Recently, I (re)discovered the art of coming out of the closet. This was due to a combination of awkward questions about girls and my own compulsion to "tell the truth", a habit that, ironically, may have been drummed into me in my Islamic Studies class at school ( Read more... )

For my last rotation, my supervisor Dr Lawrence offered me the chance to do an audit of his clinic for him. I showed polite interest, as one does, and he may have misconstrued this look of interest as genuine because he seized the chance to tell us about the minutiae of the previous audit. Before I knew it, I had been cornered into doing the audit ( Read more... )

Friday afternoon in a big teaching hospital, I had just finished observing a general neurology clinic which had been interesting - not because of the patients, but because the neurologist running the clinic had told me (quite politely) that I ought to shave as he didn't approve of my day-old stubble. I had glanced into the small mirror in the ( Read more... )

My elective isn't far off - only seven months away. Basically, during the summer between fourth and fifth year at med school, we get to go anywhere in the world to study medicine (or to drink cheap alcohol on an Asian beach whilst reassuring the medical school office by e-mail that we are, indeed, learning about the management of neurocysticercosis ( Read more... )

I've come to the end of my second week on a placement in anesthetics and intensive care. It's been really exciting for me so far, specially because I've just finished a six-month-long research project which involved very little clinical medicine, and it's refreshing to come back to it, albeit at the expense of my short summer break!


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Two weeks ago, not far from the deadline for my master's degree dissertation, my lips decided to have a little party ( Read more... )

Reason #523342 why I don't want to work in the Gulf: Bahrain is criminalizing medics for doing their job.

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally in support of filthy rich, oil-washed oligarchies inhumanely killing their own subjects under the watchful eyes of their sympathetic neighbors, not to mention crushing said subjects' hopes of ever having a voice ( Read more... )

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On Friday, I finally had my first participant come through for testing for my study ( Read more... )

A lot has been happening in the Middle East that I have many thoughts about ( Read more... )