How to digest your own body parts.

My head is buzzing with information about you. And me. Anything that lives really.
Cytoanatomy (anatomy of cells) was on last week.

Quick flick back: Look at yourself. We are complex living things, along with other animals and plants etc. Inside ourselves are organs, that take care of specific duties.
We are made up of cells, and inside these little buggers are organelles – ‘little organs’. Cool Stuff.

What got my attention today whilst studying at Uni (yep, on good friday, a public holiday! I was in the library at 0915 in the morning. Student social life? Nope, not much) was what they call “Lysosomes”. Sounds scientific. Sounds complicated. Let me explain a little:
Lysosomes are basically little sacs that don’t want to share many of their treats (what they have in the bag) with the outside world (the rest of the cell). Nasty little critters.

The reason: They hold on to digestive stuff (enzymes), and if they were a little to generous with sharing, they would just digest the whole cell – read: they’d dissolve their own house and then themselves. Some people are unlucky and are born with a genetic disorder, where exactly this happens; I believe Muscular Dystrophy is one of them.

—

Anyway, back to some real life applications: A while back in Germany we were called out 3 minutes down the road to a male in his thirties, massive abdominal pain. I will always remember how loud this job turned out to be. They guy was in absolute agony. Lying in bed, curled up in a sorry heap, vomited all the fish out that he had the night before.
We didn’t really know what was going on, could have been anything ranging from appendicitis to rotten food to zonkers. Mind you, he had a rock hard abdominal wall, which indicates there is something wrong in your tummy.

Our patient firmly believed it was the feckin’ fish that got him into this state of abhorrent pain. Between writhing and shouting and clenched teeth, he sweared at and cursed the cook…promising “he’d get that bastard, If I lay him hands on that little fucker” and so on.

Situation: Patient needs hospital, still in bed. Stocky bloke. Don’t want to carry. He agrees to walk (bent over) one flight of stairs, down the community staircase. Assisted by us.

Now, I don’t know if many of you have seen standard German community staircases built in the 50’s and 60’s…they can be pretty bare, and echo a lot.
Mister patient doesn’t have a thing left in his stomach, but he’ll try anyway. Bring it all up, boy!

Did I mention the echo? Did I mention he was in pain? Did I mention he wanted to show his girlfriend how much he was suffering? Did I forget to tell you that his guts (sick) hated the fish-chef?
UUAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!!!! WWWWWWOOOOOOHHHHHHRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAA! EEEEEEEEFFFFBPLAAAAAAGRL!!!!!

The rest of the story isn’t much to write about. Stretcher, hospital, handover, next job.

—

Yesterday our Human Structure lecturer told us about Autolysis. Auto=self, lysis=breakdown. Cells break themselves down. Something wrong with lysosomes.
Quote lecturer: “One of the worst diseases someone can have is pancreatitis. The patient will be in agony, and, if left untreated, the pancreas will digest itself.”

—

Later on, we brought a patient back to the same hospital where we delivered Mister I’m-a-gonna-kill-the-bastard-who-prepared-my-fish. Diagnosis: Pancreatitis.

Tags: Ambulance, fish, little critters, lysosomes, pancreatitis