Dr. Bigam

Sarah's Game: If you don't brush your teeth...?

Sarah's Game: Is the liver...?

What does the pupil do?

The pupil controls the amount of light it lets into your eye. When it gets dark outside, your pupil gets really big to let in more light. It's looking for more light.

Does your heart grow?

You've all seen the "Grinch Who Stole Christmas?" And his heart grew 3 sizes in one day? Your heart does grow. My heart is a lot bigger than your hearts, because I'm a lot bigger. Your heart is about the same size as your fist.

The liver takes the stuff, the food and drink that we eat every day. It gets stored in the liver and is made into different things. All the healthy foods that we eat, we use those to build up muscle. The liver makes things to build our muscle when we exercise. We even need some fat for our body. The liver makes things for our blood to make our blood clot. There's about 2,000 things that the liver does. It makes all these different things and sends them out into the body, to the heart and everywhere.

The liver is up here on your right side, right up underneath your ribs. The ribs protect the liver. If you get hit with a hockey stick or something, your ribs will protect your liver.

On the left side, that is where your spleen is.

The liver is shaped like a triangle.

How far down are your kidneys?

Put your hand around to your side, and put your hands around and that is where your kidney is.

The kidney is tucked right up here under your liver. On your left side, it would be over here.

How does your brain remember?

There's an area in your brain that is responsible for all of your memory. All of our memories from the time we are kids until we adults are all stored in that part of our brain. There's two different parts to that. There's the memories that you have for your whole life, and memories that you have just for the exams that are coming up, like your spelling test.

We know the brain has different parts for doing different things. For example, we know which part of the brain is responsible for moving your left ankle. Other parts are needed for breathing, and so on.

The skeleton is made up of all the bones in our body, from the skull down to our toes.

Can you take parts, like a heart, from someone else?

Sometimes, when people die and go to heaven, their organs can be used to save the lives of people here. Sometimes we can use a whole liver, or a pancreas. A pancreas makes insulin. If your pancreas doesn't make insulin, then you have diabetes. Later, I'm going to do a pancreas transplant, so that person does not have diabetes any more.

We know that you do liver transplants. What kinds of things make a liver sick?

Lots of things can make a liver sick. Sometimes it is a disease that people are born with, or viruses.

Even children can have problems with their livers. When we do liver transplant for a child, we take a part of a liver from their mom or dad and put that piece of liver into the sick child. That way the child can get better again. Because if your liver is not working, it is not very good and you can die from it. So we do liver transplants to save them.