Are you serious?

Ever heard about asthma? That weird affliction where sometimes the airways of a person decide to spasm and choke the life out of the person they're supposed to supply oxygen to?
It's supposedly unpleasant as hell to have (I do not have it, but I do know people who have it). 
People have compared it the hellish feeling of having to run around while breathing in and out through a straw (go try it, it sucks).

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Practicing neuro exam..

Practicing neuro exams on our classmates..

Professor & classmate: *Hits my knee with the hammer*
Me: 

No, not THAT lively. Lively enough though.

Me: *Tests patellar reflex on classmate*
Classmate: ... (*Nothing happens*)
Me: ..? *Tries again*
*Nothing happens*
Me: 

Just my luck to have super lively reflexes that are good enough to show for demonstrations and are good to practice with, only to end up practicing with a classmate with virtually absent reflexes. The hell..

Graves' Disease.. Part 6: Hoarding meds

You amateurs, you..

Word got out that one of the major producers of levothyroxine (thyroid hormone, more specifically, synthetic FT4) is unable to produce enough medication for the Dutch thyroid patients here.
This is because the pharmaceutical company is hauling ass; ergo nothing will be produced for a while.
There's going to be a shortage of Thyrax tablets with a dosage of 25ug starting February this year. The other dosages, 100ug and 150ug, will probably run out somewhere around June.

[Insert a lot of panic among my fellow thyroid patients.]

I lucked out and got my dosage increased from 3x25ug to 1x100ug, so I still have a personal stash of +- 3months lying around, with chances that I will have enough pills to last me until the summer.

A lot of my fellow patients are now attempting to hoard the last amounts of Thyrax now. Some of them are even attempting to hoard a year's supply.
Shame on you, really.
No one really enjoys having a thyroid disease. Everyone is going to suffer from being forced to switch to another brand.
Eventually, you'll have to switch to another brand as well. So please don't hog.

My first thought when I heard about patients attempting to hoard a year's supply of Thyrax: DAMN, YOU GREEDY HAMSTERS!

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Ugh...

The exam for 3.1 (Ortho) left me more dead than alive. I probably bombed that, and since the exam (which took place about 2wks ago) I haven't really done anything except for mourning the loss of my zero-retake streak.

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Surgeons are..

Seem familiar?
As far as I know, surgeons are a pretty odd bunch sometimes, but they're not necessarily mean.

...

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This is me, every time some blooming idiot thinks that people get the flu from the seasonal flu vaccine. 

The European/Dutch flu vaccines contain pieces of dead virus. 
Pieces of dead virus.
So no, it's not capable of giving you the real flu.
Yes, it is capable of making you feel a little under the weather for 1-2 days (that's because your immune system still responds to pieces of dead virus). But it's not a full-blown flu.

It's funny how the people with the most vague symptoms of thyroid disorders are often the ones to bitch the most about vaccinations and other stuff.
I sometimes wonder why the human race has not gone extinct yet.

:/

Well. I seriously considered going into A&E (or the Dutch equivalent of it, at least) for some time.

With my recent diagnosis of Graves' disease, and this vid showing the sheer amount of pressure and frustration that physicians have to deal with in emergency care, I'm starting to question my ambitions.

Stress means heart palpitations for me now that I have Graves' disease.

I don't like heart palpitations. 

And I don't know if my Graves' will relapse once I'm done with my pills.

I'm going to have to think about my decision to pursue a career in A&E or Trauma/Anesthesiology.