The Only Interesting Thing From 2nd Semester 2nd Year

I suppose it's worth mentioning that we did have one kind of cool class that I intended to write stories on, but never did. I can't give a good representation of my impressions of it since I've been through so much of third year, but I thought it deserved a few sentences of recognition.

The class was called Mechanisms of Disease, and was basically "Intro to Clinical Thinking." We were given a case at the beginning of every week, had a lab and lecture on the topic, and at the end of the week one group would present the details of what was going on with the case and what to do about it. At that point in time, we knew very little, and the intent was basically to get our feet wet.

For example, one of the earlier cases was a mast cell tumour. It was presented to us as a dog with a swelling and we were given a few details on the patient. That week in the lab, there were a bunch of dead legs with masses on them (as in, no longer attached to dogs), and we were taught how to take a fine needle aspirate. Another case was of chronic renal failure, and in that lab we were given pee to examine.

One thing that is a bit funny, is that now, every year, when they do the scouring calves lab, they give us a long thorough reminder on how to wash our hands properly. You see, several years ago, one of the calves had crypto (a protozoal infection that causes diarrhoea), and was used for the animal handling lab. Then the entire class proceeded to come down with crypto. This incident is so infamous that this year, when we learned epidemiology, the prof used the data from a study done to determine the cause of this outbreak. They did a survey to find out the dates that people were sick (it causes vomiting and diarrhoea for about a week), and even got a few samples to test, and lo and behold, it was a point source outbreak. Cause: Mechanisms of Disease Lab.