When I was in nursing school, it was very hard for me to differentiate the types of lung sounds. I guess you can’t just hear rales or rhonchi anytime you want to – you have to wait until the patient and the particular illness presents itself. To start with the basics, breath sounds are the noises produced by the structures of the lungs during Read more…
This is a guest post by Maria Rainier, a freelance writer and blogger.
_____________________________________________________________________________
While not heavily studied or well-known, Meniere’s disease can be a debilitating, painful, and dangerous condition of the inner ear. Named after 19th century French physician Prosper Meniere who studied the inner ear, it is a chronic condition most often found with varying symptoms in people in their 40s and 50s but not unheard of in other age groups, even children.
Maria Rainier
While symptoms may be relieved via various treatment methods, this chronic condition can leave lasting marks on one’s life if left untreated.
Causes and Symptoms
Although physicians don’t know for sure what causes Meniere’s disease, the most obvious hint is the presence of an abnormal volume of fluid in the inner ear.
In detail, the inner ear is made up of a cluster of cavities and passages appropriately dubbed a Read more…
This is a guest post by Catherine Bynes. Catherine is a career/ educational blogger and she writes mostly about CNA Training and Certification over at her blog.
_________________________________________________
Choosing to become a CNA as a career option can be a good choice if you enjoy helping others and want to start an entry-level healthcare position. If you work as a CNA, you will provide assistance with activities of daily living for patients, monitor vital signs and provide other basic care services for your patients.
A career as a CNA can be a good option if you know you want to work in the medical field, but if you do not want to spend a great deal of time in training. Most nursing assistant Read more…
Tuberculosis Bacteria
Is tuberculosis a contagious killer? Well, it depends on which type of tuberculosis (commonly called TB) we are talking about, active or inactive. Active tuberculosis (TB) is a contagious disease. Just like the common cold, it spreads through the air, but only people who are sick with TB in their lungs are infectious. This type of TB means the bacteria are active in the body and the immune system is unable to stop them from causing illness. People with active Read more…
Good afternoon all! It has been awhile and I’m sorry for the delay – today’s post is actually a guest post by Maryanne Osberg and her contact information is included in the post. Good to be back! Stephanie
_______________________________________
If you’re interested in medicine and would like to work in this field, perhaps becoming a nurse is the best way to go. Sure it’s great to be a doctor, but you must spend at least ten years of your life in school before you get to practice medicine on a full-time basis. If Read more…
Stomach cancer (also called gastric cancer) is the growth of cancer cells in the lining and wall of the stomach. These two terms most often refer to stomach cancer that begins in the mucus-producing cells on the inside
Early Gastric Cancer
lining of the stomach (adenocarcinoma). Adenocarcinoma is the most common type of stomach cancer. For information purposes, it might be helpful to know that the body is made up of many types of cells. Normally, cells grow, divide and then die. Sometimes, cells change and begin to grow and divide more quickly than normal cells. Rather than dying, these abnormal cells clump together to form tumors. If these tumors are malignant (cancerous), they can invade and kill your body’s healthy tissues. From these tumors, cancer cells can spread (metastasize) and form new tumors Read more…
I remember as a child, a friend of mine had a disorder called idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. It sounded so awful and I thought she was really sick. However, she had the acute form that disappeared and she was fine. The blood disorder, referred to most commonly as ITP, is characterized by an abnormal decrease in the number of platelets in the blood. Platelets are cells in the blood that help stop bleeding. So, an individual Read more…
Diverticulosis is a condition which affects your large intestine, more
commonly referred to as the colon. Nutrition is digested and food is absorbed in the 20 feet of your small intestine – the long, thin portion of the bowel that begins at the stomach and ends in the right, lower abdomen. Following digestion, the liquid waste enters the 5 feet of the large intestine (colon) which ends in the rectum. Just above the rectum, there is an s-shaped portion of the colon called the sigmoid colon, and this is where diverticulosis usually occurs. A colon affected by diverticulosis has weak spots in the walls and these Read more…
Nursing Careers for the Medically-Minded
If you’ve been considering a profession in medicine, but are reticent to spend the next decade of your life in school, you may want to look into nursing as an excellent outlet for both your desire to help others and your interest in the medical field. Not only are there several different degrees available for the profession (from certification to an associate’s degree to a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing, and beyond), there are also Read more…
Invasive Thymoma
The thymus gland is in the upper part of the mediastinum (chest) behind the sternum and extending upwards into the root of the neck. It is a small organ (reaching its maximum weight of about 1 ounce during puberty) that slowly decreases in size during adulthood and is gradually replaced by fat tissue. During fetal development and childhood, the thymus produces white blood cells, called lymphocytes, that travel to lymph nodes (bean-sized collections of immune system cells) throughout the body. There they help the Read more…
