stolen colours

I met my senior in school today as some of the M4s were having their clinical test for O&G (obstetrics and gynaecology). One of the M4s at his table opposite me was in tears. My senior himself was understandably distraught because he felt he’d failed this test - meaning that he fails the whole posting overall and must do a supplementary course, regardless of the fact that he did very well for the other tests. His patient was a mother-to-be with hypothyroidism, which is really rather uncommon in the population compared to hyperthyroidism. My senior is a very passionate and hardworking student, but he was stunned as he didn’t know how to answer “How does this affect her pregnancy?” He ranted about this to me, and I was stumped as well. I’ve done my medicine posting, so I technically -should- know what hypothyroidism does to you.

I went home, read Shape magazine, and came to an article on 8 difficult-to-diagnose ailments afflicting women. Right in the centre of the page in bold type was “Hypothyroidism can cause low birth weight and low IQ.” There you have it. I guess in hypothyroidism, less of everything good gets to the fetus and less of everything bad gets to the mother.

Moral of the story: read magazines. Don’t mug so much.

Shape magazine is sometimes rather distressing. Dr Ben Tan said in one article that for effective weight loss to occur, one should have a daily deficit of 500-1000kcal. I eat about 1000-1100 kcal a day, so cutting that down as required would mean a net of 100-600 kcal a day? Is that even compatible with life?