My Pneumonia Experience

I was unfortunate to experience this condition during my holidays in the summer few years back home in Malaysia. It was just like any other fever for me, the temperature, the headache, the cough. Peculiarly, I also have had excessive sweating all over my body especially at night.
A week passed and I felt weaker and weaker by day. It was so tormenting I found myself crying myself to sleep each of the nights in my room.

I found myself in and out of clinics, being prescribed a lot of antibiotics (but never noted which kinds..lol..back then I know nothing about antibiotic so I never really take note). As the fever carried on and off for 2 weeks, with night sweats, neverending cough, I 'thankfully' vomit real bad one night which thankfully lead my parents to finally decide that I have to go to the hospital for real checkup.

Xrays showed my left lower lobe are mildly perfused,having light shadows of pneumonia patches.


A patient with pneumonia seen with large focal consolidation in the left mid-lung.(source)

I was admitted that night and spend 4/5 days in the Hospital Kajang ward.
I was prescribed erythromycin, augmentin and have had to inhale menthol vapour (im not sure what its called tho..sorry :p). Oh and also some parenteral fluid therapy (injected into my vessel) to keep me hydrated (ie to maintain fluids in my body), also Ive read somewhere that it is also to encourage coughing to get rid of the gooey stuffs hehe.

Pneumonia is very common with people with low immune system, that is why we always encounter patients who have AIDS have pneumonia because their immune system is compromised.

The most dangerous type of pneumonia is those caused by bacteria with genus Klebsiella. This is because Klebsiella pneumonia are necrotizing process (necrosis = death of cells) to our lungs. We can detect this if our expelled sputum have a beefy-like smell in addition to above mentioned symptoms.

Klebsiella pneumonia can kill. It kills approx 50% of patients even with antimicrobial therapy. (source)

For medical students:

1)click here for basic diagnostics from Wikipedia.
2) click here for interactive pneumonia lesson with MedlinePlus.

Rus Meds: exam exam exam : therapy checklist

For Russian meds

Click here for Therapy Exam Checklist

Below are my part of the answers for our malaysian batch mission to answer all questions provided in the checklist
Q.15 Дыхание : плеврит и Q.39 медикаментозное лечение язвенные болезни желудка & 12-перстной кишки

STUDY STUDY STUDY!!

In my next discussion, My real life experience of Pneumonia =)

Gastritis

Gaster - stands for stomach in Latin. The suffix -tis at the back shows some sort of swelling (medical term for swelling: inflammation). Gastritis is the inflammation of the stomach's internal mucous layer.

Within the lining of our stomach, a number of bacteria called Helicobacter pylori live within this lining. Unless being provoked by high acidity of the stomach, these bacterias would not 'come out and play' in our stomach resulting a few changes within the structure of the stomach.

A person with gastritis can feel pain at the epigastric part of the abdomen. Epigastric part of the abdomen are located below your lowest rib arch. Can you feel it near your chest? It is painful here during gastritis because our stomach lies at around that area.

When you have gastritis, it is advisable that you drink milk and eat bread with yogurt as these are very good at lowering the acidity of your stomach. Avoid eating sour products like green apples,oranges for a while as they are very acidic. Take a small towel and run hot water on it (not too hot), rinse and place the towel on your stomach. This may sooth your pain as you will focus on the warmth of the towel,not the pain. Avoid taking any aspirin as this might worsen your condition,aspirin are for fever,not stomach ache.

Visit doctor if you suddenly have rashes around your stomach area with fever as this is a very dangerous condition called typhoid fever.

Thats all from me today;)

Thanks for reading. Please spread information to others =)

CynicalMD

Basic Hepatitis

Hepatitis basically means there's a kind of swelling (inflammation) in your liver. Normally this is due to infections from various types of viruses around. Their 2 basic types of hepatitis that everybody should learn by heart are :

1) enteral hepatitis - this means hepatitis resulted from the gastrointestinal tract pathway (or in simpler terms, it spreads through our food and anything that can pass through our mouth and into our stomach). Hepatitis A and Hepatitis E spreads via this pathway.

2) parenteral hepatitis - this hepatitis spreads via blood. Normally, this kind of hepatitis are as result from contamination of surgical equipments during surgery or it can be as small as a needle point contaminated,and even that can result infection to the patients. Hepatitis B,D.C and G are spread via this pathway.

Prominent clinical features of patients with hepatitis are:

1) Fever - After a period of incubation, patient will have increased temperature, vomitting, nausea and feeling very lethargic. Together these symptoms are called the intoxication syndrome. This normally proceed when patients are infected to bacterias or viruses.

2) Jaundice -Patients will have a period of jaundice. Jaundice basically means 'turning yellow'. Look for yellow-ness of the scalp, white part of the eyes, or if the patient is black, make sure to take a good look at their palms for yellow-ness.

3) Brown Urine & White Faeces - Patient with jaundice would have brown urine and white faeces. Normally, the urine is yellow because of a substance called urobilin (which will be discussed later). In hepatitis patient, the urine will take place the colour of faeces, so it will become brown and the faeces are without them,so they are white in colour.

4) Liver and Spleen Enlargement - In 4 to 6 days, liver and spleen become large. The sequence goes like this, first the viral infection to the liver takes place, then the spleen would respond with it's immunity against the infection,hence they increase in size. Increasing in size means spleen will overwork,hence will even more filter the red blood cells, this will later result in jaundice because the spleen is over-degrading the red blood cells,producing so many bilirubin that flows within vessels in our body.

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4th Year : Therapy Lecture Notes

Therapy 1
Rheumatic Fever
Ischemic Heart Disease
Acute Myocardial Infarction
Aortic Poroki
Hypertensive Dzs
Non-Rheumatic Myocarditis
Cardiomyopathy
Congestive Heart Failure

Therapy 2
Pneumonia
Osteoatroz
Chronic Renal Failure
Rheumatoid Arthritis
Chronic Radiation Dzs

Introducing CynicalMd Notes =)

Hey guys.Im gonna be starting to put up some stuffs i learn here in Moscow.Just something useful here and there.

Let me know if you want me to discuss about any topics that you need help with.

Thanks.

CynicalMD