Confession: I named my car

So when I moved to Charleston (nearly three years ago- geez time flies!), I was driving a sporty red Honda Accord coupe, which sits about 5 inches off the ground.  It didn't take long to realize why Charleston is referred to as the "low country." Every time it rains, especially when it's also high tide, the city floods. Several months into my first year, I pushed my poor little car through 2 feet of standing water.  In hindsight, it was a poor decision but it was Friday and I REALLY wanted to go home.

Anyway, I sent lots of pictures to my dad of the car underwater (it took several floods), but he caved and graciously bought me an SUV (my sister is now the proud owner of the sport red coupe, which is unfortunate because she has quite the lead foot).

So I swear I've never, ever named my car.  My long-held belief is that car-naming is reserved for beefy, steroid-brained jocks with 2-word vocabularies.  The closest I've ever come is "others" giving my coupe the nickname "the red skittle" which I found a bit offensive.

Anyway, shortly after I got the car, we did a month of renal physiology which utterly bores me but is unfortunately extremely important clinically (even for cardiologists!).  So microscopically, the kidney is made up of all these little units of tubules and ducts and such that regulate water balance and electrolytes and proteins and stuff.

(The preschool version)

Each part of the system has a different function, but it's not really innate or logical in terms of location and function (unlike your eyes, for example- they're in front of you because that's the way you're facing and moving most of the time).  Basically, it's really confusing and I always forget which part of the tubule is permeable to what and impermeable to whatever else, despite having learned about it a million times.  (It really IS important to know because most drugs only work on one tiny portion and for example, you need to know whether it causes you to retain sodium or dump it when you're giving someone a diuretic, or more colloquially, "water pill.")

(The college biology class version.)

To get to the point, one part caught my attention. This one section, midway through the tubule system, is called the loop of Henle, and it does a lot of the water balance regulation.  Part of the loop, the ascending part, only allows solutes like sodium through, but is impermeable to water.  It was like a light bulb turned on in my head- my car is going to be like the ascending loop of Henle!  So I call it "Al Henle" now.

Proactive defensive side note: the only way to remember thousands of tidbits of unrelated information in med school is to make associations and mnemonics (couldn't spell that word till med school); for example, to remember the movements of supination versus pronation: to carry a bowl of SOUP your hand must be SUPINATED (palm up).

Anyway so in conclusion, the only part of renal physiology I really remember to this day is that the ascending loop of Henle is impermeable to water.