Medical Patient Profile: Zainab

For my last AP for STEAM this year, we were asked create a medical patient profile. Throughout the term we discussed the topics of how to prevent a disease from happening based on your family health history. We discussed nutrition plans, and which certain vitamins and minerals are found in the foods we eat now. We also looked into experimental probability that would help us later for our Action Projects. We had an in house guest, Gayle Vaul, who was a certified CPR trainer who was able to teach the class the basics of CPR. For this AP, we were asked create a medical patient profile. This patient was supposed to be a fictional character, and include a family tree. We found the most reoccurring health disease in the family tree, and calculated the probability of the patient's chances of getting that disease in the future. We created nutrition plans, goal timelines, alternative treatments, and more to prevent our patient from getting their families most common disease. Read my medical profile I created, and ways I helped my patient!


To conclude, I thought this AP was very useful for me. Personally, I never really thought about my family health, and thinking about my family tree until this AP. I think it's important that we take time out to find out more about our family backgrounds and health. Chances are that you are more likely to develop a disease that you didn't know you could get because you weren't aware of your families medical history. Wrapping up the year, I just want to say this was my favorite STEAM course by far for as long as i've been at GCE. These courses have really guided me, and allowed me to think more about the choices I want to make in terms of thinking about classes to take in university. I have definitely started thinking about taking the medical approach for my potential future career!

Say "NO" to Sinus Congestion

In this class, Cure, which is my last STEAM term of the year, we are looking into medicine. We looked into OTC(over the counter), Rx (prescription), and homeopathic remedies. We had an in-house guest who graduated from med school, and is going through her placement as an anesthesiologist. It was interesting to get her perspective on what she does and how she balances her life as a medical professional. For this AP, we were asked to make a medicine box. We looked into one certain symptom and found different ways to treat that particular symptom by looking into three different medicines that could treat it. Look at my AP to learn more about how to relieve sinus congestion!

The Lock and Key mechanism is basically a cause and effect for a chemical reaction. This connects to medication because we can use that cause and effect mechanism when we are looking for the correct medication to treat our symptoms. From pain medication we get a chemical reaction to our nervous system because our nervous receptors may get muted so that we don't feel pain or the swollen part of our bodies get healed.


To conclude, I found this unit to be very interesting! I liked looking into the different components of medicine, and looking into what really classifies certain medication. I think my favorite part was looking at different homeopathic remedies because alternative medicine does fascinate me. Knowing that there is ways to naturally cure or treat a disease instead of using a manmade prescription is something that people should be looking into. This unit really opened my eyes and allowed me to explore that! 

Nerve Decompression Surgery

For this unit we took a deeper look into surgeries. We started off the term by beginning to read a book called, The Immortal Life Of Henrietta Lacks, which tells the story of a woman during the civil rights movement who has cervical cancer. We hear stories of her reaction to having cervical cancer, treatments, and more. Something special about Henrietta is that her cells were taken for multiple tests, but a medical professional at the time named George Gey sold them and they become internationally popular. As we go on in the course, we also looked into DNA structure and cell biology. For this AP we were asked to find a surgery we want to learn more about, and allow the audience to take a deeper look into the specific surgeries we looked into. I chose to look into Nerve Decompression surgery which is usually performed on people who suffer with migraines regularly like myself.

To conclude, this AP was very interesting to look into. For someone who struggles with migraines quite regularly, I thought it was nice to see that there are options to treat them. Migraines a constant struggle in my life and others, and it’s important to inform others on these surgeries, even something as simple as Botox, to treat migraines. This unit gave me inspiration to look into different surgeries and see the affects our bodies have when they are performed!