First Week Down

Well, this is Friday, which means our first week is over. It was a good week. I guess all the projects are a little overwhelming, but I know we'll all manage to get 'er done. For 300, we learned how to use restraints (can I get some to use on my kids? Just KIDDING!), and we worked on passive range of motion. That's not the same as active range of motion, which is what we did in 203. Here, the patient can't really help you at all, so you take their muscles through a set of movements so that they won't get stuck in place while the patient is under your care. Because that would be, um, not good. Unfortunately, this happens a lot in third world countries, where people just don't know how to do patient care.

Let's see. Nurse Rockstar taught us in pathology about scar formation and innate immunity. We also got into acquired immunity. Basically, you have a multi-tiered immune system. When a little "friend" first attacks, your skin does its best to fight him off. You have actual chemicals in your sweat, tears, and even earwax (yum!) that try to kill said friend. If friend manages to get in, you have a fast response by things like these really cool Natural Killer cells that can blow up friend. They just sort of roam the body looking for any enemy. They're sort of the scouts. Once they find the 'friend', they start the fight while calling in the big dogs. These is your specific defense system. Ever heard of Bcells or Tcells? Yeah, that's them. The big dogs. They not only cremate the bad guy (in most cases), but they also make memory cells whose sole purpose in life is to roam your body looking for friend's identical twin. Rock on!

It's gonna be a good semester.