in Arabic بالعربي

بعض القراء اقترحوا علي كتابه بعض مدوناتي باللغه العربيه، ان شاء الله سوف أفعل ذلك في القريب العاجل

I've been requested to post some blogs in Arabic I'll try doing that soon.

Jet Ski!

Last weekend I was in the ER with one of my relatives waiting for our turn to come. We noticed an elderly lady, shaking, trying to calm her self down, and sipping water. A crowed of young boys were standing quietly in a corner, looking anxious and sad. A young lady pacing back and forth chewing her finger nails not knowing what to expect or what to do next. I sat near the old lady greeted her and asked what's wrong. She said her grandson (around 12 years old) had a jet ski accident. I looked at the group of boys and asked them what exactly happened. One boy said: we were swimming at the beach and out of no where a jet ski came directly toward them and hitting their friend on the head. He was semi conscious at that time with a visible bump at the head. His friends ; although young, pulled him out the water and called the emergecy number. The ambulance then took him to the hospital for further management. I don't know exactly what happened to the young boy, all I know that he was sedated and on a ventilator. His parents were so upset, his father wanted to kill (I think) the jet ski rider because he ran away! And not even bothered to help out ( but the clever boys took the plate number). I really pray to Allah that the boy will recover soon with no complications.

The pointl of this story is that how many innocent people should suffer until a jet ski/ jet boat law be implemented to protect the swimmers. There should be a designated area for swimmer and others for boat/ jet ski activities so no one would get hurt. Its as simple as that! The young boys wanted only to have fun at the beach after a long week of studying! I think they never thought such a horrible thing will happen to them. I really hope the best for the family and their beloved boy and that he will have a speedy recovery.

I'm back!

Wow! It has been more than 3 years since my last posting! I can't believe how time flies by so fast! I met one of my relatives and she encouraged me on blogging again. The thing is I don't have time :(. Well I'm trying now to use this new link "blogging using e-mail" and see how it goes. If it goes smoothly and nice I will be blogging this way and post more frequently inshalah.

I don't want the needle :(

It's been such a long time since my last post, but I am so busy with work and have little time for posting...

Right now I'm in my last rotation as a trainee. I'm working in Pediatric department now. Kids are amazing healthy or sick. Some of my encounters with them are funny, others are sad. I will be sharing some of these stories with you.

NEEDLEs ... are you scared of them? unfortunately, some families threatens their kids with needles if they behaved badly by saying" if you are bad I'm gonna take you to the doctor and give you a shot!" .. so the child put in his/her mind that if I'm bad I'm going to get a shot, and that's totally untrue because sometimes a child needs a shot as part of his/her treatment or health.

One of the encounters that is related to this topic, is that during my night shift in the wards I met a young girl who was hospitalized. She was browsing in the ward with her younger brother, who was healthy. And once she saw me, she smiled and called at me"hey you! come here and give my brother a shot! He's being naughty" I smiled at her and went away. What was funny about that is the way she was talking to me, as she was the boss! also her brother, who was several years younger than her, wasn't misbehaving!

Another story, is that in the treatment room, where they stick needles in the arm of kids and draw blood. I met a five year old girl who was crying in agony" no needles! I don't want needles! Oh my GOD" with a sweet voice while they drew blood from her. I felt for her and her mother, who was there beside her trying to ease the pain from her.

Poor kids! what shall we do! I do hope that in the near future we will discover new types of investigations that doesn't resolve to needles :) in my experience if an adult had a choice to scream NO NEEDLES I think they will.

Cotton Sandwich!

Yes, cotton! Have you ever tried to eat one? This special diet was given to one of our patients as a treatment trial to her condition.

You might wonder: for what? Well, she accidentally swallowed a pin. This sandwich was given to her to eat it for three days untill hopefully enveloping the pin in her gut avoiding injury to it.

Did it work? Yes, it did!

One in a Million

A young man was walking with his friends when he felt a sting sensation in his back just behind his neck, he put his hand where it hurt and it felt wet. Looked at it, and it was all bloody. Then at the same time he had difficulty in breathing and was rushed to the hospital.

On arrival, all help was done to stabilize his condition. An x-ray of his chest was taken to assess his difficulty in breathing.

What showed up in the chest x-ray amazed everyone.

A bullet was found at the left side of the chest, just barely missing the vital organs, such as the heart and the spinal cord by inches. All it did was puncturing his left lung and injuring it and it was managed on arrival by inserting a chest tube.

So where did the bullet come from? The patient and his friend didn’t hear a gunshot, and the entry wound of the bullet was parallel to the shoulder axis of his body, meaning the bullet came from above. All this could be explained by a “stray bullet” that was shot toward the sky from a distant and when landing it hit our patient, who is truly lucky to be alive.

All covered up!

during my rotation as a medical student in surgery, we had two week course in plastic surgery. while in the out patient clinic a young lady with her little girl entered. what was special about that girl is that she was all covered up from head to toe, wearing a hat, sunglasses long sleeved T-shirt, long pants and on top of all that she was covered with a cotton blanket.

the doctor recognized the family, greeted them and said: OK, show me your child's tummy. her tummy was covered all with blistered rash that looked so painful.also the doctor checked her hands and feet that were too swollen ans blistered and some fingers were starting to fuse with each other.

when the patient left the room, the doctor asked us what we think the child has. I had no idea but guessed that she had the xeroderma pigmentosum because the patient was well covered up, but instead the patient doen't have this disease, she had a sever form of a heridatory disease called epidermolysis bullosa that effect the skin and other tissues causing them to be so fragile that they are easily broken down by the simplest trauma, thus calling them the butterfly children.

while searching in the web looking for more information about this rare disease I found a site that is dedicated to this illness. what special about this site is that it is been made an epidemolysis bullosa patient. so what is more informative about the disease than learning from the patient's own word. please check out her site EB - through the eyes of a patient

Looking at the Ant!

