The rewards of research

So one of the benefits(?) of being on the postgraduates mailing list is receiving regular offers of money for being a research subject. The latest one was rapidly followed up by an appeal for people to stop volunteering - the researcher had managed to recruit enough subjects willing to have a plastic tube (for anal manometry) inserted up their backsides - for £50. 

The going rate for an EEG seems to be just £8 though.

2013 Feb 15

Yesterday:
Applied electrodes and performed an EEG on Colin. Being sleep deprived (he's got a baby too), he reached Stage 2 sleep within 10 minutes! And had loads of sleep spindles. This gave me the idea of looking for periodicity in spindle power to try to detect the 'EEG signature of memory consolidation'.
Re-read some key references; marvelled that I had not noticed before that the slow oscillation requires DC EEG with head restraint(!) to detect. Or at least it did circa 2002. Which was 10 years ago - maybe things have moved on a bit since. 

2013 Feb 13

Rest of yesterday: 

removed electrodes using acetone (fumes!!!); got to see the new space-age medicine cupboards in the treatment room (nurse fingerprint recognition!!) 

Today: 

Emailed sleep lab technician re: AASM manuals. 

EEG teaching: 

Introducing my PhD/ new mum blog

OK it's time to revive this old thing, I think, as I can't think of a good place to record my informal supervisory (and other) meetings for my project. A combination of cycling to work (therefore needing to travel light), having 3 different workplaces, and having a baby (logistical nightmare!) means that a conventional paper log is just not going to work. A full update in the next post, but here's what I needed to record somewhere before I forget it all:

 Tuesday, 5 Feb 2013
 My first clinic since returning from maternity leave. On the theme of Dravet (or Dravet-like, with a big deletion containing 3 SCN genes)syndrome. Luckily Prof H thought my letters were excellent.

Thursday and Friday 7, 8 Feb 2013
Met H, and then S and K the following day, to discuss the technicalities of wiring up pre-surgical patients to PSG given limited headbox ports. Still need an AASM manual - to email R. At YE: to email IT guy re: portable encrypted hard drive for data back-up. Also re: space on network server.

Weekend:
Cleaner came on Saturday morning for 3 hours. Booked tickets and hotel for Tubingen - bringing the baby along again! Chinese new year reunion dinner on Sat - A's first!

Monday 11 Feb 2013 Spent the morning helping the telemetry crew to wire up patients, including one for a single night of (almost) polysomnography. Did some VIREPA coursework. Finalised details of Tubingen visit with lab team. Delivery of new computer (not impressed with Windows 8).

Tuesday 12 Feb 2013 No more breast milk this morning. A seems to have accepted this with little fuss. Dug out old (pre-pregnancy) bras.

Moving on again

For a limited time only, here is a link to my new blog:
[link removed. If you know me and would like to read my new blog, please email me for the link.]

can't wait...

oh. oh. Forgot to say - I bought myself a yahama clavinova! Cost me nearly one and a half thousand pounds, but it feels and sounds very nearly like a real piano. It will be delivered in a week and a half - the first time I will have had my own piano in more than 10 years! Can't wait to put my finger muscles and certain underused portions of my brain back to work again. Finally won't have to feel a fraud for putting my piano performance diploma on my CV. And the only time I have been grateful for my technically illegal Band 2A rota which means I get paid so much for antisocial working hours that I can actually afford the piano.

Front row

Here's reporting from the European Paediatric Neurology Society conference in (rainy) Harrogate! Check out the professors in the front row, some in bright orange t-shirts, the colour of the EPNS logo! The conference bags are a fashionable 'not plastic' black jute, and the sandwiches full of squishy egg mayo.
London Fashion Week this is not, but I think the world of paediatric neurology (and I imagine any other branch of medicine) has its own insiders and outsiders, rising stars, institutions (sometimes literally!) and trends that come and go.
Being a bit of an outsider (for the moment!) I spent most of my tea breaks among the hundred or so posters. There seems to be a surfeit of case reports, but some posters were quite brlliant - Ng et al made centile charts for Gower's sign, and there were a couple of molecular/genetic ones that were pretty fascinating. The best science is simple but elegant. So it will be interesting to see which one wins the prize.
Right. Have to get to bed, 08:30 start tomorrow (a lie-in compared to the 07:15 starts on thursday and today).

Stories that can't be told

Typing this from a cafe... (the mobile broadband reception in my flat is almost non-existent)
Went in just for teaching today and it was a transport team review. It's quite fascinating and a good insight into the decisions that need to be made when a request for retrieval is received. The statistics were followed by a simulated telephone referral.
They've been in some quite hairy situations, but then I suppose they're the ones who get called when everyone else is in a pickle. Am finding it quite hard to blog about individual patients, as there are only so many retrieval teams, paediatric ICUs and paediatric cardiac transplant centres across the country, so it's almost impossible to hide the patient's identity whilst describing the clinical situation. Well, too bad, readers! I think you have to actually work in a PICU to get any idea what goes on. Everything dramatised on television is dull by comparison. Ask me out for a coffee if you really want to know. Perhaps by the end of these 6 months I'll have first hand stories to tell too. Or maybe I'll just have to write a work of fiction...

A new book

Day off pre-nights today; typing this on my laptop in the public library as there's no 3G reception in my flat, and I'm trying to download ubuntu.
Had a slightly better day yeterday than the day before - by that I mean I did something slightly more than failing to put in a venous line and an arterial line. In fact, the main useful thing I did was muster all my confedence to sit tight on a very slightly hypotensive patient, whose blood pressure resolved itself. And I know what lusitropy is now, too.
Got a new book from Foyles - Handbook of Paediatric Intensive Care (by Gale Pearson) which I wish I'd found a few weeks ago. I like the way it's written - the author doesn't shy away from decriptive language, such as "rampant catabolism" or from stating simple facts that need emphasis, like "this is a human blood product" (in reference to albumin). All this in amongst the usual textbook language - "systolic dysfunction requires inotropes, with or without vasodilators, whereas diastolic dysfunction can deteriorate with inotropes and may respond better to volume replacement". So the aim is to eventually read it from cover to cover, starting with the chapter on post-operative cardiac surgery patients.