Cardiosurgical cycle is going on now. Not a heavy cycle but rather a time wasting somehow. We have to wait for unknown reasons, however it's good in a way that we can talk and gossip, and laugh like nobody's business.
The 1st few days were okay because English speaking teachers delivered the classes smoothly. The first one was a happy lady, 2nd one was a fast speaking young lad, and the 3rd one was a cute, very young good-looking doctor. Today's the 4th day, the Bear man (Medvedev, a bloke) was the teacher, and the class was kinda boring and russian-ish.
He knows some english equivalent terms but not all, which we found difficult in understanding. Hence he taught us with drawing......drawing......and more drawing. And we answered with our mediocre russian level and more drawing too. We managed to understand, if not all, the things he tried to explain pretty well.
But one thing's for sure, he smokes and he has a bad mouth odour. Ergh I couldn't stand sitting right beside him while he was explaining to us. It was like either a bad meat or a good cheese, you call it. Due to long standing babbles of his in Russian, we were kinda blew away by him.....as in to the slumberland.
"So tell me what happened if.............." (in Russian)
"zZzZzZzZz.................."
"Understand? Any questions?" (in Russian)
"Aaaaa........ha........Mmmmm......hm"
He played 3 video clips about valvular replacements. It was interesting but the volume of the video was so muffled. It was like a lullaby, sending us to sleep. We all managed to go anti-sleep but Nantha surrendered and dozed off in front of the Bear on a soft comfy couch.
So the class was devoted to Valvular Heart Diseases. He showed us some dried, well perserved heart valves with calcifications. It's somewhat astonishing and amazing because we would never (or have yet) seen calcified valves in real.
So what would you choose?
A real flower or a fake one?
A real Bush or a fake one?
A real dick or a fake dildo?
A real valve or a prosthesis?
Of course both have their own benefits. When you're out of choice, a fake one would come in handy. But there's nothing more satisfying than having an original one.
A real flower may dry up, but a fake one stays forever.
A real Bush can be seen on tv, but a fake one can be found only in Wax Museum.
A real dick.........well you know~don't need to go further than that.
Of course, a real valve is yours, a prosthesis is a replacement. Nothing is better than an original but when there's no choice but to replace it, a prosthesis is the answer.
So reasons causing the calcification of the heart valves and stenosis(narrowing) are amongst the following: -
a) Rheumatism - tonsillitis, joint pain etc
b) Infection - infective endocarditis
c) Trauma of the valve
d) Atherosclerosis - especially in aorta, the plague restricts opening of aortic valve.
e) Degeneration of valvular cusps
f) etc...........
Read
ShouZhi's blog in both chinese and english. He wrote it interesting.
Ooooookay.....getting boring here, take a look at the pictures. I'm not gonna tell here more for your understanding. Any questions, feel free to PM me.
Now you see..the yellowish is the valvular structure, the whitish is calcification.
The prostheses of valves. The forefather of all prosthetic valves. The newer prosthetic valve, the aortic prosthesis, and calcified valves. The size of a valve in comparison with ShouZhi's dry cracked palm. The latest modern prosthetic valve and its old friends. Up close Now, altogether, say cheese! Patients with prosthetic valves have little cute ticking sounds coming out from the chest. Kinda freaky though.
Kochi~