Today in Physical Diagnosis, we were conducting Head, Neck and Lympathics exams on each other. As part of all that feeling around, the thyroid gland was also palpated (fancy word for felt). In class, our instructor mentioned that a normal size thyroid gland wouldn't normally be felt. Assuming (always a bad decision!) that I was in possession of a "normal" thyroid glad, I also then assumed that what I was feeling on either sides of my trachea was a muscle. Although it was in a rather inconvenient and unusual position, I just figured that it was all the pumping iron that I do. In my neck. *Just kidding!* Anyways, so I get to the actual exam room with my partner and he's just palpating everything, feeling my face bones, my skull, my occipital lymphatic nodes, my post cervical nodes, my precervical nodes...then he stops and says, "I think I feel your thyroid gland." Despite the fact that the man was a medic and has performed an emergency tracheotomy in the field, I said, "Naaahhh."
Man, was I wrong! Our faculty advisor happened to enter the room at just that second, so Greg asked her what he was feeling. She confirmed that he was in fact feeling my thyroid gland. Say what???? Then she said, "And it's rather large." Well, I figured that since she was a PA and all, she definitely knew what was going on. I did get a second opinion (which is extremely easy to do when PAs and MDs compose more than 30% of the population in a given room) and was again confirmed that my thyroid gland is indeed enlarged. Great thing the school has insurance I have to have...too bad nobody on faculty will just order me a lab test! :)
I always heard that when you enter a medical training program, you always begin to self-diagnose. I just didn't know that I would be diagnosed by a classmate!
***Factoid of the Day****
Did you know that normal, anatomically speaking, is a structure that occurs in a certain position in only 33% of people?
No comments:
Post a Comment