This morning I went to endocrine growth clinic and saw several patients with growth disorders. One of them looked about 8 years old but was really 14. He has idiopathic growth hormone deficency and is being treated with growth hormone. The second was of a patient who was 6 years old in the bottom 5th percentile for growth. She likely has short stature and normal growth hormones since her rate of growth over the past year was 4 cm. The most interesting girl for me was one with hypochondroplasia. Like achondroplasia it is due to a mutation in the FGFR3 receptor, and the extremities are disproportionally shorter than the trunk. However, the height is much greater than that in achondroplasia. She is also on growth hormone which actually can make the disproportion more severe by mainly increasing trunk length.
After clinic I decided to go home. Its getting hard to stay motivated to go since no one is keeping track and since I'm mostly shadowing.
At lunch, I was happy to see several of my friends in the kitchen. So we had a nice chat about euthansia since there a man in the UK with locked-in-syndrome wanting someone to euthanize him, how dangerous it is to bike riding in London, and the crazy bus drivers here (I don't think people here drive worse than they do in NY).
After lungh, I finalized my plans and booked tickets for the trips I want to take before I leave. Next week Wednesday, I'm going to take a bus up to Bath, spend the night, and the next day do a tour of Stonehenge and Avebury. I'm really hoping to stay at a couchsurfer's place that night. I email a lot of girls I saw on the website but so far no one has been able to host me. I hope I do find someone not only because it would save money, but also because the idea seems so cool to stay at a total stranger's place for a night. I wish my landlord would let me host people so I could also meet people from around the world.
The following week, I'm taking a trip to Prague on Monday and Tuesday. I'm super excited about this trip. I've been waiting to go for years since people rave about Prague. And I got a great deal on tickets with Ryainair.
Jess and I made plans to check out the Imperial War Museum this afternoon. She got off around 3:30 and we meet at the tube and headed over together. We spent most of the time in the Holocaust exhibition. I throughly enjoyed it. One thing I thought was strange was that there was a sign saying you have to be 14 or older to enter. ??? What's the logic behind that??? Surely 14 y/o olds watch more gruesome things in the movies or video games.
After the museum closed Jess and I stopped at a nearby pub for dinner and drinks. We both got the house special, a cottage pie-- minced/ground beef with mashed potatoes on top. We chatted a couple of hours. She actually spent most of the time studying for her boards in pubs in Cardiff where she was visiting her boyfriend. I think its a great atmosphere to study since there always seems to be one really obnoxious person in Starbucks who makes it impossible to concentrate or there are no tables. I think its so brave to go to a pub by yourself and read but I'm going to try it because I'm so bored at nights with nothing to do and I just sit in my room. Its too uncomfortable for me to read in my room so I end up surfing the web for hours until I fall asleep.
Sometimes I wonder if its okay that I'm not doing much on this rotation. I thought about taking a PICU rotation in addition to my general peds-subi just to sort of challenge myself in a way. So far I can't bring myself to sign up for it knowing how intense it will be. So I'm just going to enjoy life being easy for now.
I also am thinking of dreading my hair when I get back to the States. I think the Coppola treatment has given me insomina.
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