the integumentary system

Veruca Salt is a character from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It’s also the name of a band. VERRUCA is the medical word for a wart caused by a virus. I bet clever ol’ Roald Dahl knew this!

How am I ever going to remember all these new words??!! Making jokes about them helps. So does telling other people about them, but who wants to hear it? I’ve been following my boyfriend around the house, saying things like “Did you know that dermatomycosis is a superficial fungal infection of the skin?” No wonder he’s sleeping on the couch right now.

I’ve got to analyze these words or they’ll never mean anything to me. Take the aforementioned dermatomycosis. Derma means skin. Myc- refers to the fungal stuff. And -osis is a condition. At least I think it is. I better go look it up. Phew! I was right.

I understand that there has to be some universal language for medicine, but c’mon! What’s with the word FURUNCLE? Sounds like a a relative with a case of hirsutism. (I actually knew the word HIRSUTISM already. Wow! ) Of course, it doesn’t mean that. That would be too easy! It means a bacterial skin abscess. Then there’s CARBUNCLE, which sounds like a relative who likes pasta. But a carbuncle is an infection of the skin and hair follicle, usually from an untreated boil. And a boil is a FURUNCLE, too. Well, I could leave my knowledge of these two silly words at that, but NO, I had to go look in my “Ologies and Isms” book. Nothing about FUR or CARB, but did find -uncle! And here are the explanations, in all their minute glory: CARBUNCLE is Latin for a small piece of coal. Does that help me? NO. I’m totally confused. To add to my confusion, here’s the lowdown on FURUNCLE: Furnuculus, in Latin, means “petty thief”. Okay. Let’s review: Furuncle means a bacterial skin abscess or boil and carbuncle means an infection of the skin and hair follicule, usually resulting from an untreated carbuncle.

I bet you need to go lie down now, too.

Rat Scabies is the name of a guy who once played drums for the English punk band The Damned. I wonder if he ever had a MITE INFESTATION? Probably. I once met those guys and they looked pretty scuzzy.

Scabies sounds nasty, but Impetigo does not. Otherwise, I’m sure some other punk would have named themselves after it. Impetigo is a disease of pustules that rupture and become encrusted. YUCK! What’s a pustule? Sounds like something you get from the plague. I think it was. Let me look it up, ‘cause I kind of know what it is, but not exactly. . .um. . .yes, it’s a raised area filled with pus! Hence, a pustule! DUH.

A cyst is just a fluid filled sac. Nothing about pus. Any old fluid, I guess. And how ‘bout them BULLAE? They’re larger fluid filled vesicles. But I don’t get it, ‘cause the definition of vesicle is a SMALL raised round area. HUH??!!
Let’s go over some other common lesions. They are legion. Well, actually, there’s only eleven of them.

Why’s a fissure on the list? It’s a crack in the epidermis. That is NOT a lesion, in my book. But it’s not my book, it’s “Terminology for Allied Health Professionals”.

I’ve had calluses on my fingers from playing guitar, but I never knew they were actually KEROTOMATAS! They can also be called kerotomas in the plural, but if you only play guitar with one finger, you have a keratoma. Just one. Literally, this one means horny growth or tumor. Sounds way worse than it is.

A MACULE is a freckle or a birthmark. Why don’t they just call it what it is? Freckle. Birthmark. Everyone knows what they are. Oh dear, I’m sounding like Andy Rooney!

And Mr. Rooney would surely complain about NEVUS. C’mon, it’s a common MOLE, for crying out loud! And a small mole is a PAPULE. Why isn’t it a micronevus??!! I’m gonna look that up and see if it’s a word. Nah, it’s not. . .but it brings me to a question I got wrong on a quiz earlier today.

What do you call it when someone sweats profusely? Geez, I thought I’d remember right away, ‘cause I was really annoyed when I wrote HYPERHIDROSIS and it was wrong! It happens to be correct! It means “excessive or profuse perspiration”. But the answer was DIAPHORESIS. I looked that one up and it means “perspiration, especially when copious and medically induced”! Medically induced? Perhaps I will suffer from diaphoresis when I have to take a test on medical terminology without all my books! And then there’s yet another word for sweating too much: polyhidrosis! Why do we need THREE terms for this, especially when there’s so many brands of anti-perspirant on the market??!!

I don’t want to make jokes about serious life threatening illnesses, but I did find this interesting. I wondered why Kaposi’s Sarcoma wasn’t Kaposi’s Carcinoma or Melanoma so I looked up SARC. A sarcoma is a malignant tumor of “certain” (which ones?) soft tissues. SARCASM means “to tear flesh”! No wonder being the butt of sarcasm hurts so much! Wow.

There’s nothing funny about these prefixes, but I have to put them in here, for the main purpose of me writing this is to memorize this crapola. MELANOMA includes the prefix MELAN, hence meaning an overgrowth of melanin. This is a very dangerous spreading form of skin cancer. CARCINO comes from the Greek word for crab. The word was used to describe this rarely spreading form of skin cancer because the swollen veins around them resemble the legs of a crab. Go figure.

Okay. I’m exhausted. I’ve got about six more pages of terminology, all relating to the integumentary system. . .and I’ve got ten more systems to go, all of which are WAY more complicated. I’m glad I find words fun. DId I remember anything I learned today? Um. . . .I can only think of the WRONG definition of carbuncle. What is it again? I wrote it twice, didn’t I? I still think it’s my uncle Alby, eating some linguine!