Genetic Disease Project 2015
In this project the goal was to create and become the backstories for the 10th graders to complete their genetic disease project. Through this we had to create a history and physical of the inflicted person. From there we had to create the backstory from the pedigree given to us, for the 10th graders to interview. To start off this project we learned about various genetic diseases through ygyh.org (a multi-media explanation on the background of many genetic diseases). From there we “got a disease” to model everything off of. I got cystic fibrosis (CF). After doing research on ygyh.org, we got our pedigree. This allowed us to figure out who in the family the history and physical (H&P) needed to be on. In my case it was over the middle child who had died from CF at 20 years old. That meant that I needed to make an H&P for when the middle daughter, Clara Fae, was originally diagnosed with CF. From there I put “clues” into the H&P for the 10th graders to accurately diagnosis. After they diagnosed Clara, I needed to create the whole backstory. In my story the 10th graders we to predict the chance that if Chris (Clara’s younger brothers) and Megan (Chris’s wife) were to have kids, what is the chance that the kid would have CF. (I am going to attach pedigree with names later with a key). In this I had prepare myself to be interviewed. In this interview I was representing Megan as I was concerned that since CF runs in Chris’s family that if we have a child they will have CF. I think I grew in my ability to anticipate questions that a doctor or genetic counselor might have when trying to diagnosis or counsel a patient.
My first artifact is my history and physical for Clara Fae. This fits into the story of this learning process as this is was created from the research I did on CF and what symptoms are reasonable to use as key symptoms to diagnosis. The history and physical was the main piece the 10th graders used to diagnosis the patient and learn about CF. Some of the classroom content that is visible in this work is the key symptoms used to diagnosis CF like smelly/greasy stool, salty skin, and poor growth. If the 10th graders did not have these key symptoms to diagnosis from, it would have been very difficult to diagnosis Clara Fae with Cystic Fibrosis. These key symptoms allowed the 10th graders to have slight clues without flat out giving them the disease name. My second artifact is my character profile/ backstory. Second artifact: my backstory/character profile. This fits into the story of this learning process as it was the main product I used as reference for my interview from the 10th graders. In this backstory I used the pedigree I was given to explain everything that happened in the family and who everyone was with their own story. My character profile/ backstory has a lot of classroom content as we had to generate questions that the 10th graders might have for us to figure out the pedigree for themselves. This meant that we had to anticipate any and every question and have a response. If we didn’t have a response or information on our backstory we could only respond with “I don’t know”. This meant that we had to “go back” to 10th grade and think of how we would respond and what questions we would think are important.
My character profile/ backstory has a lot of classroom content as we had to generate questions that the 10th graders might have for us to figure out the pedigree for themselves. This meant that we had to anticipate any and every question and have a response. If we didn’t have a response or information on our backstory we could only respond with “I don’t know”. This meant that we had to “go back” to 10th grade and think of how we would respond and what questions we would think are important. During this project I think I grew most in persistence in getting things done right. I this project, I had to keep going back to the character profile to get enough backstory to have answers to the 10th graders questions. This being said I think I grew in my ability to anticipate questions that a doctor or genetic counselor might have when trying to diagnosis or counsel a patient. This meant I had to understand their jobs and try to be two or three steps ahead in order to have answers.