Skip to content

@dresmerelda

ID/Micro Academic Doctor & Smiley-faced lover of purple

  • Home
  • Blog
  • About me!
  • Contact

Contact

Find me on Instagram and Twitter:

@dresmerelda

Categories

  • Healthy Living
  • Infectious Diseases/Micro & Global Health
  • Medicine
  • Research
  • Travel

Instagram

It’s Candida auris! I was sneaky in the story quiz- I didn’t tell you it was Candida chromogenic agar. But you may have noticed that the colour streak was one continuous sweep across the plate- it just came through as different colours... 🤔 • This type of Candida is a worry- it tends to be very resistant to the usual antifungals. First described in 2009, it was isolated from the ear (Latin: auris) swab of a Japanese patient. It has since caused several healthcare outbreaks. The difficulty is that it’s hard to identify- it requires MALDI (Vitek and API can mis-ID it 😕) and that’s why we now increasingly characterise Candida asap in ITU patients. On call sab plates it’s white like other Candida, but on chromogenic agar it can be purple, beige or pink. 🙃 • So much for this going out early this week! It’s been a busy one- here’s a round up: 🧠 brand new doctors to help out 🧠 • 🧠2 clinics🧠 • 🧠 2 case reports progressing 🧠 • 🧠 2 oncalls (one with phone calls every 2 hours overnight... 🤮) 🧠 • 🧠 rota coordination 🧠 • 🧠 3 ward rounds 🧠 • 🧠 ward/patient management and reviews 🧠 • 🧠 now off to France for a wedding 💕 • Happy #friyay everyone!
Our lab has a new home and it’s so huge that it pumps up my step count just being there 😂 • I’ve been a bit absent from here recently because there’s so much going on. I’ve also been trying to maintain my post-holiday feeling of chill in the face of it all and not overdo it. She says- in the lab on the weekend again after working a 7 day straight already 🤪 But hey, I’ve only got ONE MORE PATIENT SAMPLE left to collect after today 🙌 🙌😁 • Now to spend some time at home before coming back in tomorrow! 🧠 • #medicine #challengeyourself #doctorslife #doctorsofinstagram #science #researchlife #medical #scicomm #studygram #studyhard #workhardplayhard #selfcare #sciencesaturday #labcoat #nursing #pa #scrubslife #fashion #hippystyle #alwayslearning #purplehair #dnaextraction #womeninscience #womeninmedicine #womeninresearch #patientsfirst #infectiousdisease #microbiome #microbiology
Today is our 2 year anniversary. 💕💕 I’m a very lucky lady to have such an awesome husband. SO much has happened in the 9 years we’ve been together and yet it sometimes feel like no time has passed at all... ❤️ • #wedding #happy #inlove #intelligence #anniversary #challengeyourself #weddedbliss #brideandgroom #lifepartner #sohappytogether #scientists #medicine #alwayslearning #sealife #freecycle #doctorslife #nonmedic #learntogether #instascience #instamood
I came out of the wonderful Guggenheim with a slightly sore head from thinking about all that art! 😂 It got me wondering about whether I’m wasting half my brain...?! 🧠 • Well, the answer is probably not. At least not as I thought. It’s more about the way your two brain halves work through an activity. 🤓 The left hemisphere is generally concerned with logic and reasoning whereas the right hemisphere is concerned with emotion (broadly speaking). Studies have shown that if you get a room of artists and non-artists to sit and draw, the artists will better employ their right hemisphere. But it’s more complicated than that 🤔 • NON-musicians will listen to music and THEIR right hemisphere will dominate. But get a musician, someone who understands how to read and write music, someone who understands the structure of the piece, to listen to the music and 💥- both hemispheres fire up. There is a logical understanding, as well as an emotional response. 🎼 • It’s all about achieving ‘flow’- being all absorbed by an enjoyable activity is brilliant exercise for the brain and has been shown to decrease the risk of Alzheimer’s. Being ‘in the zone’ is important for brain function: it aids stress reduction, emotional control and the ability to focus on future tasks. And it can take all sorts of forms: be that reading, learning a new skill, arts and crafts, puzzles, meditation, card games... Such activities are increasingly being used with patients living with dementia or after strokes too, for therapeutic benefit- for eg, drawing can help people with word-finding difficulties to find those words ✏️ • I wonder if my Guggenheim audio guide was therefore helping me to fire both sides of my brain too- both respond to the art emotionally and learn about the pieces..? Being absorbed in an activity outside of my usual ones certainly helped me to recover a bit of focus this holiday! I feel utterly refreshed 🙌 • There you have it- more evidence that looking after yourself and having hobbies is good for you! What gets you in the zone?👇
