Kid me not

Heartily tired of cardiovascular and after blowing through pulmonary, we finally arrive at the renal portion of this block. The kidneys are interesting. Ask any kid what his heart or lungs do, and he's likely to know. But I don't think I knew what the kidneys did when I was in elementary school. Yet they are incredibly important and fundamental organs, regulating half a dozen bodily processes like electrolyte and fluid balance.

In any case, this block has been tough. The kidneys are complicated organs, with ions and channels and acid-base calculations. There's a lot of physiology. We started off learning about glomerular diseases, incredibly rare entities like lupus glomerulonephritis and Goodpasteur's syndrome. I thought this was a little odd since we have not yet covered diabetes, one of the most common causes of kidney disease. But I guess it's important to learn about the histology and pathology of the kidneys. This seems to be an essential part of nephrology; we spent hours trying to read light microscope, immunofluorescence, and electron microscope scans of glomeruli. I actually really enjoyed one of the path labs in which we got histories of unknown cases and images of renal biopsy and had to diagnose the patient. That was pretty cool.