Lub-Dup

So we're doing the heart now in lab - echocardiography is the official name for ultrasounds of the heart. We're learning the different views of the heart, and how best to achieve them around the inevitable rib shadowing and lung interference. I'm enjoying it though, because I feel like I can actually see the heart and I'm not searching around in vain (most of the time) for the organ I'm supposed to be examining. It's a quick feedback kind of thing...there's no mistaking the heart for something else, like the liver or kidney.

We've concentrated on two views, the parasternal long axis, which looks something like this:



And the parasternal short axis, one of which looks like this:


I'm pretty good on those. Towards the end of lab today though we tried out the apical views. First of all, as a scan model these hurt. The sonographer had to really push on the rib, and it was not at all pleasant. The image is supposed to look something like this for an apical 4 chamber view:



But mine looked more like this:


It is definitely not easy. I hope with some practice I'll get a little better.

Hey, how'd you all like the Oscars last night? I think the only dress that I hated was that woman that wrote Juno...what was her name? Oh yeah, Diablo Cody. Not feelin' it at all. Her and Tilda Swinton, worst dressed for me. Everyone else looked fabulous I thought. We so like that the Oscars are live on the West Coast, so we get to watch the whole thing and it's over by 8:45. We haven't seen any of the movies that won awards though so we have some catching up to do with Netflix when they all come out.