Week 7: Disrupted Development

We've met four days in a row now for a new class called Disruptions in Development - potentially my own development in this second block, but so far surprisingly it has been a very interesting class. The first time that we me we were introduced to a 30 year old man with cerebral palsy who had a deep brain stimulator, and then a lady with issues with the medical system. Without too much introduction I quickly realized that this is a psychology crash course with live, real patient stories that have been very interesting despite four hour class blocks.

We have so far discussed developmental lines, genderizing brain, lethal genes in families, and attachment. Some of our guest patients that have been interviewed before our class have been a patient with gender identity issues, a patient who found out later in life that she was actually genetically a male, a patient with Huntington's disease, a patient oncologist whose family has all died of cancer and who has had prophylactic surgery to remain alive, and a severely neglected, abused, and traumatized nine-year old who is in the midst of family issues including drug use, murder, hallucination, and attachment problems. Due to the sensitive nature of their respective cases I'm not too privy to disclose many details, but needless to say they have been effective visualizations of psychology in real life. To the credit of the course, and to psychology in general (which I thought I really would not like), it's so far turning out to be much more interesting than I expected.

On a lighter note, here's a anecdote that's supposed to be a funny Friday moment:

Advice: Always let the patient respond to bad news

A doctor sees a patient who exclaims: "Doctor the two greatest fears I have are cancer and Alzheimer's" The doctor looks at the test results and tells the patient "I'm sorry the test results show that you have cancer." Being an astute student of psychology he allows the patient to respond to the bad news as he distresses about how terrible the news is. After a short while he continues "… and unfortunately we've found out that you also have Alzheimer's" The patient perked up and exclaimed excitedly: "At least I don't have cancer!"

Trust me, it's funny, and if you need some help Wiki: Alzheimer's

Off to spend another weekend as I spent Labor Day and last weekend: studying. On a lighter note our class put together a video for a school celebration that we had Tuesday night.