Medicine and Music, Malady and Melody...

It seems fascinating to fathom that a lot of artists have used medical jargons / themes / conditions in their compositions. And these songs have not been washed down the memories; even today young folks could be seen humming these immortal tunes. It can be attributed to the mystical nature of occurrence of human body, mind and things associated with them that such jargons have been used time and again. When Pink Floyd, the giants of rock, gave birth to ‘Take thy stethoscope and walk’, a lot of emotional pools were flooded. The fact that one of the best heard and looked after band used the phrase; it stirred a flurry of feelings and in no time a lot of songs started mentioning medical lingo.

Girl, you have no faith in medicines by The White Stripes, Spinal Meningitis by Ween, Brain Stew by Green Day, The Jack by AC/DC (This song is about a venereal disease - "The Jack" is Australian slang for Gonorrhea), Spasticus Autisticus by Ian Dury and The Blockheads, Why does it hurts when I pee by Frank Zappa created their share of ripples and the trend immortalizes. An ordinary person related any medical connection with a disease, in turn with doom, suffering and majority of such songs imitate acerbic feel. As medical professionals, most of us can better understand the psyche used behind creating these anthems and the hollow energy doesn’t suck us as much as it does an ordinary individual. Music permeates our daily lives. It graces our weddings and funerals, fills our elevators and waiting rooms, and accents the messages advertisers want us to hear. It can be incidental or inspirational, sensitive or severe, torrid or timid, hilarious or horrifying. Amid all this remarkable variation, the fundamental intent of the music in our lives never changes: music is communication, intended to carry a message and to influence our responses to that message. “Message-songs” have served as elements of successful, multimodal interventions, such as prenatal care promotion efforts in Mexico and water hygiene education programs in Bolivia. It would be fine if more songs are created with use of medical words & messages that have inspirational, thought provoking and hopeful vibrancy. Indian composers have by far restrained from using this genre and subliminal attempts remind us of twisted euphemism of malaria (remember lovearia??)

If you have heard the song ‘Speechless’, a nice song sung by Lady Gaga for her father with the hopes he'll be convinced to seek the medical treatment he needed
for his heart condition, you could truly feel the colossal power emanating from the ruthlessly rich energy and there are high chances you would start feeling extra-responsible for your loved ones. Lets not make music part of our lives, but lets make our life part of music and feel the divine rhythm with every playing note.

End of turbulence

What appears a shell to the naked eyes can be visualized as a cosmic congregartion of indefinite particles by the knowing souls. We, ordinary humans, tend to see the things in their entirety thus overlooking or missing the finer details. Our minds are processed in this way that we associated ourselves with objects, rather than appreciating the minutest structure responsible for its creation. As its hypothesized (and proved as well) that mass is nothing but a package of energy particles, so what we see is what we are processed to see, thus overlooking the structures responsible for the overall appearance and character. That happens in real life as well, always. Our minds are preoccupied with gross thoughts and we most often deduce our assumptions which are not correct when visualized in the finest details. The gross and appreciable change can be brought in a structure by working out on its finest constituents.

The assumption that mind and body work on certain principles which can be deduced and explained by scientific studies thrills most of us. All of the contemporary physics rests on two foundations. One is Albert Einstein's general relativity theory, which portrays the world on the largest of scales—stars, galaxies and the vastness of the universe itself. The other is quantum mechanics, which portrays the world on the smallest of scales—molecules, atoms, nuclei and quarks. Both these streams have an army of intrepid followers. The truth lies in the eye of the beholder, and we should render our thought process to understand and respect the big picture and the smallest details in it. True bliss lies in knowing self and the reason for the same. The natural forces tend to practice symmetry in their existence and hence are everlasting and tranquil. A problem arises when symmetry is withdrawn, may it be any calamity. I am of the belief that if we tend to minimize the friction between forces that comprise us and regulate our aura and environment, we can achieve solace of highest degree. There is no quick-fix approach; you got to understand the fact that mass is a derivative of light and light is ordered energy. So the disorders that we witness in our lives can be corrected if we take away the negativity, worry, fear, anxiety as these tend to cause disharmony in the natural symmetrical energy fields of our bodies and mind. End of turbulence would occur if we focus our poised selflessness to the causes and derive pleasure in witnessing the change that epitomize the true message of nature; its important to be in order.

Maximal Invasive Reach; Web strategy for doctors

With the advent of new-era communicative tools, findings things of relevance has not remained a tough nut to crack. People all over search the internet for things that interests them and make their opinions about. I think it’s important in today’s fast-paced and interconnected world for a doctor to make some use of various collaborative tools in the web world. It won’t just leverage the quantum and authenticity of their practice but in turn would be helpful for the patients as well. Suppose, someone is desperately searching for competent oncologists in his / her area and he googles it, there are high chances that he will be connected to the profiles of some of the specialists in the region, who may or may not be super experts. Now the choice is limited as the person in need is unlikely to personally visit every specialist and form an opinion to select the best. Here role of web presence matters a lot.

