Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Not so humerus (eh well it is now)

 This would the left elbow.  Notice anything that may be different about it?  There is a pin in the humerus.  Although you may not be able to see it well in this picture, the humerus was chipped off and what was left connected to the elbow joint was hanging on by the width of a piece of yarn.  How do I know this from this picture?  Truth is, I can't even tell either.  This is my elbow.  I broke it in a wrestling match in eighth grade, and it friggin hurt.  This image is just a good look at the pin.
      But take a look at the picture below, and you'll see a better look at the injury.







     In this x-ray mid way through the pin, you may notice a crack in the bone where that piece of bone had chipped off completely. But, now look at the connection to the joint, and you'll notice a thin piece of the unclipped humerus still connected to the joint.








     

   










      My elbow was a displacement fracture because of the fact that the bone had been completely removed from its' original position, and then chipped as well too add to the damage.  When the end of the bone had been chipped off, the doctor said that hopefully the body will either reattach the chip, or get rid of it.  Instead, that chip floated into my elbow joint and got jammed in there.  This prevented me from getting my elbow to move out all the way.  So off to denver I went, twice before I got surgery done.  They ended up bolting that chip back to the elbow and letting the osteoblasts get to work and glue that chip back on to where it belongs.
      Once that was all said and done, the therapy and healing stages took place.  My elbow was so swollen that my friends would push there fingers into my skin and it would leave a crater.  The swelling occurred because of the torn blood vessels that were in my now newly repaired humerus.  It was swollen because it was providing new ground to now start connecting to its' self.  The swelling then started to go down leading to the new blood vessels to be formed and start getting blood flow to that chip of humerus bone.  Trabeculae (spongy type of bone)  then forms between the chip and the humerus in the second to last step to complete healing.  The newly formed border, is now solid bone and the osteoblast cells go to work and get rid of any excess bone that may have been left.  Now, I wrestle, lift, work laborious jobs, and walk on my hands perfectly normal.



Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Intro of the body, Our mechanism

     In our bodies, there is lots of different things that make it up.  Cells combining to make tissue.  Tissue being used to make our structures.  Certain structures would include the heart, liver, muscles, tendons connecting our muscle to bone, or bone to bone.  Different studies include cytology (study of cells), embryology (study of body when in the womb) and histology (tissue study).  Our bodies in a sense are mechanisms.  They can communicate, do physical tasks, digest fuel, circulate oxygen through it, and send electric currents through the nerve all at the same time.  Theres many different walks of studying the body.
   
     But in analyzing the body for study, we go into anatomical ways of studying it.  Such terms as anterior. posterior, proximal, distal, superior, and inferior to name a few pop up to show different sides/sections of the body.  When dividing the body into cut up sections, you go into scientific terms to describe simple parts of the body.  Instead of right and left side, you would call it sagittal.  "That part lies in the right sagittal area."  Or Medial, which would be smack dab in the middle of the right and left sagittal sections.  Frontal and coronal division is when the front (anterior) and back (posterior) get separated.
     Then the oblique section, a section of nine important parts divided up like a tic tac tow board.  the top right of the "oblique board" is the right hypochondriac region.  Opposite side of course being the left hypochondriac region.  In between those two, is the epigastric region.  these three regions are right below the chest muscles, and right above midway between the belly button and the chest.  Below that is the right and left lumbar, with the umbilical region inbetween the two.  The umbilical region as you might of guessed, includes the belly button towards the bottom of it.  Finally under that layer, is the right and left iliac with hypogastric between those.  Hypogastric includes the top of the pubic region, and just below the belly button. 
     In cytology, you study how cells are layered in different ways in order to make tissue.  Many, many different types of tissue.  Different tissues make up different organs.  But, back to cells, cells can be arranged in different sizes, shapes, and texture. or other wise known as epithilia.  Squamos, very short and fat shaped cells are similar to a checkers set piece.  Cuboidal would be shaped like an alphebet block that young children play with.  A culumnar type of cell would be similar to an unused pencil that is vertically standing upright.  These cells can combine to each other to make different types of tissue.
     If these epithelia are simply combined the simple squamos would look like train cars going down the track.  Short, fat, one strata'd cells combines to each other.  But if they were stratified, then it would be train cars stacked on top of each other.  Strata meaning layers of course.  Simple cuboidal would be when the baby try's to spell out words with his/her alphabet blocks.  But when the baby try's to build a house or a pyramid with the blocks it becomes a stratified cuboidal cell structure.  In a stratified columnar structure, the pencils I was talking about earlier would be stacked on top of each other and some what inner twined as well.
     That is just a short description of what cell structures tend to look like.  I like using analogies to describe what i'm talking about.  I feel that it gives you a pretty good idea of what the cell structures would look like.  Then when a real picture is seen, it binds the memory that much more.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

experimental homeostasis



the ice bath was friggin cold.  I also believe Audie has a high heart beat regularly.  Because often times he'll check it just sitting in class, and it will be abnormally high.  Maybe testing Katrina and Steven would of had turn outs towards the data collection.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Tuned into Homeostasis

