I had the best time at hospital today. I am currently on the penultimate week before med sch finals, which means we're given a free reign to do what it takes to ace the exams. I've been heading in to the hospital to see patients with my good friend Candice and today we came across a young man with the most vivid skin lesions all over his right and left shins. It was like nothing I'd seen before - I don't get to see many skin lesions because I spend much more time with inpatients than at the outpatient clinics and skin lesions do not generally interest me. But as it turns out there was a back story to this man who also had bowel symptoms and the team is working on the possibility that he has IBD and the skin lesions (which presented many years before the bowel symptoms) are pyoderma gangrenosum, which again, I've read about but I've never actually seen! It's a bit like Rheumatoid Arthritis - as a more junior medical student you'd focus on trying to understand joint pathology but there are all these extra articular signs that are characteristic of the condition. It was FASCINATING and incredible to get a chance to start on these extra-intestinal signs and then to have the 'big picture' revealed to me like that. Ultimate learning experience, I'm so happy and I hope I will remember it for years to come.
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| Example of pyoderma gangrenosum. |
PS. I know it isn't great for the patient but I'm sharing this from the perspective of a medical student. I love medicine, I love understanding pathology and learning new things and I think even as a patient you'd want this sort of enthusiasm in your doctors (among other things). Be happy & have a great day!!
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