Crow's Nest...

SK tomorrow. the game is on and time is running short. The battle will be fought tomorrow and i havent made any preperations. Tomorrow it will be me against SK in the first battle for saving sself respect and dignity. Not that i believe medical students should think that they have any dignity or self respect because they dont. And when the consultant is as toxic as SK they really don't have a chance to save your *ss. Got to go!

As we were very conveniently discussing in my room, the other night, there are two prerequisites for promotion of education in Pakistan. 1)More opportunities to impart higher education should be created. 2)Pakistan should be made a safe place to live. We can think of converting our educational scenario which will then attract potential students from abroad. Pakistan has a chance to commercialize its education industry in similar fashion to USA. Our potential customers being the Arab and the African countries. If that is effectively done Pakistan will command fare advantage in most underdeveloped parts of the world. This advantage can then be used to further our cause of existence. Pakistan can then truly emerge as the leader of the third world countries.    This thought is even more practical after the 9/11 incident. Doors of education for students from the third world are closing in the West. We can make use of this opportunity now.    We still have...

Grand Round.    Lately I have been seeing a drastic change in the grand round culture of the university. Earlier when the giants of surgery were here the grand rounds were a completely different phenomenon. They were tools for discussing all the out of ordinary or non-routine cases followed in the previous week. After brief patient presentations there were discussions over the treatment modalities and the management plans of such patients. Senior doctors used to grill their juniors for different management options and their approach towards such patients. In this way residents and students learned in a manner such that their basic drills were revised and new techniques and avenues of thought added.    Now its a completely different story in the grand rounds. The conducting doctors are not at all as good as those before them. Neither do they realize the true purpose of the grand rounds in surgery. They only use them to show off their powers and perso...

Dust Devil.    When I was still in school I happened to dare stand in the center of one that was pretty strong and frightened the rest of the pack. It almost unbalanced me from my feet. But the singular moment of being in the centre of whirlwind was rewarding enough to make me forget the pain of nausea and headache that I suffered after the dare. For a moment you almost feel as if you have no weight as if you are alighted and all. But then after the moment is over the trouble begins.    Our lives are like standing in the center of a whirlwind. On the cosmic time scale life is just a moment of joy and then, all is over. The nausea and headache start after the flight is over. On a yet smaller scale we are all on whirlwinds of our own and don't think of the ensuing consequences of our actions. It is after the brain wave is over that we realize what has passed and what we have missed.    I don't want to be in the center of a dust devil ag...

Allah is all merciful and beneficent. He gives to man what he aspires for and never keeps a record of whatever he bestows. Man can never thank Him for all his mercies. Truly those men are His best servants who spend the joyous moments of their life remembering Him. Thus I say all praise be to Allah Who is the creator and the sustainer of the universe and everything beyond it.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal the art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest, as the lowest, form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are the corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty. There is no such thing as moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all. The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of a man forms part of the subject matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an impe...

Medicine can be mischievous sometimes. There was this patient of mine who happened to present with long standing complaints of bleeding during micturation and high grade fever. He was initially admitted under the medicine team and as relentless as they are they got investigations on him worth fifty thousand rupees and still could reach no conclusive diagnosis. Thus the patient was handed over to the urology team. There he was re-evaluated and was advised further exploration under anesthesia. The plan was to get some tissue from his bladder and see if he had anything sinister. For this procedure protocol demands that he be seen by anesthesia team and declared fit for anesthesia. They got his X-ray chest and incidentally found out that the gentleman had dilatation of his aorta. Things got worse and a vascular surgery consult was sought. They asked for still further evaluation in form of CT scans of chest and abdomen to see the extent of the dilatation. After the tests the patien...