One of my absolute fave ways to relax is to read, and as I also love learning Spanish, I try to combine the two (although it’s a slower process!) 😂 • I started learning Spanish when I went to Perú for my medical elective- a block of learning we can do abroad as medical students. While there I was able to learn in private, poor, and ‘workers’’ hospitals, as well as in a local village. 👩🏻‍⚕️ • My aim has always been to ‘share the medical love’ and work abroad, and language skills helps this ❤️ • Do you speak another language? If you learnt as an adult, what motivated you? 👇 • #medstudent #medicine #doctorsofinstagram #doctorslife #beachtime #beachholiday #reading #bookworm #globalhealth #internationalhealth #healthcareforall #scicomm #wearescience #vintagestyle #nursing #pa #fashion #infectiousdisease #globetrotter #travelbug #aprenderespañol #languagelearning #spanish #literaturelover #holiday #relaxation #travel #motivationmonday #mood
When your nanodrop graph is AWESOME and it makes going in worthwhile. Hurrah for perfecting my technique at DNA extraction 🙌And yes, I’m on annual leave #researchlife 💩 • Next stop, España 😍 • #doctorsofinstagram #research #purplehair #science #scicomm #nanodrop #holiday #doctorslife #dnaextraction #workhardplayhard #labcoat #inthelab #microbiome #microbiology #infectiousdisease #medstudent #nursing #pa #medicine #success #learninglanguages #spanish #womeninresearch #empoweringwomen
Totally late because I’ve been SO busy but here’s my slightly rushed but no less heartfelt happy birthday to our National Health Service. 💕🎉 • Music credit: Bae by Jef 🎼 • PS: sorry I’m a bit absent. Have been ridiculously busy but I’m not sure I can even pin down why! Have an (only slightly working) holiday coming up though 🙌 How are you guys?! 🤗😁 • #nhs #nhsat70 #research #doctorsofinstagram #doctorslife #vlog #purplehair #medicine #healthresearch #healthcareforall #scicomm #socialist #patientcare #patientsfirst #workhard #success #staygood #researchlife #medic #medstudent #nurses #premed #pa #care #transformationtuesday
🌟🌟🌟Interesting microbiome paper🌟🌟🌟: so, C diff is a bacteria that can happily live in your gut and cause no problems. However, lots of antibiotics can give the C diff opportunity to overgrow and become toxic. Sometimes we can’t kill it with targeted antibiotics so instead we have to replace the good bacteria- with a poo transplant 💩 Or at least so we thought. It struck me during our project that we must kill off a lot of the bacteria in poo transplants when we prepare it- so how come it works? 🤔 • Turns out I was probably right to be confused by how much could survive transplant prep. A recent study showed that if you transplant poo with bacteria known to be ‘dead’ it STILL works and cures the patient. They then found that the viruses survive 🤯 • Can’t help but think we’ve spent too much time looking at the bacteria... 💩 • Through the research-arm of the NHS, the NIHR, I got my Academic based job, integrated with my clinical time. It’s been the making of me for the last 3 years in particular- learning about the gut microbiome and conducting a pilot research project has been such a great experience. Just another reason to love the NHS! 👩🏻‍⚕️ • #researchlife #doctorslife #doctorsofinstagram #healthresearch #healthcareforall #medstudent #microbiome #gutmicrobiome #inthelab #saveournhs #nhsat70 #nhs #nursing #premed #pa #wearescience #scicomm #science #scientistswhoselfie #womeninscience #womeninmedicine #womeninresearch #microbiology #bacteria #infectiousdisease #virology #workstyle #purplehair #medicine #research

Search

Follow @dresmerelda on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
Blog at WordPress.com.
Cancel