Meridian Surgical

18-year-old London teenager talks about life with the “silent killer” Hepatitis C and shares the dramatic story of how she came to be infected.

References:
Life with Hepatitis C for London’s teenage ‘It Girl’. CNN.

From the NYTimes:

“Distracted driving has gained much attention lately because of the inflated crash risk posed by drivers using cellphones to talk and text.

But phones aren’t just distracting drivers; they make pedestrians inattentive too.

Distracted walking combines a pedestrian, an electronic device and an unseen crack in the sidewalk, the pole of a stop sign, a toy left on the living room floor or a parked (or sometimes moving) car.

Examples include a 16-year-old boy who walked into a telephone pole while texting and suffered a concussion; a 28-year-old man who tripped and fractured a finger on the hand gripping his cellphone; and a 68-year-old man who fell off the porch while talking on a cellphone, spraining a thumb and an ankle and causing dizziness.”

References:
Forget Gum. Walking and Using Phone Is Risky. NYTimes.

You will get some ideas from the following conversation on Twitter:

@dreamingspires: I realised that a previous problem in my blog was that I was writing for people more qualified than me – instead of health professionals just starting out.

@DrVes: One of the best approaches to educational blogging is to write for yourself as you learn or write for beginners – which is basically the same thing.

@dreamingspires: good advice – as an(ex)publisher suddenly having to write myself as opposed to hiding behind someone else doing it is… a learning process.

@DrVes: Did Twitter help?

@dreamingspires: Twitter helped in the sense of connecting me into a community, I didn’t ‘micro-blog’ though.

@DrVes: Twitter makes you more comfortable to write in public – you don’t have to “micro-blog”…

@dreamingspires: This IS true and my experience – it reduced my stage fright!

@DrVes: Also, you may have micro-blogged on Twitter or somewhere else without even knowing it… I set up my blog posts to publish automatically in the future — it may help with your “stage fright”.

@dreamingspires: To be honest I am unsure what micro-blogging is — specific tweets on a topic like you do, or a mini conversation? Yes, I also now autopublish via Twitter feed, and now using Stumble too. OK – microblog is an ‘opinion’/link/statement.

@DrVes: Anything you post on Twitter is micro-blog as long it’s not only replies… A comment on a comment is not a blog. I think you qualify as a fully-fledged blogger and microblogger now…

@dreamingspires: You mean I’ve MADE IT?! Newbie happiness.

@DrVes: It’s official: You’ve made it. You’re a blogger now. Expect you share of nasty comments and spam…

Kanchana is a bright young nurse in Sri Lanka. She graduated eleventh out of 30,000 nursing students in her country and is dedicated and energetic about her work as a nurse.  Where she is today is a far cry from where she was a few years ago.  During her first year in nursing school, a male acquaintance threw acid on her while she was on her way to school.  The violent practice is common in this region of the world, and most women are targeted for their beauty, out of jealousy, or for refusing the advances of the person who accosts them.

Kanchana had to undergo many painful operations, hair loss and the wearing of a facial mask for months to reduce scarring.  Dr. Chandini Perera, Interplast’s partner in Sri Lanka, performed Kanchana’s much-needed operations and provided her the needed after-care.  In addition to restoring her functionality and reducing her disfigurements, Perera also fought to have Kanchana continue with her nursing studies.  The school administrators thought it would be too distracting and disturbing for other nursing students and teachers to look at Kanchana, who needed to wear pressure garments to ensure proper healing.  Perera also helped Kanchana seek legal justice, and the perpetrator is in jail. 

Now healed but still with some scarring, Kanchana works as a nurse at Perera’s hospital, but not without another fight with hospital administrators who believed her scars would disturb the patients.  Kanchana’s smile and efficiency are doing just the opposite; she is telling her story when asked, and so many patients have stories of their own.  Kanchana is having an empowering effect on those she meets and is raising awareness about violence against women and the discrimination against those with disfigurement and disabilities.

She is moving forward and focusing on a profession that allows her to give back the same care she received. Though this event forever changed Kanchana’s life, her will remains strong and she has persevered against all odds with her caring nature intact.

She is one of our many patients who continually inspire us and reinforce our belief that reconstructive surgery can be the tool to a new beginning. By removing one of the many major obstacles that our patients face, these surgeries make it possible for them to strive for their full potential, just like Kanchana has.

After photo by Phil Borges.

Rob Centor:

A new study finds the tea shows promise as a possible oral cancer fighter.

Some interesting abstracts from PubMed:

“Google is an efficient web resource for identifying specific medical information.” Google was more efficient than all other resources for identifying medical information (P less than 0.0001) http://bit.ly/6FXATW

Google Scholar versus PubMed in locating primary literature to answer drug-related questions: no major differences http://bit.ly/8OygYt

Every year, millions of observant Jews fast on their holiest day, Yom Kippur, and millions of Muslims fast for the month of Ramadan. And every year, as many as 40% of those who fast develop serious headaches.

Yom Kippur headache is a well documented phenomenon but the causes are unclear, but doctors have suspected withdrawal from caffeine, nicotine, oversleeping, and dehydration.

About 36% of subjects who took COX-2 inhibitor etoricoxib (related to Vioxx) developed headaches, compared to about 68% who took placebo. Those who took etoricoxib also had less severe headaches, and they had an easier time fasting.

References:
Could Vioxx cousin prevent religious fast headache? WebMD.

From Google: Antisocial networking. FT.com:

At the root of the problem is Google’s decision to use Gmail, with its 175m active users, as a launchpad for its latest push into social networking. All users were enrolled as soon as they clicked a link to look at the service, and many found the names of those they corresponded with most frequently by e-mail – usually a private list – became the basis for a public “social network” of contacts on Buzz. That risked exposing the details of “estranged spouses, current lovers, attorneys and doctors”.

Eric Topol says we’ll soon use our smartphones to monitor our vital signs and chronic conditions. At TEDMED, he highlights several of the most important wireless devices in medicine’s future — all helping to keep more of us out of hospital beds.