Patient Profile- Lung Cancer Prevention

Hello and welcome to my final STEAM AP of my Sophomore year. Of all of the Action Projects from this year I think this is one of my favorites. In this AP we are called to create a patient profile of a character. I chose the disease risk, gender, sex, familial risk, etc. This AP goes really in depth and combines everything that I learned this year in my Disease and Cure courses. I really enjoyed how this AP really wraps everything up and allows us to take control and lead with everything that we know about the subject. I am especially proud of the story path that I chose to go on with this character. Giving the character a backstory farther than just was required by the rubric really made me connected with the patient and I really felt invested in everything I wrote for them. I hope you enjoy my final Sophomore action project

Athlete's Foot Begone

What's itchy, uncomfortable, and resides between your toes? Foot Fungus! Well maybe not YOUR toes but, if you are suffering from a burn in-between your tootsies, I have three solutions for you!

In this AP I will be discussing different treatments for Athlete's foot. Before we get into it I will tell you about this unit in my STEAM class Cure. This unit we discussed treatments vs cures, drugs vs medicaments, and the lock and key system that some medicaments use. Lost? Well let me explain, when something painful happens like a headache, pain receptors are fired and it makes your body produce a chemical called Arachidonic Acid and enzymes in your body convert that chemical into different chemicals that produces inflammation. Painkillers like Ibuprofen block the enzymes so that the chemicals can't get into the active sites. Whew, that was a lot right? Try taking a test on it! 

 All in all I really enjoyed this action project because of the art element that was incorporated into it. I really enjoy lettering and like to use it in action projects whenever I can. I would say this is one of my favorite action projects that I've done in STEAM. One of the elements that I'm most proud of is the images that went into my slides.

Resective Surgery Investigation

Hello and welcome to the first AP of the STEAM course Cure. In this class, we investigated cures to the diseases that we discovered in the last course. We learned about Cells, Mitosis, Miosis, and different math concepts. This AP was very fun to do, I decided to look into a surgery that is in a field I'm interested in Neurology. The surgery we will be investigating in this AP is Resective Surgery. This is a very interesting surgery let's dive deeper.
 

Excercise in Empathy| Anorexia Nervosa

Hello and welcome to the second AP for my STEAM class Disease. In this unit, we talked about mental diseases and their impact on people. We read the book The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida which was written by a 13-year-old on the autism spectrum. Math-wise we discussed piecewise functions and point-slope form. For this AP we were called to make a presentation that would make people empathize with people experiencing a certain mental disorder. For my presentation, I did Anorexia Nervosa.
 


This AP was very interesting for me. I felt that it was a good experience to learn about anorexia. There are a lot of misrepresentations of anorexia in the media. I did not know a lot about this mental disorder until now. Hopefully, my presentation will help dispel the myths around anorexia.

Works Cited
Three, BBC. “Anorexia Recovery Story: How I Survived An Eating Disorder.” YouTube, YouTube, 1 July 2018,

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Arlington, VA: American Psychiatric Publishing.

Marie | An Exploration and Profile of Breast Cancer

Hello and welcome to my first AP for my STEAM course, Disease. In Disease, we have talked about blood, cancer, and body systems. In a few assignments, we went over cancer and how it affects the body, why it happens and some of the options that people seek to treat it. This AP was very challenging for me. I wanted to create an informative patient profile while also not making it sound cold or impersonal. In this AP, we will be learning about the breast cancer survivor Marie and her experience. We will be going over her surgeries, aftercare, risks, and symptoms.

Marie is a 42-year-old white woman who lives with her husband and foster children in Cleveland. Marie never had any children of her own. When giving herself a breast exam, our patient noticed a lump in her breast and new dimpling. According to Marie, “At first, that didn’t worry me because my mother had a lump in her breast that was benign.” (benign means that it is not cancerous) Four months later, however, Marie noticed a discharge from her nipple. “This is what worried me; that was what wasn’t normal.” Following this, she went to her primary care physician to get a mammogram. A mammogram uses x-rays to examine the breast for lumps. Marie was not very active and had a history of breast cancer in her family; these factors heightened her risk for breast cancer.

After many tests, Marie was referred to get a single mastectomy which is a surgery in which the breast tissue is removed. The skin remained intact, but they were not able to save Marie’s nipple. Before the surgery, Marie prepared by buying a special pillow and special sweatshirts with pockets that hold the drains (tubes connected to pouches that are placed in during surgery to prevent the buildup of fluid.) “I searched frantically for someone to tell me how this was going to go. The doctors gave me medical advice but weren't able to give me first-hand insight.”

Marie’s surgery was life-saving as well as life-changing.“I think, as a woman, so much pressure is put on you to look feminine. I felt almost guilty that I was giving away one of the most feminine aspects of my body.” Marie says that she went through a slight depression over the loss of her breast.

Breast cancer is a disease that affects mostly women ages 40 and up. 12 percent of women (all ages) get breast cancer and 1 percent of men get breast cancer. This disease can affect the breast tissue, lungs, liver, and lymph nodes by spreading into the bloodstream and attacking the cells. Cancer occurs when cells in the body don’t shut off their reproduction function. In the instance of breast cancer, this affects cells in the breast. Symptoms of breast cancer are redness and tenderness of the breast, discharge from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, and dimpling of the breast.

There are 3 main treatments of all cancers; radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery. The surgeries we discussed earlier are broken down from breast-conserving to complete removal. Complete removal is necessary when the whole breast is affected with cancer and there aren’t just one or two lumps to remove. There are breast-conserving surgeries called lumpectomy (where only the cancerous lump is removed) and partial mastectomy (where part of the breast is removed).

Some risk factors of breast cancer are being overweight, starting your period before the age of 12 or starting menopause after the age of 55 these factors both producing high amounts of estrogen, smoking, alcohol consumption, and not having children before 40. Marie was put at risk because of her family's history with cancer and also some of her lifestyle choices.

Breast cancer has a major impact on the body of the person who affects the disease. Below you will see a diagram of the affected lymph nodes, liver, lungs and breast tissue.

     TN Breast Cancer Diagram 2019

Citations

“Breast Cancer Surgery.” American Cancer Society, Feb 13

“CDC - What Are the Risk Factors for Breast Cancer?” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

“Breast Cancer Foundation.” Susan G. Komen®,