Grooming essentials for growing baby. Contains brush, comb, scissors, nail clipper, fingertip toothbrush, four emery boards, deluxe travel/storage bag, and a babycare, wellness and safety guide.
Archive for September, 2008
Schwartz’s Principles of Surgery
I am a fourth year medical student going into general surgery and this is the only surgical textbook that I have read in significantly. I chose this book because it got the best rating in First Aid for the Wards. I have completed all but the last 100 pages of this 1870 page text. It begins with a 500 page, 14 chapter section entitled “Part I, Basic Considerations” that is mostly surgical basic sciences. This material is mostly well-covered. The clinical application is not always clear but that is not the intention of these chapters as far as I can tell. Chapters on SIRS, infection, wound healing, and cell/molecular considerations stood out. In “Part II, Specific Considerations” there are chapters arranged by organ systems that cover the various areas of general surgery, followed by individual chapters on surgical subspecialties such as urology and ortho. These chapters vary somewhat in style. The congenital heart disease chapter was brief and a bit hard to follow partially due to insufficient discussion of embryology and fetal circulation. The acquired heart disease chapter was too brief in my opinion. The esophagus and vascular system chapters very lengthy and thorough. The other chapters are adequate. The gyn chapter and neurosurg chapters in the subspecialty areas are actually pretty good and have some useful info for general surgeons. The chapters generally speaking are less oriented towards descriptions of the surgery performed. They tend to have a brief discussion of normal anatomy and physiology, followed by in depth discussion of diagnosis including various tests and imaging studies, followed by descriptions of benign diseases and their medical and surgical management, followed by malignant diseases of that organ and their management. The chapter on colon and rectum is an exception since it discusses the various resections separately from the disease entities. The gyn section is heavy on descriptions of surgeries.
Since I cannot compare this text to others in the field, I am not sure how to rate it. The chapters have some variation in style. The discussion of diagnosis and management including diagnostic testing and imaging is very thorough. The descriptions of the actual surgeries is usually somewhat brief and not always complete. The illustrations of normal anatomy and of surgeries could be better. However, that may be more of a job for a surgical atlas, which is next on my list of things to read. The heart chapters (congenital and acquired) could be extended and improved. Otherwise, this is a pretty decent textbook that is mostly fairly readable.
Ultra Pill Splitter By Apex Healthcare Products
I got this for my Mom who has to split one of her medications in half. Every month when she gets her prescription she sits down and splits the entire 30 day supply in half. It only take a couple of minutes and she’s done. She’s very happy with this product. Before she used a sharp knife and was constantly retrieving pill halves off the floor. This product does a good job of containing the halves and makes splitting the pills in half much more accurate. This is a great product for the elderly and those with sight impairment.
Aveeno Baby Cream
I use this baby shampoo on my infant son. He has contact skin allergies, such as eczema. After trying all different kinds of shampoos on him, I started using Aveeno Baby Soothing Relief Creamy Wash on his hair and body. Since using this product, my son’s skin looks and feels so much better. He has very sensitive skin, and I am glad that Aveeno makes a fragrance free baby wash. I even use this shampoo to take off my eye make-up because it is tear free, and so gentle.
Funky Monkey Snacks Variety Pack, Freeze-Dried Fruit
My favorites were the Purple Funk (bananas w/acai) and the Bananamon (bananas w/cinnamon). My least favorite was the Carnival Mix because the pieces were all really small and a few times I bit into something hard (I probably wouldn’t buy that one ever again). Freeze-dried fruit makes sense because it won’t spoil and the fruit doesn’t lose any nutrients in the process. If it weren’t for the price, I’d order more.
Essentials of General Surgery
The book is organized like most surgical texts; it starts off with nonsurgical chapters on fluids & electrolytes, nutrition, etc. While necessary, they’re extremely boring and things start to sound the same (hypokalemia vs hypomag vs etc). First Aid and NMS tend to make better deliniations. After reading Lawrence, I still didn’t have a good idea how to preop/postop a patient (each case is different, but there are some generalities or bread and butter cases), nor could I easily reference this book for quick answers.
I spent a lot of time wading through this book, but in the end I don’t know if I learned much because everything became vague or nonmemorable. Each chapter has some multiple choice questions (weak) and a final Q&A oral review (good).
The surgery clerkship can be exhausting and time intensive. I wish I had spent my time with a different text. The surgery shelf exam smacked me a good one.
