Lymph Nodes

I worked with Kevin again today in Infectious Disease. We saw almost all of the “normal” things, but had one ‘exciting’ thing happen to switch it up a little. A man came in saying he had swollen lymph nodes. I had seen swollen lymph nodes in the armpit in Durban—I had seen them being aspirated. They were fairly big, so I was expecting about the same thing. I was completely shocked when I found them to be something very different. He took his jacket off and placed it over the chair, and then started to unravel the scarf he had around his neck, to reveal lymph nodes at the base of his neck and collar bone to be larger than the size of tennis balls. I could not believe that they were THAT swollen! They were practically huge abscesses. Kevin immediately decided that we needed to drain them to at least give this poor man some more instant pain relief than antibiotics. We drained 25 ML of green pus out of both sides, but could have taken at least another 25 out from the left side. The left side was quite a bit larger than the right. I was so shocked. I didn’t even know something like that was possible. It was probably the grossest yet most fascinating thing I’ve seen in a clinical setting.

There was an x-ray meeting happening in the early afternoon that we were told to attend. An elderly and apparently entertaining radiologist comes once a week and allows students to present a patient case that they have seen. They discuss the health queries and examine the x-rays in front of the large group, allowing everyone to contribute information or ideas, and teaching the students to interpret x-rays more efficiently and accurately. It was quite interesting. This evening we also had our weekly meeting with Avril and Marion. They are so cute! We talked a lot about the things we had seen in the hospitals, how our tour went, our adjustment to Cape Town, and just everything in general since the last time we met. They are taking us on a weekend trip on the Garden Route next weekend. It is apparently world renowned for being so absolutely stunning, and incredibly fun. I’m sure it will be so exciting! I’ve heard that we can do things like pet elephants, ride ostriches, and bungee jump off of one of the tallest bridges in the whole world. I think I want to bungee jump but I’m getting scared! I’ve been informed that if I don’t do it I will regret it, but it still scares me a little bit…….hmmm…wonder what I’ll end up doing!