Background
John, a ten-year-old, normally active child has been feeling ill for about a week. John came down with a dry cough and fever around a week ago, which his parents dismissed as just a simple cold. After taking over the counter medication he was feeling relief the following day. A few days pass, and he began to feel ill once again at school. He was feeling lethargic, had a sore throat, and wasn’t active during recess as usual. His teacher noticed these symptoms and decided to call his parents. His parents picked him up and took him to a nearby urgent care to get checked out. His symptoms were not significant enough to warrant a lab test and the attending physician ruled it as a mild case of the flu. The attending told Johns parents,
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The blood test confirmed that there was indeed an infection going on with the elevated WBC count. The Gram stain remained inconclusive as there was no firm evidence that there was a pathogen present in the sputum. The x-ray was a big piece of evidence to figuring it all out. The patchy areas narrowed things down with pneumonia and tuberculosis. The ELISA test was what allowed the doctor to make his diagnosis. The ELISA test revealed there were antibodies present for the bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae (Bono, 2018). The doctor knew this meant John had walking pneumonia, also known as atypical …show more content…
Mycoplasmas can be distinguished from bacteria by looking for the lack of a cell wall structure (Kashyap, 2010). This prevents them from being accurately stained by Gram staining. This will result in Mycoplasma being dyed pink, showing a negative result. But, phylogenetically, Mycoplasmas are more closely related to gram-positive bacteria.
M. pneumoniae make up more than 40% of community-acquired pneumonia cases and result in as many as 18% of cases requiring hospitalization in children. M. pneumoniae infections are greatest among school-aged children 5-15 years old. The rate of infection declines after adolescence and on into adulthood (Kashyap, 2010). Atypical pneumonia is spread through respiratory droplets, such as sneezing or coughing. Atypical pneumonia is predominantly seen in school children because they are always in such close contact with each other.
She had fever, felt a pain in her hip, loss of sleep, the then pain spread to several parts of the body over the next few days her blood pressure of dropped significantly during the first day of her illness, she also had little infected boils all over her body. Doctors thought that Addie was infected with a virus. In the first hospital and pneumonia in the hospital which specialized in children’s care.
Addie Rerecich was an eleven and a half year of girl who was just as normal as any other kid her age. She played sports and was very social. All that changed one night when she woke up complaining of some pain in her hip. Her mother thought it was just a simple softball injury, so she gave her some ibuprofen and sent her back to bed. When the pain didn’t subside, she was taken to the hospital. Initially the doctors said she had symptoms of a virus. The next day she could breath well and they said she now had pneumonia. When at the hospital the disease specialist said Addie had “community-aquired” resistant staphylococcus MRSA from picking her scabs. This infection caused damage in her lungs and was so bad she was then put on ECMO, total life
On December 15, the patient comes in for his check up. The physician tells the patient his blood test was positive for Lyme and prescribes the patient antibiotics. However the patient now tells the doctor that he is still experiencing the weakness and fatigue even after the doctor’s advice. He also says he is having slight trouble swallowing foods and speech has become slurred and nasally at times. Due to the patients broad range of symptoms, the physician suggests the patient either get an electromyography o...
It is hard to comprehend how and why people lose their sanity and become mad. I will address how the mind’s struggles caused by individual genes, stress and social-cultural influence affect the lives of Naomi, a 24-year-old college student with schizophrenia and Eric, a 27-year-old classical musician with severe depression. Their thoughts and behavior surprised me as this is my first time exposed to what these mental illnesses are. The relation between the mind and the body and the fact that the emotions affect the functioning of the body and vice versa explains the how and why a person become insane.
The phrase that was used by Margaret Newman “The nurse and client become partners in living through the period of disharmony and emerging at a higher level of consciousness” meant that even though the patient is going through this difficult time of illness, his or her sees this one person as a partner which is the nurse. The patient sees the nurse as someone he or she can trust, someone is he or she can count on, and someone he or she believe has his or her best interest.
My disease is Streptococcal pneumonia or pneumonia is caused by the pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae. Streptococcus pneumoniae is present in human’s normal flora, which normally doesn’t cause any problems or diseases. Sometimes though when the numbers get too low it can cause diseases or upper respiratory tract problems or infections (Todar, 2008-2012). Pneumonia caused by this pathogen has four stages. The first one is where the lungs fill with fluid. The second stage causes neutrophils and red blood cells to come to the area which are attracted by the pathogen. The third stage has the neutrophils stuffed into the alveoli in the lungs causing little bacteria to be left over. The fourth stage of this disease the remaining residue in the lungs are take out by the macrophages. Aside from these steps pneumonia follows, if the disease should persist further, it can get into the blood causing a systemic reaction resulting in the whole body being affected (Ballough). Some signs and symptoms of this disease are, “fever, malaise, cough, pleuritic chest pain, purulent or blood-tinged sputum” (Henry, 2013). Streptococcal pneumonia is spread through person-to-person contact through aerosol droplets affecting the respiratory tract causing it to get into the human body (Henry, 2013).
