Emotions of water

The Physicians for Human Rights Club at SGU recently had a coffee house. The theme of the coffee house was water and I read a poem at the event.

Poetry usually expresses the poet’s emotions. This makes water a hard subject to write about because there is no single emotion I associate with water. Rather I think of water as a source of human emotions because of the immense impact it has on our lives.

Emotions of water

Brings relief to a thirsty person,
heartbreak when it causes disease.
Cities grow up around it,
Villages are swept away by floods.
Nourishes the food that feeds my spirit,
Breaks the spirit of the farmer praying for rain.
Indescribable, tasteless, colourless, odourless,
yet it affects everything.

Tags: poem

Don’t stay alone in a hospital

One of my favourite medical authors and a surgeon, Atul Gawande, posted a video on Youtube urging family members to stay with patients after operations. He compares family members to the alert passengers who spot the hijacker security missed.

Which are the best hospitals?

According to a study by HealthGrades, a hospital rating company based in Golden, Colo., big name hospitals like John Hopkins need not necessarily provide the best care. While the big name hospitals do cutting edge research and deal with “exotic” cases, they don’t always excel when it comes to basic procedures. A lot of regional hospitals on the other hand  provide good quality care.

The ratings agency estimates 150,132 lives can be saved and 13,104 complications can be prevented yearly in the Medicare population if all the hospitals performed as well as the top 5%.

More over here.

Haiti and Pat Robertson

Pat Robertson is a Christian commentator. On Wednesday, he said that Haitians had been “cursed” by a “pact with the devil”.

“”They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil,” he said on Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The 700 Club.” They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal.”"

Here is a very-well put together response to his outrageous statement.

Reflections on first term

As I start with second term, I thought I would write on some of the memorable experiences, good and bad, of first term.

The courses:

Anatomy: I had never taken anatomy before and learning about the different parts of the body was really fascinating. This is probably the course in first term which made it feel like I’m in medical school. At the start of the course, I had trouble eating my food while watching dissection videos online, but by the end of the term I could hold my food down while watching lab videos.

Biochemistry: Biochemistry was a really fun course to take, and it is really interesting to learn about how the body works on a molecular level and how quirks at the molecular level can show up as observable symptoms.

Histology: Histology was the “easy” course in first term. The most interesting part of this course was looking at all the beautiful pictures, some of which are really striking and some pretty funny. For instance, did you know that the cross-section of a penis can have a striking resemblance to Eric Cartman (from South Park).

Bioethics: Bioethics was a really fascinating class and it was nice to take a break from all the hard science and ponder on what it means to be alive, dead, and things in between.

Things that I will look back fondly on in first term:

1) Friends: Friends are the only support network you have on the island and make your time on the island immeasurably better. Going through an experience as intense and taxing as medical school also means that you develop some really strong bonds with people.

2) Volunteering: I volunteered for the Orphanage Students Organization (OSO) and the Humanitarian Service Organization (HSO). Volunteering with the OSO involves playing with the kids from the Orphanages on Saturday mornings and is a GREAT way to destress. I would encourage everybody to come to the Grand Anse beach on Saturday mornings at 10AM starting from the 23rd of January.

I also volunteered for the HSO. I volunteered with the HSO and taught sex education to school children. It was a very fun and rewarding experience.

The ICSA cultural show, cricket in the basketball courts, running on the beach, swimming in the ocean and  the coffee house put together by Physicians for Human Rights are some other pleasent memories from last term.

Things which were stressful in first term:

1) Course load: Medical school isn’t hard, but the volume of information that one learns is immense. It’s a shock to the system, and I remember times when I doubted my ability to go through it all.

My trip to the International Museum of Toilets

On the occasion of World Toilet Day, here is a repost of an article I wrote for the student newspaper last year.

I was sitting around reading the news on my laptop about a month ago when I saw a link to the “International Museum of Toilets” in New Delhi. I was intrigued, particularly since I had lived in New Delhi for five years and never heard of the place. As it happened, I was to be going to New Delhi for a family wedding and decided that I should really go the Museum.

The International Museum of Toilets in New Delhi is run by an organization called Sulabh. Sulabh was founded in 1970 with the initial objective of stopping an Indian custom in which human “scavengers” carried the waste excrements and disposed of it. Since India had a caste system, the human waste carriers were/are treated as “Untouchables” and shunned by the rest of society. It should be noted that the practice of carrying waste and caste-based discrimination is illegal. However, the practice continues in some parts of the country. Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, the founder of Sulabh and a sociologist by training decided to set-up modern toilets in order to stop this age-old custom of discrimination. Since then, Sulabh has “been able to restore human rights and dignity to 120,000 scavengers, set up about 1,100,000 household toilets and 7500 community toilet blocks, constructed over 190 human-excreta-based biogas plants and made 640 towns scavenging – free. The sanitation facilities created by the Sulabh are used by over 10 million people everyday.” In addition, Sulabh has been involved in research and development in sanitation technologies.