By understanding the need of projecting your special interests and capabilities as a clinician, you can help patients in dire need of your services and believe me its not a web developer’s job to highlight your profile or to enhance your web reach. By virtue of simple tools (your personal website, basic social networking tools i.e. facebook, linkedin etc, bookmarking tools i.e. stumbleupon, delicious etc), the profile’s visibility can be increased multifold. If you can write a blog, make it a point to do it regularly and keep on updating about your professional inclinations and techniques. If the target audience is a patient, the goal should be to equip him / her with the knowledge and options of various treatment modes.

The top trends in web and social media usage of internet tools are increase in the number of websites that target to social networking of health care professionals only & a high rise in web version availability of all medical and scientific journals. Its high time that we start contributing actively our scientific papers to online journals that would add up the credibility and serve as a cornerstone for our patient in his / her selection of care provider. Patients are looking for authoritative but personal information to help them navigate all of the health information they find in today’s media, and I find that using social media helps me to reach more than just the patient in my exam room, hopefully saving patients and parents unnecessary anxiety and saving physicians and other health care providers unnecessary visits.

Stomach pain, a virus in your hard drive !!

Almost all of us have suffered stomach pain at so me or the other point of our lives. It can be boring, throbbing, stabbing, cramping or burning in nature and hampers our mental and physical activities. The cause of stomach pain can be innumerous; there is little point in illustrating all of them. Its just that as a virus harbors your hard disc and hampers the overall computer functioning, the stomach pain as well keeps you down till the time it is there. As there are different types of virus attacks in your hard drive (Trojans, spywares, malwares, bots etc) and severity differs with the type, similarly stomach pain can be grumbling enough to keep you on toes and screaming for help.

Formatting your body is sometimes the solution for getting rid of stomach pain by virtue of gut sterilization (by medications), surgical interventions (to fix the issues in body organs / tissues responsible for abdominal pain) etc. People who have propensity for development of recurrent abdominal pathologies need greater care of their bodies. Its just that some computer systems frequently need formatting which needs time, energy and involves great discomfort to the user. Try asking a web developer how does it feels when an unknown Trojan horse causes multiple syntax error and corrupts all the project files permanently. But then there is no permanent cure, one has to fix the acute issues and try to install good antivirus programs, frequently update them, not to attach corrupt external discs and most importantly to take maintenance contract with a good service provider. Its just like the notorious abdominal pain, once it occurs, it disturbs us and to minimize the chances of its recurrence we have to consult and follow advices of good doctors, not to indulge in things that are likely to exacerbate the problem and take a good mediclaim (health insurance) policy, so that we can be comparatively safe from the expenditures involved in hospitalization, medical bills etc.

The most difficult type of abdominal pains to handle for a clinician are ones who have psychosomatic etiology and a clinician can do little to prevent the relapses and to control the acute flairs. Similarly some of us, I am sure, must have noticed that their computer systems don’t just run brilliantly, though no contributory cause are being mentioned to them by their service providers. Its just that sometimes they work magic and the other moment they are dying to crawl. Certain things in life are beyond the scope of proof, logic or fact, they happen at their own will and desire and we have no choice but to go on. Abdominal pains will keep on bothering us as will the crashed internal drives, keep on formatting and taking the precautions.

Hail mercy on little angels…

Yesterday a cute kid was admitted at my hospital in extreme distressed clinical state. She was having severe breathlessness and had probably caught most virulent variety of lung infection. In view of her sick general condition, she was kept in ICU and put on injectable medications with application of BIPAP Mask (a sealed mask which delivers high flow oxygen with pressure to assist in respiration). Her face looked pale, distraught and frightened. She was seemingly in enormous agony with no clue as to what has happened to her and why. Being the center of all attention in the ICU, she gathered courage to ask one of the nurses and her question created a wave of emotional stir. She asked whether she will be able to celebrate her birthday this year (due in June 2011) with an expectant glance. Though nurses and doctors in ICU are well oriented to handle such emotional issues, the charm of her innocence caused my eyes getting welled up with tears. I deep dwelled in the thoughts of life, birth, happiness, hope and misery. Its difficult to find a single constant in the life and I was perturbed at the fact that happiness is always followed by sorrows, health by illness and life by death. Why can’t small kids and children be free from the burden of diseases? Aren’t they too small to bear the harsh realities of life to which they owe no contribution? Isn’t it unfair to bestow sound health to one little angel and to render the other one on death bed?

