When he nerved himself to return...

... the fire had done its work.

Lower back pain explained

In the last five weeks I've seen a lot of patients with chronic lower back pain.  Depending on the cause, they can also present with other symptoms which can be quite mystifying unless you have a detailed knowledge of the lumbosacral plexus - the network of nerves which leave the spine in the lower back and control the motor and sensory function of the lower body.

The problem is, the lumbosacral plexus is rather complicated.  That is, it has always been considered complicated until just this week when I realized that it can be easily understood in terms of the battle of Waterloo.  A little bit of work and voila!  This aide memoire inventee a moi pour la purpose de la education medique, as they say in France.

To use it, simply note that the French commanders are in blue, the Allied commanders are in red (British), grey (Prussian), and black (Brunswick), and the local villages and farm buildings are in brown.  (The Dutch are not included in this diagram since they correspond better to the visceral innervation.)

For example, if a patient came in complaining of lower back pain and sudden onset ineffectual cavalry charges in the genital area, the diagram clearly shows that this is the fault of Marshal Ney, and that the underlying lesion lies somewhere in the vicinity of the sleepy hamlets of Rossomme and Papelotte.  Or if the patient instead complained of lower back pain and surprise arrival on their flanks of a brigade of horse artillery, the diagram indicates that this is related to the activity of General Bulow of Prussia.

Every patient is different, of course, so please use these suggestions with caution and don't leap to conclusions.  But it's definitely worth asking, when your next patient comes in with long-standing back pain unresponsive to conventional treatment, whether or not a whiff of black powder or a snifter of grape-shot might help!

Careless whispers

I feel so unsure

As I take your hand

And lead you to the dance floor

As the music dies, something in your eyes

Calls to mind a silver screen

And all its sad goodbyes

I've never gonna dance again

Guilty feet have got no rhythm

Though it's easy to pretend, I know you're not a fool

I should've known better than to cheat a friend

And waste the chance that I've been given

So I'm never gonna dance again

The way I danced with you

Time can never mend the careless whispers of a good friend

To the heart and mind ignorance is kind

There's no comfort in the truth, pain is all you'll find

Tonight the music seems so loud

I wish that we could lose this crowd

Maybe it's better this way, we'd hurt each other with the things we want to say

We could have been so good together

We could have lived this dance forever, but now who's gonna dance with me

Please stay

Now that you're gone

Was what I did so wrong

So wrong you had to leave me alone

Cartoon mashup revisited

It occurred to me last night in a fevered dream that I missed a golden opportunity last night in my previous post. Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present the other half of my soon-to-be-world-famous Dilbert/immunologismo mashup!!!


I think this is even better than the other one! I predict it will soon be appearing in the PowerPoint slides of Spanish immunologists at conferences and universities around the world.

Cartoons

One of my Esteemed Colleagues and I had a male bonding moment in class today laughing at the way the lecturer was using the word "cartoon" to describe what I would call a "diagram". It's something that the old-school lecturers seem to do. I did some quick research on wikipedia, but it turns out that the facts are kind of dull in that they make sense, so I'm going to ignore the facts and instead focus on ridiculing this usage of the word "cartoon".

So what I did is take an example of the type of cartoon that the lecturer today was showing us. This one apparently shows the process of antigen presentation by macrophages to T-cells. I'm not 100% certain because for some reason it's in Spanish. Educational, but not very cartoony.


Then, I took this Dilbert strip, which I think we can all agree is a real cartoon. I stole this from the Dilbert site at www.dilbert.com and if the image isn't here anymore you'll know that Scott Adams sent a team of assassin-lawyers to get me.


Then finally, to make the "Presentadora de Antigenos" cartoon more cartoony, I replaced the captions with the dialogue from the Dilbert cartoon. I think you'll agree that not only is it now even more humorous than Dilbert, it's also more educational than "Presentadora de Antigenos".


I am available for guest lectures on any topic immediately.