Revision Surgery

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Femur fracture around hip implant from UMass Aches And Joints Blog

The other day I was in the operating room assisting Dr Roloff once again. This time, the patient was in a predicament very similar to the patient in the X-ray above. She had fallen and broken her thigh bone (femur) below her prosthetic hip joint. She must have been in a lot of pain! It took us about three and a half hours to get the old hip joint out, as well as the cement, and get the femur ready for the new prosthesis. But the femur was in such a bad state that we had to create a cage of metal wires around it so and leave it for six weeks to heal before we go back in and insert the new prosthesis. That procedure is called a Revision Hip Replacement. Quite ironic, I think! Seen as we are dealing with surgery to your revision planning.

The timetable (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

As already noted here, when we learn a new piece of information, the brain grows new dendrites on neurons, thus hard-wiring the new information. But if we do not quickly review that new information, we will quickly lose that information. The rest of this post is going to deal with the factors that will influence how you will structure your revision planning, and the next post will give you some ideas of how to structure your revision planning. I'm not going to be dogmatic like Dr House about how you should structure your revision timetable because there are a number of factors that will influence how you will structure your revision timetable.

1. The duration of each study session. If each study session is one hour, then you are going to be extremely unlike to follow an intensive revision timetable. By the same token, if your study sessions are only five minutes, your revision timetables are going to be so complicated that not even Tom Cruise (excuse the background hurling noise) in Minority Report would be able to keep track of. You need to find a study time of about 20 to 25 minutes because it means for each subsequent revision session, the amount of time you spend on that section decreases by about 50-60%.

Cover of Minority Report [Blu-ray

2. The number of facts learned per session.This is a very similar concept to the first point and for the same reasons. Bear in mind here that the optimum number of distinct learned facts that should be learned at any one sitting that are directly related should be between 5 and 9. If you can learn more per session, then go ahead - everyone is different. 3. Your existing schedule. This is an obvious one. There are only so many hours in the day, and you have got a certain number of commitments and activities already scheduled. You will need to plan around these events.

Late Night Sessions (Photo credit: candyschwartz)

4. Your own rhythms. What I mean by this is that each of us is unique in the way we function during the day. For example I can stay awake very easily late into the night but struggle to wake up in the morning. Whereas my wife is the opposite. She can hardly keep her eyes open beyond 9 pm! During the day, some people have a mid-afternoon slump. I don't seem to have that. You need to take note of what your own rhythms are.

A patron of "Sammy's Bowery Follies," a downtown bar, sleeping at his table while the resident cat laps at his beer, 12- - NARA - 541905 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Diagnosing Your Revision Sickness(schooledforlife.com)
Five things I have learned about learning in the operating room(schooledforlife.com)

Diagnosing Your Revision Sickness

Caricature of Dwight Lyman Moody. Caption read "Prayer and Praise". (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In his book called Pleasure and Profit in Bible Study, Dwight L. Moody recounts the story when a man stood up at one of his meetings and said that he hoped for enough of the series of meetings to last him all his life. Dwight Moody promptly told him he might as well try eat enough breakfast at one time to last him his lifetime. His point was that he couldn't hope to survive his Christian life on a series of a few meetings, he needed to be disciplined in Bible study personally and corporately at church with the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a perfect illustration for revision. The need for revision cannot be overestimated. In fact, when you review perfectly something you have learned more than once, you permit the new neural network to fire correctly more than once. The latest research shows (see Research-based Strategies to Ignite Student Learning) that the more these neural networks fire, the easier it is for you to access and retrieve the information later. But, you need to diagnose your revision sickness first. So, put on your stethoscope. Pull up your walking stick, sit on you chair and throw your tennis ball into the air - you are now Dr House, M.D. These are the questions you need to ask yourself. Excuse the tone, but this is Dr House speaking! 1. Do you have a revision time-table? Yes, I know, it is an obvious question! But I've got to ask it! And if you face is looking red and sheepish, then shame on you! Get your act together! (See the next post) 2. Do you recall what you studied in your last study session? Stop reading this post, pull up a big blank piece of paper and brainstorm everything you can remember from the last session you studied and then come back.

A photo of a cup of coffee. Esperanto: Taso de kafo. Français : Photo d'une tasse de caffé Español: Taza de café (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, how well did you do?? Hmmm. Just as I thought. You need to start revising. (See next post) 3. Can you even remember the name of a section you studied a week ago? If you do, then that's great. If not, then hang your head in shame and go stand in the naughty corner. Stay tuned for some corrective surgery in the next post.