In one of my rounds with the medical department, I was asked to present the findings on my case and read the plain chest x-ray the consultant handed me out. We were taught that when reading an x-ray I should read it in a systematic way. Like reading the name first then the date it was taken then comment on the image if it was well exposed etc etc etc until I reach the abnormal findings and comment in details on it. And never comment on the abnormal findings directly as not to miss some of the small findings that might be important.

So I began commenting in a systematic way, although this patient has an obvious cardiomegaly "enlarged heart". The consultant was impatient with me and began shouting and waving the x-ray at my face saying "Just tell me what you are seeing!!!! You are looking at the elephant and telling me that you are seeing the ant!!!!". All I could say was "OK! this patient has a cardiomegaly, but I was taught to read the x-ray in a systematic way and not jump into the obvious findings so as not to miss anything".!

I mentioned this story because the obvious sometimes is missed by doctors. As it happened to one of my teacher whose a respiratory pediatrician. He said that he had an young patient;around 11 months old, came with recurrent respiratory problems. His father was so worried and visited many doctors that told him your son has an asthma problem. The father wasn't convinced, he said that my child's condition is not improving with any kind of medication the doctors gave us.

The doctor-our teacher- then examined the child thoroughly and looked at the x-ray. He gave us -medical students- that x-ray "he kept it with him as a teaching tool" and told us to read it. The first thing that struck me was the round opaque shadow that was located in the throat area, it was circular in shape and about 2 cm in diameter. I asked the doctor" is this an artifact in the x-ray?". He told me that he thought the same thing and asked to do another chest x-ray of the child. He showed it to us and the round shadow was still there. He told us" OK , what do you think?". I said"is this a foreign object stuck in the patient throat? how could he breath? how could the previous doctors missed it? it was so obvious?". He said" yes, that's right. It was a foreign object. A coin that was aspirated and was stuck in the trachea -windpipe-in a vertical way, that what made the wheezing sound. And for the cough symptoms it was because of the recurrent infection that was caused by the foreign object. And yes the doctors before me missed the obvious in the x-ray! that's why it's so important to read the x-ray thoroughly."

And for the child a simple procedure was done to remove the coin and he was free of any symptoms when he got back home.

For me it taught me a lesson to look for both the elephant and the ant in any case in the future :)

From The Memory Vault...A Survivor....

I will be posting some of the amazing stories that I encountered during my studies for the time being since I'm still unemployed!

This story is about an Indian gentleman; let's call him "Mark". I met him only once during my first rotation in Surgery. He came smiling in the out patient clinic, holding a huge white envelope that contains his X-rays. Said "hello" and handed the envelope to the attending surgeon. The surgeon returned his hello and then looked at us and told us-medical students- that this gentlemen has an amazing story to tell, I'll let him tell you in his own words.

So Mr. Mark began telling his story: " I was hospitalized not that long, about 6 months ago with symptoms of fever. After running all different kind of test on me, the doctors came to deliver the bad news. They said I have Leukemia and that they discovered a swelling in my abdomen more than 5 cm in diameter. I was transferred to the specialized hospital immediately, upon getting there my fever stayed with me for a couple of days, and the doctors continued running all kinds of test on me. During that time I told the doctors that God will not give me this disease and I can't have it. I kept saying that and all they did was nod and go out of my room".

We the medical students looked at each other and then I asked him " why did you have such a strong belief in that?". He smiled at me and said " let me continue my story and you will know why".

He continued:" Well, I kept telling my self God will not give me this disease all the time and even after all the tests showed up confirming the diagnoses I kept saying that I don't have this disease and telling the doctors in a few days you will see that I'm right". He told us that it was not a denial but a strong peaceful believe in God that He will rescue him from this illness.

Only after staying in the hospital for less than a week, that day the attending unit came to his room delivering the amazing news to him. They said" Mr. Mark, somehow today your result came out to be normal and the imaging we did to your swelling had reduced in size. You are a healthy man now. Free of cancer!". I smiled back and told them "I told you".

He told us since then I've been visiting this clinic for follow up. All my check up are fine now. The attending physician looked at us holding the CT scans in his hand and motioned to us to come and look at them. The doctor said " Look at the images" he showed us the old ones with the 5 cm swelling and then showed us the recent CT scan taken a couple of days back. It showed no trace of the swelling! I asked the doctor "what happened?". He said " we admitted to the hospital a dying man and now he's a healthy individual. How? why? we don't know! We can't explain it".

Mr. Mark asked us " Do you know why I felt this strong feeling that God won't give me this disease? It's because I did a lot of good deeds in my life that was inspired from my dad's good act to people. I've helped a lot of people in this country expecting nothing in return.

And he started telling his story: " I was born to a poor family, my father worked in a factory in the area that we lived in. He helped a lot of our friends and neighbours to get jobs in that factory. My father refused to take any sort of gifts after his friends got the job, he used to tell them and me that he only did it in God's sake, and that he always told me if you want to do anything do it so as to please God and not to get credit from others. So his friends used to sneak small gifts such as fruit baskets or some food supply to my mother and me and insisted not to tell my father because they knew he didn't allow it."

" So I took his example and as I came to this country I helped my friends get jobs and didn't take anything in return, because I did it in God's sake. That's why my belief was so strong that God will protect me as long as I lived. That's my story."

After that the surgeon said I told you that Mr. Mark has an amazing story to share. He's one of the lucky individuals we meet every day.

I haven't met Mr. Mark again, but his story is still engraved in my mind.