A better option would be to just memorize Surgical Recall thoroughly and do several question books or case scenarios (NMS Casebook). Surgeons for several years have been reading Recall. The Lawrence text I used was the second edition from around 2000, I believe, which is pretty old in medicine. Thank God they finally made a new one, but I doubt there’s an overall improvement in the body of the text.
You might get more out of this book if you focus purely on it, take rigorous notes, review it again and again, etc. but it will be difficult to find time for this, and in the end, your thoughts on how to work up an upper GI bleed might just turn to mush.
100% Whey Protein – Gold Standard
People often say in reviews of protein powders and other health and fitness dietary products that the product is delicious. I try it and am underwhelmed. The people who rave over protein powder are clearly unaquainted with good food (that’s what comes of living on egg whites and skinless chicken breasts), or they’re comparing it to some of the really horrible stuff out there. The best I can say about the flavor of any of these products is that it’s uninteresting. So let me say that the flavor of this whey protein is uninteresting. It certainly isn’t bad. It could certainly be made better by the addition of ice cream, but that sort of seems opposed to the spirit of drinking protein powder.
I’m sold on this stuff because it passes the kid test. My kids like it. Like most kids, they aren’t into interesting flavors, and they aren’t into eating the delicious and nourishing food we put in front of them every night. Also like most kids, they like chocolate. The double rich chocolate version is convincingly chocolatey to anyone who doesn’t know better (like my kids). I put this powder in a Nestle’s Quick can and tell them it’s chocolate milk (note: I don’t actually lie and say that it’s Nestle’s Quick, but my equivocation puts me on shakey moral ground and I’m sure I’ll someday pay for it), and they’re quite happy with it. I, alas, am something of a chocolate connoisseur and can’t be so easily fooled as my kids, but still I find the flavor entirely okay. I suspect that when my children first taste real Nestle’s Quick at a friend’s house, they’ll wonder what Dad’s been feeding them and there will have to be some sort of a reckoning, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, they’re getting a pretty decent protein supplement to make up for the meat and fish that they won’t eat at dinner.
On the technical side, this powder stirs into milk fairly easily, though I find it works best if I make a thick paste by adding a little milk to the powder and then adding more milk. If you try stirring the powder into a glass of milk, you’ll never get rid of the lumps. (I haven’t tried mixing it with water and don’t intend to – that sounds revolting – but if I were going to go that route, I’d put it in the blender with some ice-cubes, a banana, a little vanilla, and a shot of chocolate syrup.) (Okay, curiosity got the best of me; I just went in the kitchen and tried that recipe and it was sort of okay; I tried it again with some blackberries and it was actually almost good.) I can’t say anything about the quality of this product relative to other protein powders (that would require a large scale study), and I have no basis on which to say that it’s a worthwhile product for body builders or for people who are simply physically active. On the basis of no apparent malnutrition in my family, it seems to do no harm. Accepting the label for amino acid composition as accurate, it should be nutritious. On the basis of price and flavor, this is a solid product.
Steam Facial By Kaz
This is the exact same steamer my mother bought for me back when I was a teenager and began having skin problems. I was so happy to find the same item again on Amazon. You get A LOT of steam coming out of this thing and it does a nice job of opening up your pores and letting them sweat out all those impurities naturally and gently. I have been doing weekly treatments and my skin has stayed clearer, because my pores have really been getting a deep cleaning. I consider my weekly steamings a treat, as the experience is very relaxing and soothing. My skin glows afterwards.
To those worried about the plastic smell mentioned in other reviews, all I did was wash it out really well with plenty of soap and water, then let it air dry and the smell was gone. It’s just a new plastic smell that you get with any product made of plastic. No biggie.
Marcy PL-43211 Upright Mag Cycle
I’ve had this bike for a couple weeks now and couldn’t be happier with it. I was a bit nervous buying it sight unseen, especially since I’m a pretty big guy (I fit in right around the bike’s 300-pound limit). Still, I’ve found this bike to be extremely sturdy, even under my admittedly large amount of weight. I’ve been using this unit about 3-4 times a day for about 15 minutes each time since I got it and have been very pleased with how quiet and smooth it is to use. I will agree with a previous reviewer that the tension cable is extremely difficul to connect, but I can’t really hold that against the finished product. Overall, I think that in terms of quality for the price, this unit would be impossible to beat.
