Physical Exam Done

Phew, just a quick note, but just finished the final exam for the 'History & Physical Diagnosis' course for second-year med students. This was actually the one med school subject that I was really worried about, so I pushed in gobs of time with friends to be able to pull off an entire one-hour long physical examination (see outline of physical exam). Anyway, *so* relieved it's over :)

Anyway, in other news, R. sent me a link to the manga series Team Medical Dragon which "focuses around a genius surgeon, Asada Ryutaro, who's methods have made him a bit of a renegade in the eyes of Japanese doctors." -- it's got a lovely drawing style . . .

. . . and it's always kind of cool to see anatomy conundrums -- could you be a genius surgeon if you just had big sesamoid bones? Initially, one might say that "exceptionally long" sesamoid might be bad, given that the sesamoid bones are embedded in a tendon right adjacent to a joint . . . but then again, they could help finger flexion by creating a bigger lever . . .

Arrgh, it would be so much easier if the strip said elongated 1st metatarsal (or Marfan's syndrome) :)

NB: Following up on the 'genius hands' of Ryutaro (and Yakitate), here's a little something from JAMA entitled: "Nicolo Paganini. Musical magician and Marfan mutant?"

The thesis is advanced that Nicolo Paganini of Genoa (1782 to 1840), the greatest violin virtuoso of all time, owed his incomparable violin virtuosity to a fortuitous and fortunate coincidence of three factors: a soaring musical genius, a flair for the dramatic and ostentatious, and manual dexterity conferred by being born with the long fingers and hyperextensible joints of Marfan's syndrome. Ordinarily, an inborn connective tissue disorder is a calamity for the patient and a burden for society. In this particular instance, however, Marfan's syndrome bequeathed to posterity a legacy that will ennoble the human spirit for innumerable generations yet to come.