I know I bore you all with my blogs and sketches but am really happy with these two! Hope you like them too!
Story time!
We love symmetry! In fact nature is full of symmetry! In fact even in medical science as well as in nature, any asymmetry is feared!
This is really surprising because not everything has symmetry! In fact your own body is not symmetrical! You cannot divide an average human or for that matter most animals in two and expect each part to be symmetrical!
Even in primary section we have learnt that since most people are right handed, even the measure of their biceps would reveal that the right is a little bigger and possibly stronger than the left! Of course it is the opposite for a left handed person!
But for specific areas we do look for symmetry! This is when there are similar organs or central organs! Like even in the average scan we look for symmetry before anything else! In the nose and sinuses we look out for symmetry and it is the same for the ear and even the brain! These have to be similar or must have symmetry! When there is a difference then there is usually an issue!
Which is why asymmetry is actually good! It is like the pain! No one likes pain and usually you are pain free, but when you do have pain it shows that something is wrong and needs to be investigated!
Thinking of asymmetry reminds me of this clinical rounds story during our medicine posting.
There was a patient with recurrent infection sitting and minding his business but the exams were near and any patient is dear to the average final year student!
One of my seniors had remarked that he is an interesting case without mentioning what was interesting! So we all armed with our stethoscope and couple of us with the Indian ones while some had the Littman rushed towards him!
If he was not well, I am sure he would have just jumped and ran away! We were sure that he had a heart murmur! So we started with the site for the most easiest to find; Pansystolic murmur! Couple of guys ‘found’ it and we all wanted to hear it! When I placed my Indian steth all I could hear was a very faint muffled heart beat! Forget murmur! But when everyone heard it, the best option was to nod along which I did!
Our senior PG then came and saw us proudly exclaim the ‘finding’ to him! Couple of ‘guys’ and ‘gals’ even heard some rarest of the rare murmur which we simple blokes could not hear!
The PG simply said, “That’s great! You guys are better than me! I could not hear any!” With that he simply took out his steth and placed it on the right of the chest and not the left! We knew he was a very intelligent bloke! In fact he had got AIR rank and he selected our college! But to see him place the steth on the right to get a heartbeat which even a junior would know is usually on the left was shocking!
We thought maybe the stress of the PG had got him!
Then he proudly said, you can hear the heart beat here! Which we did eventually and this time it was not muffled or had any murmur!
The PG then announced that the interesting thing was that he is a case of Dextrocardia! Dextrocardia is a rare congenital condition where the heart is positioned on the right side of the chest, with its apex pointing rightward!
He was right and the heartbeat was on the right! The look which the patient gave was not very symmetrical! In fact even before the examination he had told us where to place the steth but we ‘knowledgeable’ final year students did not listen to a ‘patient’!
What would he know!?
Well, this time we could not even say, “At least his heart was in the right place!” since his “Heart was in the RIGHT place!”
Rightly places with great directors also is Quentin Jerome Tarantino!
Confirm that your heart beats a little to the left and sleep!
SHubh Ratri!
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