an itinerant observer

“Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality Open your eyes , look up to the skies and see I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy …” Bohemian Rhapsody by Freddie Mercury And I was hooked. How could I not be? I was 15 when I heard the above, a lifetime ago. Being drawn into those words could merely be attributed to a teenager’s existential angst, but in my head, it was clear that Freddie Mercury was writing and singing for me and me alone. That he crooned the song in a most rhapsodizing manner, was a bonus. Thus, I began my love affair with Bohemian Rhapsody, arguably one of the most influential songs of all time, performed by the band Queen.   I was in high school when I fell in love with that song. For me, that was a time of trials and tribulations. Societal acceptance at that age and stage of my life essentially boiled down to peer acceptability. Perhaps it was not so surprising that except for those fe...

“Primum non nocere.”  (First, to do no harm) This is how I started a  blog  for the  Express Tribune  a few years ago. I wrote it then because I felt I had to speak out. A sweeper in Karachi had been rushed to a nearby hospital after he succumbed to noxious gases while trying to clear a sewer. The shocking bit was that the fasting doctor on duty refused to treat the critically ill sweeper covered in sewage water, claiming that doing so would have broken his fast. Interestingly, it is Ramazan again, so perhaps an apt time to remind my fellow healthcare professionals to recall their primary responsibility – the patient. Fast forward two years, and I’m once again recalling  primum non nocere , the starting phrase of the Hippocratic Oath – a solemn promise exhorting freshly minted medical and nursing graduates to heal their patients, but prior to that, to do no harm. I am again reminded of the oath, as there’s been a recent upswing in alle...

" Guys Google #crisper baby", a young colleague texted the team. At first, I didn’t realize the misspelling. In the heat of the moment (no pun intended), I thought the term ‘crisper baby’ was referring to some burn-related injury. The fact that I’m a pediatric emergency physician likely informed that pseudo-deduction.   “Not only is the victim a baby, the ‘hashtag crisper baby’ meme is even more unfortunate”, I thought. Although I wouldn’t put it past social media or tabloids to come up with such cringe-worthy titles, I was intrigued.      Whenever I’m asked by my post-millennial team to Google something, I generally comply. Likely because of my #FOMO (and for the uninitiated in such 3-4 letter acronyms, that stands for ‘Fear Of Missing Out’).   The Googling didn’t take long to make me realize the spelling error. The word was meant to be CRISPR (pronounced “crisper”) , alluding to the cutting edge genomic editing technology that had taken the...

I love working- but truly detest taking exams. However, as life only gives you more of what you fear, I found myself responsible for my program’s weekly Clinical Grand Rounds—an exercise in which I was expected to present a case and be judged by my program for my clinical acumen and physical exam skills. Passing would be a quiet victory; failing, on the other hand, would be public humiliation. My anxiety kicked in hard as the presentation drew closer. As I rehearsed and revised just before my moment of truth, I was stricken with a revelation— I hadn’t cut my fingernails . Alas, my personal grooming had become another casualty of my daily workload and brewing burnout. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have been a concern, but here, my long fingernails would make percussion during the physical exam almost impossible. I would end up scratching, scarring, and bruising the patient’s poor abdomen with my taps, earning a brutal shaming from my attendings in the process. “Damn, I need a nai...

The huge poster at the mall grabs my attention. There’s a mom in her kitchen with her kids around her. The children are creating a supreme mess in the kitchen (in the said poster), as expected, but mom is peaceful - levitating in a yoga-like posture, seemingly practicing mindfulness meditation, hence the caption ‘Breathe Mama, Breathe!’ is quite appropriate, I think.       Happy Mother’s Day it says at the bottom of the poster, albeit in small print. That’s what it’s likely advocating for. It is, after all, one of the busiest ‘C’ days per my lexicon, i.e. commercialistic/capitalistic/consumeristic, when people shop till they drop at all kinds of sales events at malls. Perhaps some of what they purchase is for their moms.   I’m also there, but unlike most, I believe I’m actually there shopping for my Ma. She has given me a list of what to obtain for her kitchen in Karachi. I’m in Houston for a work-related trip and on that last day of my visit there, t...