The Buddha Says

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.

My best time at a laparoscopic cholecystectomy yet - 36 minutes flat. My previous best time was 45 minutes. And, no I wasn't racing against time. Honestly. It is always a bad idea to race against time, especially in elective surgery. I just got lucky this time. Like a boss of mine said, the more operations you do, the luckier you get.

I have created a new MessagesTa.php for the Wikipital project. This contains a larger number of translated messages in tamil than the default file that ships with MediaWiki 1.7 . A lot has been derived from the work done for the Tamil Wikipedia but I have added a considerable amount of stuff. This file, I hope, will be very useful for all Tamil Wikis. Remember to replace விக்கிபிட்டல் with your own project's name or {{SITENAME}} before you install using this file. You can download this file from here . While at it, also check out விக்கிபிட்டல் . Please link to this blog to download the file until I upload it to a more permanent location. I don't want people cursing me for a broken link to my googlepages.

Wikipital is now available in Tamil. There are a few issues that I will iron out over the next few days. It took a good deal of work to get the MessagesTa.php file in order inspite of the fact that many of the messages have already been translated for the tamil wikipedia project . The completed file has got a much larger number of translated messages than the default tamil translation file that comes with Mediawiki . I am sure this will be useful for numerous Tamil Wiki projects.Check out my exclusive entry to download this file. விக்கிபிட்டல் உடல் நலம் மற்றும் மருத்துவம் சம்பந்தப்பட்ட தகவல்களை இலவசமாகவும், கோட்பாடின்றியும் அளிக்கின்றது. கூடிய விரைவில் மற்ற மொழிகளிலும் விக்கிபிட்டல் உருவாக்கப்படும்.

How many signs do we see everyday on average? Little boards telling us where to go, what to watch out for, where to tread carefully and a lot more. Shops, roads, cars, buildings - there is a signboard in every one of them. I work in a hospital and have for the past 18 months taken exactly the same route to the surgical ward on level 3. I am curious to see how many signs my eyes glance at everyday. There are plenty - but have I ever read them? Let me try and recollect. 'Cosultant Obstetrician On Call', 'Maternity...???', '???Access to Theatres, ITU, CCU Only', a board on the inside of the lifts listing out all the wards and what floors they are on, 'Ward 3/4', '??Access for Staff Only', etc. I am sure that these are only a fraction of the actual number. I will pick up a dictaphone tomorrow and actually read them all into it as I walk the walk. Oh, and on a completely different note, I completed uploading the tamil version of Wikipital. It is now...

Wikipital is finally online. Thanks a lot to my brother-in-law, an SpR in Paediatrics, the site is online and content is increasing by the day. I am still working on the translation files for Tamil, my mother tongue. That should go live hopefully within the next fortnight. I have used Mediawiki to do this. More later. The site is at www.wikipital.com

The worst of partialities is to withold oneself, the worst of ignorance is not to act, the worst lie is to steal away. - CHARLES PEGUY (1873-1914) A few months ago, I was faced with an exceptionally difficult situation. It was fairly routine to start with. A 68 year old man was brought into A&E with a leaking abdominal aneurysm. He was in hypovolemic shock and I was the surgical doctor on call. It was obvious that he needed urgent surgery and I spoke to the vascular surgeon on call and agreed to transfer the patient to the oeprating theatre while he got to the hospital. The patient was on the operating table, fully anaesthetised, 30 mins after I first saw him in A&E. And, he was deteriorating fast. The consultant anesthetist asked me if I had clamped the aorta before. I said that I had never done it before though I had assisted numerous aneurysm surgeries and knew how to do it. I said I probably could do it if the situation was desperate. At this stage, I asked the theatre s...