Friday, April 07, 2006

Grey's Anatomy

http://abc.go.com/primetime/greysanatomy/

i defected from watching CSI to Grey's! man... rem i blogged abt how excited i was abt CSI Las Vegas coming back on Ch5? i havent even watched a single episode cos i moved my TV day fr tues to mon! LOVE this series! any1 got the DVD? pls pls lend!!

realise how TV drama has become more didactic these days? they have strong storyline revolving ard theme that is introduced in the first minutes by narrator. they teach u abt life, n they tell u dat (esp in their conclusions). they ve turned philosophical!

i like that, except sometimes while we sit there agreeing with wat the narrator is saying, we need to know that the wisdom is dat of the world nonetheless and we need to sift thru it wif values and principles in the Word. i'm not saying that u need 2 disagree with wat s said in. wat i m saying is that we need 2 b clear of wat we r taking in... cos if not, we Christians are quoting, and living out the wisdom dat really is fr the world instead.

always been left "Huh?"-ing re the cases n watching last episode, i resolved to know those things that flew past my head... so tonight i checked out the medical cases in Grey's.

Kalpana's illness: Munchausen's Syndrome. another PSY!

  • It's a type of psychiatric disorder or mental illness. Those who suffer from it either fake or embellish disease symptoms and seek treatment for those diseases.
  • Most people with Munchausen's fake physical ailments - but, some pretend they have psychiatric disorders - like schizophrenia or OCD.
  • It's named after Baron von Munhausen, an 18thC German officer who spun tall tales about his life n accomplishments. In other words the disease was named after a notorious liar.
  • Those afflicted will lie about symptoms, or make them up, in order to get doctors' attention. They'll also create symptoms by harming themselves (Kalpana took pills to produce heart arrhythmias) or falsifying test results (i.e. - adding things to urine samples).
  • No one knows why some develop Munchausen's.

Doctor's suspect Munchausen's when their patients:

  • Recite textbook definitions of symptoms and know an unusual amount of medical terminology (Kalpana regurgitated her symptoms to Stevens in textbook style, to which a surprised Stevens asks, "i thought your Ph.D's is in ____pharm. how is it that you are so familiar with ____ pharm?")
  • Get better - then decline inexplicably
  • Have multiple surgical scars
  • Suffer fr stronger symptoms when no1 is present to observe
  • Are almost eager to have invasive testing and procedures
  • Tell a dramatic medical history with inconsistent details
  • Won't allow Dr 2 speak with their family or previous Drs

The great irony of Munchausen's… those afflicted with it are willing to undergo extremely invasive procedures and tests to treat or diagnose their fictitious ailments. HOWEVER they refuse to acknowledge or be treated for the ONE condition they ACTUALLY HAVE - Munchausen's syndrome.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

there's a syndrome called munchhausen's syndrome in proxy, which is more scary cos the patient is not the one with the fake ailment... instead, it's someone else. eg a mother does something to her child (like put something bad in her food to make her have diarrhoea) so she gets some of the attention.

evan said...

wah dat's really bad!