March 25th, 2011 by Bongi in Humor, True Stories
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Amazingly enough, no matter how crazy our country gets we are a darn sight better than many of our neighbours. Many people from countries around us flee to South Africa for a better life. Only problem is for the better life you sometimes have to produce a South African identity document. These can be easily bought from corrupt government officials, but why buy one if you can borrow one?
I was working in Qwaqwa. It was an amazingly poverty-stricken place with what seemed to me to be almost total joblessness. I truly don’t know how the people survived. And yet people from neighbouring Lesotho would still move there illegally. I’ve never been to Lesotho personally but if Qwaqwa was a better proposition, then I can’t even imagine how bad life in Lesotho must have been.
Anyway, one day I got to work and was confronted with a sticky problem. The police were there and they apparently needed my help. You see as it turns out, a Lesotho illegal had died a week before in our hospital. In order to qualify for admission to our hospital she needed to be South African. Luckily her sister was the proud owner of a South African identity document and had simply lent it to her, along with her name. I assume they looked similar enough that the clerk working in admissions hadn’t noticed the picture in the book wasn’t that of the patient. More likely she simply didn’t check. The problem was that the patient had been declared dead by the doctor on call that particular night. Or rather the patient’s sister and her ID had been declared dead. At that stage no one yet knew who the patient was. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at other things amanzi*
March 24th, 2011 by Happy Hospitalist in Health Tips, Humor, Medblogger Shout Outs
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A new blog has entered the medical world. She’s only a couple months old, but she has an awesome name: happy internist. happy internist shows us all how to die healthy:
my patient saw her gynecologist. he told her to eat right, get lots of exercise, and lose weight. that way, he said, you can die healthy.
What a great quote. It’s called finishing strong. Given what I know about the incredible pain and suffering I witness everyday from self induced disease, dying healthy is a goal worth living for. Death is inevitable. Dying healthy takes hard work and personal sacrifice.
She was discovered at this week’s Grand Rounds, where Dr Val has done an excellent job of organizing the best of this week’s Internet medical offerings.
*This blog post was originally published at The Happy Hospitalist*
March 19th, 2011 by Bryan Vartabedian, M.D. in True Stories
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This week I lost one of my patients, Cooper. He was a feisty 4-year-old with mitochondrial depletion syndrome. I began looking after him as an infant when he wouldn’t stop screaming. I saw him through surgeries, diagnostic rabbit trails, and ultimately helped with the painful decision to undergo small bowel transplantation. Inexplicable symptoms and strange complications defined his short life. While he spent his final days in considerable pain, his lucid moments were spent throwing marshmallows at his siblings. It sort of encapsulates who he was. Great spirit.
Independent of the circumstances, a child’s death is always brutally difficult to process. It’s counterintuitive. And facing Cooper’s parents for the first time after his passing was strangely difficult for me. When he was alive I always had a plan. Every sign, symptom, and problem had a systematic approach. But when faced with the most inconceivable process, I found myself awkwardly at odds with how to handle the dialog. In a hospital my calculated clinical role has a way of sheltering me from a parent’s reality. At a funeral it’s different. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at 33 Charts*
January 1st, 2011 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in Better Health Network, True Stories
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The holiday season is a time of both joy and sorrow. Tomorrow a childhood friend will be laid to rest — one of my favorite artists, Teena Marie, died unexpectedly two days ago and at least six other people have made their transitions as well. My own father died unexpectedly on Christmas Eve in 1981 leaving a great void in our family life. Why do people leave us during the holiday season? It has been said because they want to be remembered.
While I lamented about all the transitions that occurred in the past two weeks, one of my best friends announced that she had a new granddaughter that was born on Christmas Day. She stated that this was part of the “life cycle” or “circle of life.” Her comments gave me reason to pause and reflect. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
August 12th, 2010 by David Kroll, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, Health Tips, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
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On the heels of Scott Gavura’s superb post on dietary supplement regulation in the U.S. and Canada, I bring you one of the most egregious and obscene product cases I have seen in 15 years of teaching on botanical and non-botanical products: Miracle Mineral Solution. Please accept my apologies in advance for not having a scholarly post for you — this is just too unbelievable not to share with science-based medicine readers. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
