Each gene (A, B, and C) encodes an ENTIRE MHC I molecule.
Okay…so there are three different class I molecules on all my cells? No – there are 6 (because you have two major histocompatibility complexes – one on each chromosome 6).
If you have questions like these, you might find these two posts helpful:
Please note that this is just optional reading!! For our quizzes and exam, you are ONLY responsible for the material we cover in lecture. When I write test questions, I focus on the material in the learning objectives, and I don’t ask about anything that isn’t in the lecture slides.
But I like to share things that took me forever to figure out, because it might save you guys time.
Dental Student Pathology 