mehrali.com

Flat White using JBM

2012-02-11T16:16:00.001+00:00

A delicious flat white using some Jamaican Blue Mountain beans that arrived unexpectedly today.

Kopapa inspired sweet muffins

2012-01-01T06:27:00.001+00:00

Insomnia

2012-01-01T05:43:00.001+00:00

Rather embarrassingly it's been a fair while since I've visited the site, let alone blogged. I'm afraid a certain 140-character orientated micro-blogging upstart has lured me away from my first love. It's amazing what a bout of insomnia can inspire though...fidelity!

The corollary to insomnia in the modern world is the app store - a labyrinthine collection of the sublime and trivial. It's through the app store that I stumbled upon the Blogger app and this latest blog entry is courtesy of the newly downloaded gem.

A similar (albeit thankfully rare) bout of insomnia in a pre-iPhone, pre-app store, pre-blogger world may have rendered me bleary eyed and incomprehensible yet this most recent encounter with the world of the wide-eyed has been strangely satisfying!

Depression - lost in translation

2010-06-06T10:10:00.000+01:00

I've developed an unhealthy obsession with trying to compile a list of words/phrases in South East Asian languages that helps capture the essence of depression. A previous post on Begum Syndrome, touched on language and cultural barriers to interpreting and understanding complex symptom clusters and subsequently conveying a presumed diagnosis of low mood.

Drawing on my East African Asian heritage I discovered that the term often used in my community to describe depression is munjaro - a Swahili word which translates as cobweb - perhaps perfectly capturing the clouded perception and thinking that can take hold with clinical depression. However, in its original usage it was probably applied more to long term psychosis rather than the more subtle but equally pervasive depression.

If the Queen spoke Gujarati she might describe depression as manshik udashinta which I suspect may correlate with it's Urdu equivalent udasi (sadness) which doesn't really hit the spot.

Tellingly, the Royal College of Psychiatrists' patient info leaflet on depression (in Urdu) merely transliterates depression.

Has anyone had any success in coining an appropriate phrase? Which other languages pose a similar challenge?

[First posted here at doc2doc]

Even more delicious

2010-05-26T10:47:00.000+01:00

If, like me, you use del.icio.us to record your online reading while you work and your appraisal is approaching, you're probably wondering what's the best way to export your learning record into your appraisal portfolio. This entry will show you how to generate a neat, dated, pdf of all that browsing you do that so often goes unrecognised! Read on here.

ALT

2010-05-02T13:12:00.001+01:00

Tired All The Time since returning from Afghanistan
Running late because of a codebase error

Difficulty expressing myself in English
Difficulty understanding his English

Walking away clutching a form for some blood tests
Baseline bloods should reveal anything serious

Reading a letter from my doctor. In English.
A raised ALT and γGT – come and see me at your earliest convenience

Walking away clutching a form for more blood tests
I didn’t realise he’d lost his son

Another letter from my doctor. In English.
Have you ever used drugs? Any tattoos?

I can’t believe I’m crying
I can’t believe he’s dying

By Tauseef Mehrali
Top 300 entries for the 2010 International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine

Street Sign

2010-04-28T21:54:00.002+01:00

Street Sign, Marrakech ©Tauseef Mehrali 2010

The art of engaging a chicken in conversation

2010-03-30T10:12:00.000+01:00

Chicken Chat, Marrakech ©Tauseef Mehrali 2010

Koutoubia Minaret

2010-03-30T10:09:00.000+01:00

Koutoubia Minaret, Marrakech ©Tauseef Mehrali 2010

Saadian Tombs

2010-03-27T16:39:00.001+00:00

Saadian Tombs, Marrakech ©Tauseef Mehrali 2010

Life in the fast lane!

2010-03-27T16:37:00.001+00:00

Life in the fast lane, Marrakech ©Tauseef Mehrali 2010

Les Jardins Majorelle

2010-03-27T16:34:00.001+00:00

Les Jardins Majorelles, Marrakech ©Tauseef Mehrali 2010

Asymmetrical Rosetta

2010-02-18T22:14:00.001+00:00

Rosetta, London ©Tauseef Mehrali 2010

Make room for the shock doc

2010-02-18T22:07:00.001+00:00

As I grow older and theoretically wiser, it is becoming clearer and clearer that I am turning into my dad - who is, incidentally, an authority on wisdom: he says things like "that would be wise" on the phone.

Balding - tick
Inability to lie-in - tick
Buying anti-freeze in bulk - tick
More than one pair of brown shoes - tick

Read the rest here.

Charity, recession and micro-loans

2010-01-30T00:07:00.001+00:00

Understandably people give less in charity during a recession. At the very least it forces us to re-examine how, where and to whom we give.

I recently came across Kiva, a microfinancing scheme which involves lending micro-loans "to unique entrepreneurs around the globe" "for the sake of alleviating poverty".

Reading around, there appear to be some drawbacks, most notably the exorbitant interest rates charged to borrowers. This latter aspect flies in the face of the microfinancing envisaged by its creator Muhammad Yunus, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

Does anyone have any experience of being involved in such a scheme? Would you consider it as an alternative to "traditional" charity? Share your thoughts here.

