"Don't Ever Drive When You're Sleepy..."

The title are the words that were said to me by a woman who was in a severe car accident.

Just yesterday, Thursday night, I decided to walk over to the hospital for dinner before my Physics class. As I was getting some frozen yogurt, I woman with a walker was walking towards the register when she noticed my skirt. She complimented it, and we engaged in some small talk. They lady kept insisting that I go ahead her in line, but I stood my ground that she goes before me. When she walked in front of me, I noticed that tell-tale curve in her back. She had scoliosis.

Instead of taking her food to go, she was eating there in the cafeteria. I helped her put her tray on the table and adjust her chair so she was comfortable. She thanked me profusely for my help. It's the next part that made me so sad and curious at the same time.

"Don't ever drive when you're sleepy. "She said. "This was caused me to be like this today. If you ever feel sleepy, at least take a 5 minute nap before you drive."

To be honest, I didn't know how to respond. I became incredibly sad and wanted to cry. I was able to muster up some words to express my happiness that she was able to survive that accident and my gratitude for her valuable advice.

As I walked to another table to sit down, I contemplated the encounter. How was a car accident able to cause scoliosis? Wasn't it only congenital? It turned out that it can be caused by accidents. The trauma caused from an accident can cause an injury to the spinal cord. This damages the neuromuscular interaction, resulting in the loss of muscle control. The spine then gradually curves, the formation of scoliosis.

Honestly, this encounter of histology is very sad. I just pray that this woman can at least be relieved of the pain.

Absence of Color Blood Cells

So this week in class, we learned about blood. I have encountered a lot of the words before, but I was definitely learning a lot of new terms. I also looked ahead in the notes and I'm encountering many unfamiliar words.





Granulocytes - these are white blood cells that have granules in their cytoplasm. Examples of these are eosinophils, basophils, and neutrophils.

Agranulocytes - these are white blood cells that do not have granules in their cytoplasm. Examples of these are lymphocytes and monocytes.








Sinusoid - These are unique blood vessels that are actually classified as open pore capillaries. They are commonly found in the bone and spleen.








Megakaryoblast - this cell is involved in hematopoiesis. It develops into a promegakaryocyte and then a megakaryocyte.

Mesenchyme: Unchained

I've encountered A LOT of words this week outside of class. Thank you, disease paper! Sarcoma is the development of cancer from the mesenchyme, as I've mentioned in my first post. Now this is looking at a few of the different kinds of sarcoma.






Liposarcoma - This is cancer in the adipose tissue.

i.e. On the show My 600-lb Life, it follows a woman who is morbidly obese and has a heightened chance of developing liposarcoma.

Kaposi's Sarcoma - This is cancer that is associated with HIV and other forms of immunospression that causes nodules in the skin, even the mouth.

i.e. Melanie was unfortunately told that she developed Kaposi's sarcoma due her having AIDS.

Leiomyosarcoma - This is cancer of the smooth muscle, which causes the brain to lose control over contraction.

i.e. When a female is complaining about her uterus painfully contracting randomly even when she isn't ovulating, on her period or pregnant, it can lead the doctor to believe that she has leiomyosarcoma.






Rhabdomyosarcoma - This is cancer in the skeletal muscle, which may cause the loss of voluntary control of the muscle.

i.e. Some people that develop rhabdomyosarcoma are restricted from operating heavy machinery because the jerking movements of their body can cause an accident to occur.

Yay, Overlap!

Today was such a stressful day. I had two exams. :( Now, these two exams were in Animal Diversity and Biochemistry. I focused about 99% of my time on studying Biochemistry, so you can imagine how poorly my other exam may suffer. Or maybe not.

I actually encountered histology on both of my exams. Yay, overlap! On the Animal Diversity exam, there were questions about connective tissue and epithelial tissue. It even asked what the term is for the study of tissues was (Psst....it's histology)! What I've been learning is histology so far has significantly benefit me. On the Biochemistry exam, I was was trying to explain the important of proteins. I'll have you know, I said that it is important in forming collagen found in connective tissue. This is a piece of information that I learned when we covered chapter 6 about connective tissue.

Even though it is challenging to manage 4 science classes at ones, it really is cool and relieving to see information overlapping between classes. That definitely makes the learning process a bit easier.

Mesenchyme? What is it?!

Mesenchyme.

If you're like a lot of people, your response when you see this word is, "Huh"? I'm a biology major that should supposedly know science-y things like the back of my hand, but when I came across this word my mind went blank.

I first encountered this word on my first Histology quiz. Just reading it sent my mind into a world wind of thoughts from, 'Oh my gosh, Cherriese! How could you not have learned this word for this quiz?!' to 'Hehe, mesenchyme rhymes with time. Oh, and it rhymes with rhyme!'. I regained my focus (eventually) and kind of deduced what it was to help  lead to me to the correct answer.

But what is mesenchyme? It turns out that it is a connective tissue that is undifferentiated and derived from the mesoderm. Their elongated cells form a network of processes in the cytoplasm. What is so cool about these cells is that these are stem cells that you retain from when you're born into your adulthood. They can form into many tissues like ones found in the lymphatic system or the circulatory system or can develop into bone or cartilage. When there is uncontolled division in these cells, it can lead to a form of cancer that most people have heard about: sarcoma.

Mesenchymal Cell Differentiation

Mesenchyme doesn't follow time by staying neutral and not being claimed as "mine". That was corny. I'll just stop this rhyme.