TheAnatomiser

It’s difficult to know where to start with Ms. Goody. Her life, her ‘media career’ and her recent illness have been so well-documented that you feel that even as a fully-registered medical practitioner, there is little you can add.

© News of the World

Maybe just one comment. As someone who has had a close family member treated for endometrial cancer recently (similar, but not identical to the treatment for cervical cancer which has spread to the uterus), can I just say how well Jade looks in this video clip. She must be wearing false eyelashes and pencilled-in eyebrows, because they fall out at the same time your hair does when you are having chemotherapy.

Tags: Celebrity health news // Add Comment »

According to various reports, the post mortem (autopsy) on the son of John Travolta has shown that his death was due to a seizure - by which is meant an epileptic seizure.

As far as this writer is aware, there are never any post mortem signs of epilepsy itself. It is after all electrical discharge in the brain - not something you can see after the event! Perhaps what the pathologist (medical examiner) means is that no other pathology was found, leaving a seizure as the only other conclusion. The sixteen-year-old’s body has now apparently been cremated.

The web has been alive with speculation surrounding this family tragedy. Not least because of the reports of autism, and the fact that Scientologists do not believe in autism. It has also been reported that Jett Travolta suffered from Kawasaki syndrome. This quite rare condition usually occurs in very young children, and is hardly ever life-threatening. It can occasionally lead to heart problems (particularly aneurysms of the coronary arteries) but is not associated with epilepsy later in life.

Tags: Celebrity health news // 1 Comment »

Yes, he has apparently had a tumour in his pancreas, but it’s not the same thing as ‘pancreatic cancer’. Let me try to explain.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs

The boss of Apple has had a particularly nasty, and very rare condition called a neuroendocrine tumour. They often crop up in the pancreas, but can also grow inside other organs.

[Read more →]

Tags: Celebrity health news // 3 Comments »

If you’re like me, British, then probably the last time you saw Howie Mandel on the telly was in St. Elsewhere, where he played Dr. Wayne Fiscus (the guy with the big hair.) Now he’s the US equivalent of Noel Edmonds, presenting ‘Deal or No Deal’, that show which has inexplicably captured worldwide attention by getting people to open boxes completely at random.
Howie’s just been admitted to hospital in the states with an ‘irregular heartbeat’, a term which includes the A-Z of cardiac abnormalities, from atrial fibrillation to; well, there must be some heart abnormality beginning with Z, only I can’t think of it right now.

[Read more →]

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Paul Gascoigne

On the recent documentary aired on the Channel 4 - ‘Saving Gazza’, Paul Gascoigne’s 12 year old son was asked what he thought was wrong with his dad. “Everything” was the reply. The lad should definitely consider clinical psychology as a career. This link to a previous documentary - ‘Surviving Gazza‘ - has some video clips. These were filmed prior to the documentary ‘Saving Gazza.’
Whether or not Paul Gascoigne (the former England footballer) has a formal psychiatric diagnosis is an arguable point, but probably not one worth arguing. However you label the poor guy, he appears to be very ill indeed and possibly beyond recovery.
[Read more →]

Tags: Celebrity health news, Sport // 1 Comment »

OK, if you haven’t seen ‘Seven Pounds’ yet then grab your box of tissues and head out. Certainly don’t read the rest of this post, because it contains spoilers. [Read more →]

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What can you say? People like Humph are supposed to live for ever. He was the Prince of Irreverent Humour; completely irreplaceable. I expect a minute’s silence at a certain Underground station and people to throw flowers in front of the funeral cortege as it wends its solemn way down the Mall. The Queen must surely make an announcement. [Read more →]

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The film director and screenwriter Anthony Minghella has died unexpectedly, a week after undergoing surgery for what sounds like tonsillar cancer.

Ever since I found out about its existence, tonsillar cancer has been top of my list of things-I-don’t-want-to-get. It’s a horrible disease, just like other forms of cancer. But this one is particularly nasty as it tends to present late, and the treatment is particularly aggressive and often disfiguring. [Read more →]

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Here’s a useful tip. If someone is about to stick a needle into you in the name of the healing arts, don’t piss them off beforehand. Even if you’re drunk and normally quite obnoxious. Here’s why.

It only works with intra-muscular (IM) injections. I’ve never practised it myself, or indeed seen it done, but I am quite certain it exists.

Most IM injections are drawn up into the syringe out of the phial they come in, using the same needle that you inject into the patient. The needles are actually little miracles of engineering, with an angled, sharpened point at the end. If that point is tapped firmly on the bottom of the glass phial while the drug is being drawn up, the point bends round very slightly at the tip. You now have a barbed implement. It goes in alright, but on withdrawal it catches on muscle fibres and tears them, causing unnecessary pain and a very nasty bruise afterwards.

As I say, I’ve never done this or seen it done. But the very fact such a phenomenon is even talked about is one very good reason to be nice to your nurse and your doctor. If you need one.

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Stories of moronic patients are second on the list of the most popularly-requested A&E ‘anecdotes (number one being, of course, the sorts of things that people insert inside themselves and then get x-rayed when they won’t come out again.)

So here’s the first of what will probably turn out to be occasional brief rants about such people.

The woman who booked in because her false fingernail had come off and she wanted us to stick it back in place.

The woman who actually called ‘999′ (the emergency services number) for an ambulance because she had chewing gum stuck in her hair. In fact the trick to get chewing gum off clothes is to put the clothing in a freezer for a couple of hours so the gum goes hard and can be cracked off. So I advised the patient to go home and stick her head in the freezer for a couple of hours.

Of course I didn’t actually. The General Medical Council frown on that sort of thing. But it’s what I wanted to tell her.

The weird thing is that a lot of medical soaps cover exactly this sort of thing these days - inappropriate use of resources, ambulances tied up with trivia while the elderly man quietly dies form his heart attack - that sort of thing. But the eejits who pitch up with their gummed hair and broken nails either don’t watch popular TV shows as they are too busy attending museums and art galleries (unlikely), or they are just so stupid that they can’t see the comparison.

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