This week in our clinical skills class we learned about the neurologic exam. I've spent my fair share of time in a neurology clinic between the many, many hours I've shadowed and working at CNN in Hastings so I actually knew most of the exam by heart already (I've had some seriously awesome examples to learn from!). It still was one of my favorite clinical skills classes so far though.
Today we had a meeting for the Student Interest Group in Neurology (SIGN). We had the "ALS in the Heartland" crew come talk with us along with Miss Heartland, Charissa Hauge, and one family that has been affect by ALS. For those of you who don't know, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (aka Lou Gehrig's disease) is a rapidly progressive neurological disease that affects nerve cells responsible for voluntary muscle control. There is no known cause, prevention, cure or really any effective treatment. It's definitely one of those disorders that give neurology its bad rap for being uber depressing and really not that helpful to patients.
They were hoping we could partner with them as a group or, in the very least, to bring attention and awareness to the cause. ALS is one of those interesting disorders in that it's a "rule out" disorder. There just isn't enough information about it out there to yet to have tests designed for diagnosis, so you have to rule out everything it's not before settling on it being ALS. I think some of us might end up going to the ALS Walk later this spring (another really great brain-y walk is the MS Walk also held in Omaha. I've gone the past two years with a wonderful family that I met through the dance team at HC and it's a blast!).
Well, I'm off to a Mavs hockey game... a girl's gatta have a little fun on the weekends, right? We're playing the Wisconsin Badgers (goooo Mavs! Sorry, I'm not sorry about it Hannah W-K!).
Hasta for now!
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