As medical professionals, we are supposed to provide physical and mental healing to the sufferers even if we feel like mourning high. I fuelled up the optimism of our little patient and promised her that we will celebrate her birthday in a grand way and all her friends (which included me and 2 nurses as well) would bring nice, little gifts for her. It was a depressing sight to have a cute, chubby kid connected with machines, intravenous drips fighting to survive for her own life, and quite not knowing why she has been chosen to face this holocaust. Her parents looked as sucked up of life as dry wood, wrenched in agony, praying to almighty incessantly. I decided to re-arrange my schedules and spent a fortune of time with my priceless patient. Call it faith healing or turn of lucks or medical miracle, her seemingly very bad condition responded dramatically to subjected treatment and before she could have succumbed to the labor of breathing, her body started showing improvement. She was taken out of BIPAP machine today morning and is presently very stable and continuously showing signs of improvement. Her effervescent smile and chirpy talks are keeping the hopes alive that no malady is for forever and that true faith shines amidst the hazy clouds of uncertainties. I am still lost in the labyrinthous lanes of the mystery of nature and finding my answers. I am sure almighty can’t punish someone who has just bloomed to life and the realization of this fact makes the other facet more emboldened. If it is not God who is responsible for the unseen incidents in our lives, then who or what drives us?

Hope, a marvel !

Hope is the force that enlightens a person’s real and virtual world. The turbulence gathered with burdens of anxiety, despair, and fear vanishes away when rays of hope infiltrate in the person’s domain. The juxtaposition of hope and despair is the key to appreciating and fighting for one's survival. And hope itself is not one-dimensional. Hope must work in tandem with trust, again establishing that devout bond. Hope is an innate realization of being able to survive the biggest of holocausts and to come out stronger.

Hope, if used as a medical weapon, can be surprisingly effective in aliening out a plethora of undesired physical and mental conditions. The depressed person can no longer perceive and differentiate an effective connection between a plan of action and the aim he or she has set. This, in turn, leads to a loss of self-confidence, which results in the person's depending more on others. Hope has its roots in spirituality and nothing can bolster the chances of sound health than the realization of one’s own existence. In medical world, we should give its due share of impact to spiritual health as well. If used tactically in wholesome approach, I believe we can decrease the disease burden globally. Ideally, importance of hope & spirituality should be given its share of magnitude right from the childhood as its better for a person to identify his / her own self, the earlier the better. Spirituality is the seat of hope, giving one a sense of meaning in the face of adversity. With hope, inclusive recovery becomes a pleasant possibility.

COLLLABORATIVE APPROACH FOR OBESE PATIENTS

Managing a patient with bariatric issues requires high level of dedication and team-spirit approach. A person who has tried for achieving optimum body weight and has not been successful requires motivation, disease education and an inclusive approach by the team of attending clinicians. Every case has its own merit, while sometimes it may be possible to achieve the results quite fast the same may not be true for everyone. An in-depth analysis regarding dietary schedules, physical regimen, family history is important as many vital links can be obtained regarding future approach. Though Psychoanalysis remains a separate specialized stream of medical sciences, the chief attending clinician should be able to make out the emotional and psychological factors associated with the disease. Patient’s can provide unmatched compliance if the rapport is established well with the attending team. Obesity in patients poses a challenge to clinicians, especially if the person is unreceptive, but sometimes it is unexpectedly easy to break through hostility and gain patient trust. If I recall, most of the rapport establishing sessions have been a blend of bitter-sweet experience, then. But there was consolation in knowing I had learnt something useful and brought a little light into my patient’s life. I couldn’t ask for more than that as the road to health begins when mutual faith is born between doctor and patient.

The disease burden was known to be high in developed countries, however in past few years; it has silhouetted even developing nations in a big way. Escalating prevalence of obesity in children will lead to higher obesity rates in the adult population, resulting in a greater health burden caused by obesity-related metabolic and cardiovascular complications. In fact, obese children may already exhibit early signs of disorders such as hypertension, elevated cholesterol levels, and insulin resistance. A patient should always be made comfortable, giving attention to his / her small needs, and after establishing the rapport, treatment options should be narrated along with their merits and limitations. It is highly recommended if the patient could be shown animated videos of the bariatric surgery (if the person is required to undergo surgical intervention) with highlighting step by step approach in a nice way. It helps the patient to be mentally prepared and to be equipped with a lot of questions which in turn will help the outcomes, as the expectations turn to be more real. Clinician should always tend to involve the patient’s family support in the applicable capacities as post surgery the outcomes can radically differ if the optimum mental and physician care has been imparted and patient’s emotional solace is a very important factor.

Importance of keeping up sessions with obesity support group has been highlighted every now and then and I believe this is one of the best methods for the patient to understand the best postoperative measures which can help in achieving adequate weight loss. Acquiring bariatric surgery support is essential to letting the patient effectively navigating his / her own struggles after weight loss surgery. In order to get a decent jump start on exactly what to expect after weight loss treatment, the patient should join a support group meeting prior to having the procedure. Mentors, found usually in obesity support groups, can be a concrete rock in moments when the patient doesn’t seem to really want to move further on his / her quest to weight loss. There’s a wealth of answers that individuals will provide in a group environment and ground realities can be explored which mostly encourage the patient to undergo the procedure and follow the schedules thereafter.