Fat patients

Are we allowed to call patients fat? Oh no!!! Not anymore.

'Ma-am, I think you maybe a wee bit overweight. Your BMI is 45. Ideally, it should be something like 25. Just a wee bit over the top.' - And, the patient leaves the clinic thinking - 'The doctor thinks I am overweight and HE is going to do something about it.' NO...HE IS NOT!

Last week, saw a patient with a BMI 0f 49. Gallstones.

Patient: 'Niggly pains in my back doctor'
Me: 'Your BMI is high.'

Patient: 'Pains not too bad doctor, just annoying sometimes'
Me: 'You are overweight.'

Patient: 'A scan showed gallstones doctor.'
Me: 'You are morbidly obese.'

Patient: 'I smoke and have diabetes. Do you think that's what's causing the pain doctor?'
Me: 'YOU ARE FAT! So fat that in a few years time your knees wont be able to carry you anymore. That is if you make it to 50 with the diabetes and that smoking.'

Patient: 'I am waiting for an appointment with the Weight Management Clinic.'
Me: 'What are YOU doing about your health?!'

Patient: 'I don't eat that much you know!'
Me (my brain banging itself against a wall that is my skull): 'Well, how much does this pain affect your life?'

Patient: 'I think I will feel a lot better if I had an operation to remove my gallbladder. I can't eat a pack of crisps without these niggly pains coming back you know.'
Me (feeling a trickle down my ear that is my brain melting down): 'You could die in the process. No - no operation for you. Go away and lose some weight. Shoo Shoo...'

Followed by a very emphatic dictation to the patient's GP and weight management clinic, which will be duly toned down by the secretary into Times New Roman on A4.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2008/03/17/doctors-ask-vets-to-scan-fat-patients-86908-20353642/
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23416709-details/Hospital+floor+can't+take+fat+patients+weight/article.do
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article593126.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article712496.ece

Back again - ?wiser ?cynical

wtf. Its been a year since I last posted. A lot has happened and a lot more hasn't. I still suffer from verbal constipation when it comes to blogging. Maybe it is the overwhelming desire to post 'good' stuff. But, wtf. A lot has happened and I couldn't care less.

Have turned 30. A big F for that!

Don't have a job after a few months - hey wait a sec - that is not really news is it?

Wikipital has died 'in utero'. RIP naive, 'save-the-world' do-gooder. Have taken up more projects than I have good teeth.

Have not killed a patient yet - but have come pretty close to it once this past year. Someone was watching over the bloody lucky patient or bloody lucky me that day. And did I say 'cynic' somewhere.

And, I cant quite remember why Slashdot is listed on the links on my blog. Cant remember when I last visited it. WTF has been happening in my life.

Anyway, I maybe back at blogging - or maybe not.

Bollywood Movies on Goolge Video

I was browsing Google Videos today and clicked on the 'Top 100' link and chose 'India' to see what was being posted by my countrymen. I was very surprised to find two videos that were over 2 hours long at the first and third positions. The first one had 158,314 views and the third one had 33,453 views. They both turned out to be complete Bollywood movies. Now, if this isn't copyright infringement, then what is. Google does not have an easy mechanism to flag a video as copyrighted material. Check out this page for yourself to see what I mean.

One of the videos was posted by a site called megaload.com. (no hyperlink here to save you the trouble. Take my word for it when I say...) It turns out to be a parked domain with only a zillion pop-up ads to boast. Come on guys...if you want to watch a movie, pay for it. But, just look at the number of views and the ratings.


I bet most of these have come from outside India. I live in the UK and it is not very often that you get Bollywood movies screened at a cineplex near you. And, the DVDs are always a year late. But, excuses apart...I think somebody is going to pay for copyright infringement...or do they ever?!

And, like any sensible person using Google, the next natural progression was to search for Hindi movies. This is what I found. Google speaks louder than words!!!

All images are screenshots from Google Videos and all trademarks, etc. belong to their respective owners. (Just in case!)

En Route to Ethiopia

I am making this entry from an internet kiosk in Amsterdam Airport. I am on my way to Ethiopia as part of a team from the Southern Ethiopia Gwent Health Link. After a month of hectic preparation I am hoping that I can contribute to this visit. I will be teaching health professionals in Ethiopia how to make the best use of computers in medicine. The primary focus is going to be E-learning. We are hoping to get them to interact with us more via the forum that I have created at the link's website. If I get one out of every four attending the course to register on the forum and start posting, then my visit would have been a fantastic success. Well, of all the zillion other problems that they have, I wonder if they will have the time to sit in front of a computer and bother to post to forums. We will know in a few days time.
More from Ethiopia.