News comment, 10th week

Anaesthetic awareness

Can you imagine how it could be to wake up during a surgery? the news I heard this week was based on a new movie called “Awake” that´s about this situation. The news explained a strange situation called anesthetic awareness in which the patients wakes up during a surgery just a few minutes after they had had anesthesia, the doctor explained that this can happen because the mix that the patient inhale before the surgery is compound of tree substances; one is to keep slept the patient, the second one is an analgesic that keeps controlled the pain and the last is used to paralyze the body, and sometimes the two first substances can be inactivated in the body, and that is the reason why the patient can wake up and feel what is happening in his body but he is unable to move so he can´t tell the doctor or nurses what is happening until the surgery ends. There was a narration also of a person that had suffer this situation, and she explained that it happened to her during a cesarean, and it was terrifying, she wasn´t able to tell the doctors and she was felling pain in all her body. The doctor also explained that it is not a strange situation he said that it is One in six hundred operations in which the patient is experimenting anesthetic awareness. I think this is a non-rare situation if we compare it could be like those people that take an aspirin and it didn’t calm his pain, there are some drugs that function only for some people, and if anesthetics are drugs it is common that they don’t function for some people.

Book report, 2nd story "The speckeld band"

THE SPECKLED BAND

The second story I red was The Speckled Band written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and adapted by Philip Nokes. The story talked about the avarice of people talking about money and the action they are able to do when they are afraid of loose what they had, and the way a recognize person can become a murderer using his intelligence and courage.

The story took place at Stoke, a village near London, in which Roylott family lives, two sisters, Julia and Helen, and their stepfather. The mother of both died years ago and left all her money to her husband Mr. Roylott, and established that when her daughters married they can receive a part of the heritage. Two years ago one Julia died just before she gets married, and the Helen is about to married so she was worried about what would happened with her so she went with Mr. Holmes to asked him if he can helped her to discover how her sister died. She only can told Mr. Holmes some clues like, some days after Julia died she told her she had heard some noises like a whistle and a sound of metal, and when she died her last word was “the band, the speckled band”, that she died in her room which was locked totally and some things about his stepfather Mr Roylott, like he was a violent person who had pets like a tiger and a monkey.

Mr. Holmes went with Dr. Watson to Roylott house in stoke an took a look off all the things in Helen`s room the place where she was supposed to died, and in which was staying Julia temporally. He observed that in the room was a ventilator with a rope hanging of it and that the bed was fixed to the floor, and in Mr. Roylott room he found an iron box with a plate of milk above it. Mr. Holmes ask Helen to stay in Julia’s room until Mr. Roylott arrived an after he got into his room she had to return to her room and left Julia`s room light turn on. When Holmes and Watson saw the light they went to Julia’s room window and waited there until they heard some noise in the ventilator just in that moment Mr. Holmes hit the rope with a stick and after that they heard a horrible scream in Mr. Roylott’s room they arrived there and found Mr. Roylott sitting at his chair with a speckled band in his neck; a snake. Mr. Holmes deduce that Mr. Roylott had killed Julia by introducing the snake in her room and letting it killed her, but this time when Holmes hit the snake it returns to Mr. Roylott room and killed him.

The story is really interesting, the way the author has the imagination to create such big scenery with all kind of details about how the murderer planed everything is surprising, and how everything Helen said can helped Mr. Holmes to solve the case and to connect everything. The author had the ability to make us imagine every little detail like the sound of the metal when Mr. Roylott put the snake in the box.

The story is captivating and keeps you interested until the end. It shows us the terrible things people are able to do when they are not satisfied with the material things they had, this is a problem we can see everywhere we go, people fighting for the best economic status without taking care of human beings.

Book Report; 1st story "The man with the twisted lip"

THE MAN WITH THE TWISTED LIP

The story was The Man with the Twisted Lip written by Sir Arthur and adapted by Philip Nokes, this story is about a big truth in the life; sometimes a man can earn more money by making people feeling compassion, happiness or joy than developing a profession like accountant, doctor or teacher.

The story takes place in London were one day Mrs. Whitney ask Dr. Watson for help, because her husband had been in an opium house for 2 days, Dr. Watson looked for him but he found him and someone more; Sherlock Holmes. Holmes told Watson the reason about his visit to the opium house; he was trying to solve a case about the disappearance of Mr. Neville Sinclair. Holmes had only a pair of clues; the clothes of Mr. Sinclair full with coins outside the opium house, the testimony of Mrs. Sinclair in which she said she had saw his husband in a window of the opium house, and a beggar who was arrested in the opium house after Mrs. Sinclair called the police.

With this clues Holmes solve the case; he deduced that the Beggar in the jail was Mr. Sinclair, and he told homes his entire story. How the first time he disguised as a beggar to make a research an write a news about the life of a beggar, but he realize that as a beggar he can earn more than writing for the newspaper, so he continue as a beggar and used the opium house to disguise him, so when his wife saw him he tried to escape and dropped his clothes with the coins out of the building but the police caught him and put in jail.

The story is really interesting, until the end of the story the author caught your entire attention, because you didn’t have any little idea about what would happen. The way the author goes deep into the details of the personality of each character make us trust in the ability of Holmes to solve the case, in the capability of awesome of Watson or in the desperation of Mrs. Sinclair. But without a doubt the end of the story is the most surprising part you never imagine how the things will end, you imagine all kind of things like Mr. Sinclair was murdered, or he run away.

The story is a interesting and captivating tale that I enjoy reading but in the other hand shows a case of real life, how many times we have seen, lawyers or architects working as taxi-drivers or selling food and they live better, but the worst is when we saw little children begging for money in the streets only because it is an easy way to earn money even more productive than study a major.

Calm down, and count until 10!

This time I heard about a very common problem; the untreated anger, and how this makes us ill. A doctor of the Mental Health Foundation in the UK talked about people who can't control their anger, and how this problem can make them become ill. This kind of people is those who had continuous episodes of uncontrollable anger, this can bring problems like depression, anxiety disorders or heart diseases. Anger is a healthful way to express our feelings, but it is uncommon that we became angry every day, every hour. The doctor said that people who suffer this disorder can assist to anger management courses and he also said that this disorder need more research and studies because it isn’t considered as a mental disorder yet. Another thing he said was that the common thing like take a deep breath and count until 10 are things that also work. So I think it is time to ask us if our anger is becoming a disorder.

Cheap or expensive pills?

This time I heard something i think all of us had sometime pass trough, what kind of medicine choose?, that one that is expensive, the "original" or that one that is cheaper the generic. I heard about a research that had been made in The Massachusetts Technology Institute in USA, in which they tried to prove the placebo effect of pills in humans. In this experiment researchers produced some kind of pain in people and then told them they will take a pain killer and gave them 4 kinds of different pills, they told them the first one was cheap and made in china, the second one was expensive and made in china, the third one was cheap and made in USA and the forth one was expensive and made in USA, after every time they gave them the pill they produced them pain again and ask them how painful was it every time, and they concluded that people felt less pain when they took the expensive pill than those who take the cheaper, but at the end of the experiment they told them that pills were not pain killers it were only placebos (pills without medicine, just sugar). Another research explain this experiment, they said that everytime we take a pill and we know something that make us trust in it our body release opioids something like morphine that helped us to finish with the pain, thats why everybody thinks that expensive pills works better than cheaper pills although they had the same content.