Homeostasis in short is just the body in it's self trying to maintain normal balance of weight, hydration, energy (food), oxygen, etc. But this type of regulation if the body is a bit different for each individual person. You see, some people may have more of an active life style leading to more of a need for calories and water, and varying weights because of exhaustion of the body after work outs. Then there are others that may not be as active as most and this leads to less of a need for calories (fuel) and also water for that matter. Ever wonder how you can eat 3 meals a day every day and not be huge? Well homeostasis is the regulation of using up all those colories throughout your day and preparing it's self for some sort of action. Homeostasis, the wonderful action of the body that keeps you finely tuned like one of Eric Claptons guitars. But with different guitars comes individual tuning.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

the dissection of officer wallace

In the dissection of a pig, i was appointed too investigate the outer workings and digestive properties of the pig.  Not surprisingly they look very similar to the human digestive system as well.  in the lab, Dillon and I found the lungs, esophagus, liver, small and large intestine, rectum, colon, and kidneys.  The name of our subject was officer wallace, a mean cop who hates fun.
    Ok so besides that fact, the pig was allot more complex than first thought.  There was three different sections people were assigned to study.  Digestive, circulatory, and reproductive.  I studied the digestive.  After opening wallace up, we found all the parts.  Pry the most interesting thing about the pig was the fact that you could possibly jump rope with its small intestine.  We cut the mesentary off of the pig and stretched out the intestine.  As far as it would go it was probly 6-7 feet long.
     At least o learned something this time around doing the dissection.  In middle school my group just mutilated the poor thing.  I now have a better idea of how things work inside the piglet.  RIP Officer Wallace :)

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

evolution (eh-va-loo-shin)

    Evolution is either a fact or a thoery to different people.  People with strong religous beliefs tend to stray away from the thought of organisms (dogs cats humans elephants etc) deriving from bacteria billions of years ago.  But with others that are open to scientific theory thoughts and may still be a bit religous, who knows, they can see that organisms may have been developing over time.  It's hard not to accept facts, and artifacts that have been found to prove such theories.  With evolution, certain attributes occur in a relatively short period of time.  This is called micro(small)evolution.  
    In micro evolution just judging by the name you can probably tell what it is.  It is the small or minuet changes in an organism to evolve.  Its more of an adaptation than the evolving of a creature.  for instance micro evolution includes a rabbits fur changing to white in the winter to hide itself from hungry wolves.  It could also be a beetles' resistance to pesticides increasing.  Microevolution is a wide variety of small changes that benefit the organism in its' day to day life activities.
   Micro evolution is also known to happen fairly quickly.  In mice that have new foundedly settle in black lava rock, they already begin to evolve. What they do is go from what ever color they were whether it be white, or brown, they begin to turn black through their kids.  It can happen quickly for the mice to avoid being eatin by other predators suck as hawks that will see them from the air.  Micro evolution is pretty much adaptation of a species to their environment.
    On the other hand there is evolution that takes longer to be completed.  For a great example, humans.  We humans took a very very long time to be completed and are still in the making.  Billions of years ago there was an ape-like creature that walked, or rather crawled on four legs/arms.  2 arms up front and 2 legs in the back.  Now today, we humans walk on just 2 legs with ease.  This is macro evolution.  A fine example of it as well.  Macro(large)evolution takes a longer time to complete or can be some what never ending in some cases.
     In the 1800s when "honest Abe" was president he was considered to be a tower.  A very tall person.  But he was only 6' 1".  Today we have people like Shack that are like 7'3".  Humans are still evolving.  in my opinion.  Brains are possessing more knowledge and bodies are capable of doing more that what once was thought of.
     Evolution is a widely accepted theory and is very close to being complete fact.  But The strict religious beliefs people have make evolution a joke.  But, i believe that evolution could be Gods work:), think about it I mean, maybe human kind deriving from bacteria is gods work.  Maybe, even the creation of bacteria is gods work.  God could of even got rid of the dinosaurs as a prototype of life.  Because of the fact that humans wouldn't be able to survive with dinosaurs around.  The thought of Evolution is a very complex one with MANY artifacts that have been dug up in order to prove its reality.  With Lucy's body being found, how can you not believe.  Whether your a believer or not, you can't deny the cold hard proof.