Week one was all epilepsy. It's amazing how many kids have seizures, sadly enough. But again, most of my week was devoted to calculating a ketogenic diet for our epileptic patient. By Friday, her ketone body levels had raised to 1.9, almost at the therapeutic level of 2.0! This was extremely exciting as she has been there since Monday. The patient really seemed to love playing with our name badges, so as a parting gift, we got her her own!

The bad news? She threw up on me yesterday morning. Lovely. It came out of nowhere. Luckily interns don't always need their lab coats.

But besides working with an epileptic patient, I had exposure to patients with various viral diseases, and also a patient with arthrogryposis. Don't worry, I didn't know what it was either. Google it!

...too lazy? OK. It's a rare genetic abnormality that causes muscle weakness and fibrosis. This causes the joints to curve to awkward angles, causing the patient to be wheelchair bound. It has no real link to nutrition, but we had a nutrition consult to the patient for other reasons.

And while this all can seem to come across as incredibly saddening and heartbreaking, the patients are completely different. They're all (95% of the time) in happy spirits, glad to be getting help. It may help that I am younger, and able to relate to them more easily. Yesterday I played peek-a-boo with a "ladies-man"-type 2 year old who was sitting inside by the window of his room and I was standing on the outside. SO incredibly adorable.

But now it's finally time for the weekend, so more to come next week!