Lack of sanitation is a problem all over the world. It is estimated that 2.6 billion people (about half of humanity) do not have access to proper sanitation. UNICEF estimates that lack of safe water and sanitation is the single largest cause of illness in the world, with 4500 children dying each day because of it. However, because sanitation can be a queasy subject, people are often loathe to talk about it. One of the biggest accomplishments of the International Museum of Toilets is to make people think about the problem in a clear-headed fashion. Here are a few fun “potty facts” that I learned from my tour guide:

1)      Did you know that the English used to shit on toilets that were shaped in the form of French books and the French kindly returned the favour. Here’s a picture of a replica toilet that I took at the museum. The toilet is shaped in the form of the Shakespeare classic “Macbeth”.

2)      Managers used to shit on top of their employees heads in the US. You might ask, so what’s new? Seriously though, here’s a picture of a two storied toilet which was used where the managers used to use stall on top of the employees.

3)      King Louis the 14^th of France used to sit on a “toilet-throne” and pee in front of his court. Here’s a picture of me on a replica of the “toilet-throne”.  I could sense the power King Louis the 14^th must have commanded as I sat on the toilet.

4)      Toilets used to be a part of living rooms and hence were elaborately made.

(source: http://www.sulabhtoiletmuseum.org/pg01.htm)

5)      My personal favourite was this toilet from Japan which washes, dries, plays MP3s, and releases room fresheners, all at the press of a button. 90% of Japanese use this kind of toilet. I think I want one.



what goes “WOW” at night? Answer: me

I’m sharing my room with a person for the first time in 12 years. This can be a bit of an adjustment as you can imagine. But it can also lead to some funny incidents.

Apparently, I talk in my sleep. That’s news to me. Not just talk, but talk loudly. A few nights ago, I went “WOW” with a huge smile on my face, then turned over, and continued to sleep with a grin on my face. My roommate thought it was hilarious.

I like visuals, so here’s a picture of me lying down with a grin on my face.

Source: http://www.redrockpress.com/images/wisdomRoommate.jpg

PS: In case you were wondering what I was dreaming about, I don’t remember. However, my roommate and I both suspect that I was probably listening to Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major live in concert.

Running and I

I love running. I started running as a 4-5 year old and still have vivid memories of those times. I ran initially to increase my lung capacity which had been diminished due to childhood asthma. I remember my dad cheering me on as a 5 year old as I ran around the track next to my house. My asthma and running continued till the age of 12 or 13, and my dad continued to be a part of running, organizing friendly races between me, my brother and friends. My love affair with running continued after I went away from my parents and got over asthma in Grade 9 and continues to this day. Running on the beaches in Grenada is some of the most wonderful running I’ve done, with the sights and sounds of the ocean filling my senses and the soft sand beneath my feet. Running for me now is as much an emotional way to keep in touch with my past as it is a way to relieve stress and stay fit.

That’s my relationship with running. The NYTimes did an interesting feature recently on the relationships some other people have with running which I would recommend. The NYTimes also had an article on the evolution of running and how humans might have evolved to be proficient runners. The article notes that humans have incredible cooling systems (our sweat glands) relative to other animals, most of whom can only pant in order to cool themselves off. As a result, humans are exceptionally adept at running long distances in hot climates and are capable of outrunning a horse over a 26 mile distance on a hot day. This ability is used by present day hunter-gatherers to catch their prey. The Tarahumra Indians are a commonly cited example of a people who have pushed humans ability to run to an extreme.

On a slightlydifferent note, here’s a song titled Running by No Doubt which I absolutely love.

post-midterm cricket on the beach

The mid-terms for the first term just finished and I can honestly say that I’ve never worked as hard as I have in the last few weeks. Luckily, I love studying all of the subjects for this term, which makes it a much more enjoyable experience and putting in the hard work easier.

Today I spent the morning at the beach volunteering for the Orphanage Students Organization. It was a blast as usual. I returned to the beach later in the day for a run. This was followed by cricket on the beach with some Grenadians. In my experience, you can go to people playing sports anywhere in the world, whether it be cricket in India, squash in Canada, or cricket in Grenada and ask to join in, and you will always be welcomed. After my game of cricket, I was offered some beer by the folks I was playing with, which I happily accepted. Good times.

Well said

I was listening to Beethoven’s Spring Sonata on youtube when I read this really interesting comment, which might help ease mid-term stress for some of the people reading this blog:

“I have this giant test Tomorrow in an AP class, and I was listening to this while i was studying- I melted into my chair, my whole body went from tensed to relaxed. Suddenly, everything doesn’t seem so impossible; if this great man could make beautiful music and move me almost to tears and yet, be deaf and never able to hear it, suddenly everything in my life doesn’t seem so difficult. Thank you for eating our hearts out and raching our souls Beethoven.”-Serb471

Well said.