Medicine, Mind and Me

A day before independence day, after the long wait of more than three months, the FHM interview took place at SVYM office.

I was on duty and was checking on a newborn with tachypnea (probably transient tachypnea of newborn) when they called me upstairs for the interview. I had others fill in for me and ran to the interview room.

My friend Swathi went in first and sitting outside I could hear them talking about the challenges faced by a clinician and public health worker in managing HIV because of the stigma associated with it and how by consistent effort we can influence at least families of HIV infected people to look at it like any other disease.

I had practised multiple times the answer to why I wanted to join FHM. I look at it as a course in infectious diseases and India is a country still struggling with infections. My personal interests and career choices are probably going to take me to places where being good at managing infectious diseases would be an advantage. Also, SVYM…

Blalock-Thomas-Taussig shunt is a surgical technique used in colouring Blue Babies pink.

Last week we had a baby who was referred for cardiac evaluation come back with a report saying she had Tetralogy of Fallot and needs a BT shunt. The parents had not gotten it done yet. Still, the baby wasn't blue. Because she was too anaemic to have enough deoxygenated haemoglobin to be cyanotic.

I had to watch Something the Lord Made that night. It is the heart-touching story of how B(T)T shunt was developed. If you don't cry with Vivian Thomas at the end, you should probably check your cardiac functioning.

In the backdrop, there are dogs. Blalock and Thomas would perform their surgical experiments on dogs. Countless dogs who have lost lives for (human and animal) science. Thank you dogs!

Talking about dogs, there are cats too. I found this post on reddit.

Cats don't get HIV - it's Human Immunodeficiency Virus, for viral Lords' sake. Or maybe there is a Feline Immunodeficienc…

Unlike with many other resolutions I figured out that today is the first day of the month only after resolving to be productive today. As a part of that I woke up about an hour early and started seeing my babies in ground floor general ward. (Oh, did I forget to mention, I'm in charge of Paediatric patients since more than a couple of weeks now).

But I hadn't even figured out why Atenolol was prescribed to the child with hepatorenal syndrome and not so high BP when I was informed that I had to cover general OPD in Kenchanahalli hospital today. As I had the experience of missing the van going there for being a minute late last time, I didn't take risk and ran away after instructing the nurse to withhold Atenolol.

It was only when I was halfway over the bridge that connects our hospital to the other side of Saragur that I realized that the Atenolol was not for BP, but to control the heart rate - tachycardia and gallop rhythm. I told the consultant paediatrician about how du…