Harvey, Moriarty, Friedman, White, Parrella, Mohs and Davids (2000) conducted a study to analyze the preservation of cognitive functions in geriatric patients with lifelong schizophrenia in the hopes of discovering the success rate of long term institutionalization. The overall objective was of the study consisted of obtaining enough data to compare the scores on numerous cognitive skill tasks from the geriatric schizophrenia population and a population of healthy elderly individuals. Their experimental group consisted of 165 volunteers and they were matched one-to-one with an individual from the control group based on same age and education. The symptoms of schizophrenia were examined with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale; PANSS. It contains thirty items with seven items rating positive symptoms, seven rating negative symptoms and sixteen items assessing their general psychopathology. The total scores obtained on the positive and negative subscales were used as dependant variables in this study.
The Influenza virus is a unique respiratory viral disease that can have serious economic and social disruption to society. The virus is airborne transmitted through droplets release by coughing or sneezing from an infected person or by touching infected surfaces. Symptoms range from mild to severe and may even result in death. People with the virus usually experience fever, headache, shivering, muscle pain and cough, which can lead to more severe respiratory illness such as pneumonia. People most susceptible to the flu virus are elderly individuals and young children as well as anyone whose health or immune system has been compromise. The most effective way to counteract the influenza virus is to get the flu vaccine which is available by shots or nasal spray before the flu season as well as practicing safe hygiene. (CDC, 2013)
TB is an airborn infection that affects primary to the lung. Not all infected person show sign and symptoms. Only peole who have active TB show signs and symtoms such as low grade fever, cough with hemoptysis, tachypnea, pleuristic chest pain, dyspnea, progressive weight loss, fatigue and malaise. PPD skin test is a way to detect mycobacteria infection. A positive PPD skin test is the result of a specific immune response against the antigen introduced into the skin of a person who has been exposed to mycobacteria either from previous infected with TB or from receiving BCG.
Hospital-acquired infections (HAI) are preventable and pose a threat to hospitals and patients; increasing the cost, nominally and physically, for both. Pneumonia makes up approximately 15% of all HAI and is the leading cause of nosocomial deaths. Pneumonia is most frequently caused by bacterial microorganisms reaching the lungs by way of aspiration, inhalation or the hematogenous spread of a primary infection. There are two categories of Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia (HAP); Health-Care Associated Pneumonia (HCAP) and Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP).
Influenza is an acute respiratory illness caused by infection of influenza A and B viruses. The disease can affect both the upper and lower respiratory tract and is often followed by systemic signs and symptoms, such as: sudden onset of fever, chills, non-productive cough, myalgias (muscle pain), headache, nasal congestion, sore throat, and fatigue. (Cox et al.1998). Influenza viruses evolve continuously, challenging mammalian and avian hosts with new variants and causing complex epidemic patterns with regard to age, place, and time. Human influenza viruses cause disease through a variety of direct and indirect pathological effects. The direct effects include destruction of infected cells, damage to respiratory epithelium, and immunological responses that cause general malaise and pneumonia. Indirect effects of infection include secondary bacterial infections due to the tissue damage and other disease such as cardiovascular disease, renal disease, diabetes or chronic pulmonary disease (Schoenbaum S.1996). In the USA, clinical illness affects 5–20% of the population and asymptomatically infects a larger number (Noble G.1982). Infants, who are exposed to influenza epidemics as a novel antigenic challenge after maternal antibodies decline, may have attack rates as high as 30–50% in their first year of life, depending on the frequency of contacts with older siblings (Glezen et al.1997). For reasons, influenza viruses cause epidemics in the northern and southern hemisphere during their respective winters. In the tropics, the timing of activity is less defined, with sometimes year-round circulation or bi-seasonal peaks during the year (Viboud et al.2006).
When people think about mental illness they think about people with mental voices or psychopathic killers like Michael Myers from the movie Halloween , but not all mental illnesses or disorders are so not visible or easily distinguished. Psychological disorders can vary from as minor as drinking problems to as severe as depression and anxiety. Though all mental illnesses are severe and harmful in many ways psychiatrist and doctors still are yet to find permanent cures. There is research linked to genes, hormone problems, brain development, and environment that trigger mental disorders but no research yet indicates the true cause.
...n of purified protein derivative or PPD, which is derived from cultures of M tuberculosis (Nayak & Acharjya, 2012). According to Nayak and Acharjya (2012), a person who has been exposed to the bacteria is expected to mount an immune response in the skin containing the bacterial proteins. A positive skin test means an infection with M tuberculosis has occurred, but does not prove tuberculosis disease. However, false positive results can occur with exposure to, or disease of, nontuberculous mycobacteria (Alguire, 2009). In addition, the causes of false positive TB skin test include previous BCG vaccination, incorrect method of skin test administration, incorrect interpretation of reactions, or incorrect bottle of antigen used (Nayak & Acharjya, 2012). Due to the test’s low specificity, most positive reactions in low-risk individuals are false positive (Starke, 1996).
Mycobacterium tuberculosis is a nonmotile, acid-fast, obligate aerobe. The bacilli are 2-4 um in length and have a very slow generation time of between 15 and 20 hours. The cell wall of the mycobacterium is unique in that it is composed mainly of acidic waxes, specifically mycolic acids. M. tuberculosis is unusually resistant to drying and chemicals, contributing to the ease with which it is transmitted.
Medicine presents a myriad of complex puzzles waiting to be solved. Though not for the faint of heart, Internal Medicine allows for a daily dose of these complex diagnostic and treatment problems. During my Internal Medicine rotation, one of my most memorable cases was a 44-year-old who presented with shortness of breath, cough, night sweats, fever, focal neurological