stories

"if they don't give you a seat at the table bring a folding chair"

-Shirley Chisholm

Someone asked me today about their dog's cognitive impairment, and whether or not I had heard of Alzheimer's disease in dogs and what that would even look like. And sure enough, apparently there's something called canine cognitive dysfunction syndrome, an age related clinical syndrome characterized by deficits in many of the cognitive domains also impacted by classical AD in humans. Interestingly, in CCDS there's only some diffuse A-beta pathology, largely limited to the cortex, and really no tau tangles at all. Honestly sounds more like senescent, age-related amyloid deposition. The overlap between both clinical syndromes is still really fascinating though, and I wonder if CCDS could be a good space to study clinicopathological correlation

I met the most fascinating woman today. She spoke about 8000 words a minute, and had these sparkling eyes and these completely unfiltered observations about the world around her. I really feel like I live at the border of journalism and medicine sometimes, especially when documenting someone's memories is a very intimate look into not just the history of their clinical presentation, but the history of their life and a window into time, into the world in which they grew up and adopted their own perspectives of life and what life is supposed to look like

I find it fascinating that a well trained neurologist can walk into a room, listen to the way someone speaks, watch the way their face moves, notice that they have two different earrings on, or that their hand quakes ever so slightly and just have a gestalt of what's contributory and what isn't

it's such a privilege to be able to listen, to feel like someone trusts you enough to tell you a story 

I have no idea if i'll get a seat at the table, but I think I'm strong enough to carry a folding chair anyways