Don’t just think outside the box, break the box

Category:Sinking of the RMS Titanic (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One hundred years ago on the 15th of April, RMS Titanic sank. By far the majority of those who died were men. The strictly held moral norm in those days was the maxim "Women and children first". But this type of absolutism has disappeared from our current culture. But there are a few absolutisms that do remain today. The one absolute in current schooling is that high school students must learn each subject in specific ways that each teacher ordains. You don't really have a choice. Each teacher tells their students how they must learn their particular subject. But, I'm going to give you some radical advice. CHOOSE THE SHIP! But I promise, in your case, you won't sink. I'm going to show you two examples of people who didn't follow what was expected of them and who have done amazingly well in their academic lives. They are each on the two extremes on the age scale of studying. The first is in Grade 12, the other is in his late forties and a practicing orthopedic surgeon. Both of them didn't just think about doing things differently, they did things differently and blasted their way through to academic success. The first person is a young lady who is a patient of mine who is currently in Grade 12. She does exceptionally well at school and is applying to study medicine next year, despite my warnings! Recently she came to see me for a Medical Certificate as part of her application to study at the University of Cape Town Medical School, and we were chatting about studying and about Schooled for Life. I was telling her about teachers at school force pupils to learn their subjects in very specific ways. And so I asked her how she did so well academically at school (because I had noticed the vast number of academic - as well as sports and extra-mural activity - badges on her blazer). Before I could even finish asking the question, she said "I ignored the teachers and studied everything my own way." I was so taken aback. Here was a bright young woman who had found out one of the keys to learning that has just been discovered in the latest research, and is one of my S4L Principles. The second person is one of the best orthopedic surgeonsI know, Dr Richard Roloff (his rooms are in Hillcrest Private Hospital, outside of Durban, South Africa). This last Thursday morning I was assisting him in theater with a knee replacement, and during the procedure I asked him he studied at university. He laughed and said that he crammed the night before and seemed to brush off the question a little bit. I know him, and that was his way of being quite modest about something, so I persisted a bit. So he said that he found that if he studied for weeks or months before the exam, he would forget the information and get so stressed that he would fail badly. But, he found that the day and night before an exam, he was so relaxed and was experiencing so little stress that he could study literally five to ten times more than anyone else could in the same period of time. His Amygdala was perfectly calm and ease. He walked around and read aloud. The information went from his senses through to his Amygdala.

The amygdala--our inner nut (Photo credit: cheerfulmonk)

Now, because they were so calm, the information literally flew through them deep into his long-term memory. So, how can you take these two peoples' stories and start using the information gleaned from them right now. Let me give you three ways you can not just think outside the box, but break the box down altogether. 1. Ignore teachers and lecturers when they tell you there is only one way to learn their subject.

Image by dbking

But I must add a disclaimer here. Sometimes, sometimes, there is only one way to learn a particular subject, but these are very few are far between. Who says you can't use Rap music to learn Chemistry formulas? Who says you can't draw crazy cartoons for Mathematics? Who says you can't write new words to your favorite songs to learn soil strata? 2. Start linking the things you love doing with subjects you don't like. I love history. So, when I was studying and cramming right towards the end of fifth year, I invaded Russia as you can read here. If you love modern dance, make up a quick dance routine that links the information you are learning with that routine. If you love drawing cartoons, convert each of your main points into a crazy image and turn them into a crazy cartoon. 3. Try write your main points with your other hand.If you are right-handed, try writing your learning material left-handed, and vice-versa. You will be amazed at how much you will remember, because you will laugh at yourself so much during the whole process!

by indi.ca

So, instead of that sinking feeling in your studying, your box will start breaking. Enjoy the feeling! Let me know your stories of how you have broken the box below.....

What Is the Most Important Quality of Education? (Guest Post by Vidushi Sharma)(coopcatalyst.wordpress.com)

A Gym called Focus

attention (Photo credit: gordonr)

"David! Focus!" The teacher was screaming in my face, snapping her fingers inches away from my nose. I can't remember which class it was and when (which goes to show how successful her attention-making was!), but I do remember I was day-dreaming that day. It didn't matter what it was. Maybe it was Pippa's beautiful smile, or the coming weekend with its endless hours playing computer games. Whatever it was, my attention was far away from that lesson that day.

Sound familiar to you? Thought so. I've got an interesting fact for you. The more you practice focusing your attention, the better you will get at focusing your attention. It kind of seems logical, except in a kind of "Why didn't I think of that?" kind of way, doesn't it? Well, it seems that the brain boffins (that pun was intended, nudge, nudge), have found that every time a student focuses his or her attention, the resultant activation of the alerting and focusing pathways results in these attention circuits becoming stronger and much more efficient at carrying new data from the sensory areas of the brain into the storage areas of the brain via the Amygdala. Chew on that for a little while. Yummy.