TSR Med Students' Society Part III

My life:

Tell me about it. I have more work than I've ever had in my life, but instead of actually doing it, I'm just pissing around procrastinating.

So a guy I knew died of a PE a few weeks back but I only just found out about it. I didn't know him very well but he died at the tender age of 27 and was a very intelligent well spoken guy so it was a real shame.

After the initial "that sucks" phase yesterday I'm not filled with the morbid curiosity of the medical student on how exactly you can die of a pulmonary embolism. He used to be quite a large guy and then lost quite a bit of weight. He never really did any exercise and was ill for about a week before so I understand he had quite a few risk factors for a clot to occur somewhere.

However, the clot moves to the lungs and increases the pressure in the pulmonary arteries (presumably it gets stuck before it reaches the veins by getting jammed in the small arteries) and would diminish lung function but I don't see how that would kill you? People can live with one lung so I can't see how having a small section being messed up causing you to become hypoxic enough to kill you.

So, does the build up of pressure cause the right ventricle to swell and fail? Would this then possibly tear/burst? Could the same happen to the great veins? The online articles on emedicine/wiki are pretty sketchy and vague so any help would be appreciated.

I've decided to swallow my pride and ask my housemate's girlfriend to set me up with someone when I go back to uni.

We are??
Is this one of Haniah's plans?
Fill me in..

You didn't miss too much but would have been better for you if you'd gotten in

True true.. would just be nice to mix with some new people

Yeh according to her we are, but I don't know where or even if I'll be able to go

Yeh I would have much rather have got in to be honest, stupid bouncers

Haha new people? What is this madness

When is re-freshers? I don't start back til like a week after you guys, hope I'm not gonna miss out...

Yup... I know it's really mad.
first term we've finished covering metabolism, enzymes and protein signalling.
Second term is genetics.

By the way our terms are only 8 weeks long.....

Still 8 weeks of Metabolism and signalling pathways is intense.

Surely they break it up with a miniscule of clinical stuff so you dont loose sight in what you are doing?

apart from three two hour applied anatomy sessions, we've done no clinical stuff the whole term... It's a really theory science based course....

apart from three two hour applied anatomy sessions, we've done no clinical stuff the whole term... It's a really theory science based course....

apart from three two hour applied anatomy sessions, we've done no clinical stuff the whole term... It's a really theory science based course....

Don't lie, we had like 2 hours of obesity PBLs and 2 hours of diabetes lectures

apart from three two hour applied anatomy sessions, we've done no clinical stuff the whole term... It's a really theory science based course....