The snow has gone

2010-01-17T10:58:00.001+00:00

The snow has gone. All of it. As a fully signed up member of the pro-snow brigade I mourn its passing. (Although rumour has it that it may well be back on Wednesday).

As the snow dusted the London cityscape, I continued to regress further into childhood. The mere sight of snow brings back vivid memories of sledging, dysmorphic snowmen and the sheer delight of school cancelation. My wife thought I’d gone insane as I eagerly peered out of the flat window and made my minute-by-minute snowfall pronouncements, cheering on the subzero temperatures and blizzards.

Read the rest here.

How to measure a mountain

2010-01-16T13:56:00.000+00:00

Managed to sneak a letter into today's Guardian review in support of the Persian polymath al-Biruni (973-1048) against Renaissance hegemony.

Letter and accompanying cartoon.

Who am I to argue?

2010-01-12T13:04:00.010+00:00

Beyond Begum Syndrome

2009-12-06T10:03:00.000+00:00

As a house officer I think I was just too busy to dedicate time to selecting the attributes that would constitute my bespoke "heartsink patient". More senior colleagues had seemingly highly refined criteria for the awarding of such an accolade to a patient. Thankfully my own portfolio of heartsink stereotypes never really took off. Perhaps I became more empathic through my training, or perhaps I just became desensitised? However, one stereotype does live on and continues to baffle me: Begum Syndrome.

Read on here.

A GP unable to prescribe antibiotics is like...?

2009-11-11T10:07:00.000+00:00

A (non-medic) friend recently tweeted this story from the BBC to me. The headline commands GPs 'must cut use of antibiotics'. His additional tongue-in-cheek note was "is this your career unravelling?" peddling the longstanding myth that antibiotics form the solitary weapon in a GP's armoury.

The latest diktat is from the European Centre of Disease Prevention and Control and warns against inappropriate antibiotic use and increasing bacterial resistance. This is nothing new. Fortunately the powers that be have realised that the situation is not down to an incestuous relationship between GPs and drug companies but public (un)awareness. The government apparently launched a major advertising campaign earlier this year telling people that antibiotics do not work on coughs or colds.

Anecdotally patients I've seen seem less resistant to the idea that rest, fluids and over the counter medicines should see them through a viral illness. My family have stopped asking me for advice, safe in the knowledge that they can pre-empt my suggestion of "take some paracetamol and let's review things in a couple of weeks".

This year the picture's been complicated somewhat by the perpetual fear of swine flu that appears to be regarded by most patients as just a notch down in severity from the bubonic plague. An interesting result of the heightened swine flu awareness though does appear to be an increasing appreciation that antibiotics do not treat viruses.

What are your experiences?

On being Mr Wolf on Saturday mornings

2009-08-10T12:00:00.001+01:00

A couple of Saturdays ago I found myself being awoken at 08:00 by an alarm I couldn’t remember setting. I lay in bed for a few moments toying with the idea of returning to sleep knowing full well that I’ve inherited my father’s inability to lie in. By 09:00 I was showered and shaved and working my way through a long list of neglected emails and admin. This was going to be a productive Saturday.

At 09:30 the phone rang. I didn’t recognise the number. Ordinarily I would have let it ring out but something compelled me to answer.

Carry on reading here.

The Sultans' Throne

2009-06-21T13:25:00.002+01:00

on the iPhone and Twitter

2009-06-21T13:16:00.000+01:00

The vast majority of the weekend so far has been unashamedly devoted to mastering the new iPhone. My heavily entrenched scepticism prevented me from riding the euphoric first waves of iPhone possession. It soon became clear that the fact I was drooling whenever I saw an iPhone within touching distance meant the time was right to become one of Steve Jobs' iChildren. Stephen Fry's panegyric in yesterday's Guardian has helped expel any remaining tinges of guilt.

On Friday I was part of a tutorial introducing us to the potential/emerging role of new media in medical education. The focus of the session was Twitter. Again something I'd given wide berth to and dismissed as a means for people to broadcast nothing more than updates on their bowel habits. The so-called Green Revolution in Iran (and its apparent Twitter dependency) however happened to coincide with tutorial lending it a surreal geopolitical air of significance. The utility of Twitter as an educational tool is actually quite exciting: the instant recording of Patients' Unmet Needs (PUNs) and Doctors' Educational Needs (DENs), the posing of concise clinical conundrums to a group of peers, to name a few.

Test Tweet

2009-06-20T11:05:00.001+01:00

Trying to synch my blog with Twitter. Here goes...

On Meat Free Mondays

2009-06-16T19:13:00.001+01:00

The next BMJ blog entry is now live:

My grandfather used to counsel my mother’s worries about my insatiable carnivorous tendencies as a child by suggesting that the only solution would be to ensure I gain a butcher as a father-in-law. I would frequently be teased at dinner parties when it looked like I was struggling to make it to dessert with mock incentives such as the profiteroles actually being meatballs. My meat eating was so ingrained by my teens that an aunt felt compelled to proclaim that I should stop making my stomach a graveyard for dead animals.

Read the whole post here.