Once Again

I haven't said anything about the events in Gaza, because I didn't feel like copying and pasting. I could have gone back and copied anything from the war on Lebanon, the six-day war anniversary, Israel's 60 independence anniversary, or whatever I've blogged after one of the Israeli massacres. I'm pretty sure that I will, in the near future, be looking for this post, copy it and paste and with little editing make it suitable for another Israeli massacre that is bound to happen as long as the state of Israel continues existing.

Whatever is happening in Gaza now will end after some time only to happen again later, maybe in Gaza, or in some other Palestinian city.

Some people blame Hamas for these events. I think Hamas was terribly stupid in throwing those lousy rockets. It's just dumb to seek a war when you have no chance of winning, and yes Hamas had no chance of liberating an inch of Palestine by throwing these rockets. Those rockets were the perfect gift for Israel to start something that it had done extremely well since its foundation: play the victim and express its right to "self-defence", and telling Americans, "If San Diego was attacked by rockets from Tijuana wouldn't you respond?"

However, attacking a terror state should not be called terrorism, and whatever unreasonable goals that Hamas had on its agenda should not make it an justification for people to blame it. With all my sorrow and grief for the hundreds of victims that died and are still dying from the recent attacks, this tragedy doesn't even compare to the tragedy of losing a whole nation and worse, its division upon itself. I'm not sure what is the solution to this current problem, but that's why we have politicians, that's why we pay them very good salaries, so they can figure out problems for such crises, and I'm afraid they're not doing their job.

MiiiiiKRO - BLOGGING: Mekkarren Mefarren Mokbelen Modberen Ma3an, Ka Julmoodi Sakhren Hattaho Assaylo Men Ali.... Ali.... Yaaa2

-It's always good to know that obesity was once considered a sign of physical beauty. I always felt that had this been the 17th century I would be voted People's magazine Sexiest Man Alive.

- The name of my country in English should have been Ordon and not Jordan. It really sucks whenever I'm looking up Jordan on google or youtube and the first 1000 results are those of basketball player, a tooth brush or some stripper.

- I watched the movie Slumdog Millionaire. Never imagined that Geroge Kirdahi was such a moron. Also, taking dancing out of Indian movies makes them really good, despite shortening their duration from nine hours to three.

- The movie events take place in Mumbai, and 200 people die in it. It's not about the recent Mumbai events, it's just another regular Indian movie with 200 people dying in it.

- I performed the first stool transplantation in the hospital. It felt a bit strange how I discussed the procedure with the infection control nurse over lunch. Specifically, while we were eating mashed potatoes we were talking how she was able to crush human feces and place them in the rectal tube. Mashed potatoes never tasted so good.

- I haven't decorated my house for Christmas. I heard there's a very big sale on Christmas decorations next week so I'm waiting for that. Can't believe those idiots who bought all the decorations earlier in the month.

-Women are bad drivers. Period.

- Have you ever wondered who are the adults with the maximum amount of mental retardation ever known to mankind? I can answer this question from a medical standpoint. It's those adults who still forward you emails with some good-luck messages and warn you that your house will be on fire if you ignored the email.

For those morons I'm telling you, I was inspired to write my blog from an angel, and if you don't copy my 3-year old blog and forward it in one email to 20 people, you're going to get rectal cancer, your mother will get syphilis and your father will be raped by a guerrilla continuously for 16 years. Forward now.

- Conan O'Brien : "People are still discussing the shoe-throwing incident at our president. ... It was reported today that the Iraqi journalist who threw the shoes at President Bush had his arm broken when security subdued him. And even worse, it was his shoe-throwing arm. That guy is out for the season."

-People usually take something to read when in the bathroom unloading their duty. Some people like this habit and may even start taking 2 or 3 magazines. As for me I'm currently in the process of building a library with 4 shelves, Wi-Fi, with a small table for coffee or tea.

- People who still believe in signs need to go to rehab. The only sign I believe in is the middle finger and it will be up in your face the next time you ask me what my sign is.
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P.S. I always post pictures of very hot women from around the world. To show my patriotism I decided this time to display some Jordanian beauty on my blog. This picture is breath-taking, I really went "haaaaaa2" and my heart paused for 5 seconds the first time I saw it.

Un-Stoning Dr. Evil

That's not a Jordanian Santa holding a kid.

This is Mohammad Asha, the Jordanian physician who immigrated to the UK to become a neurosurgeon. He was arrested in July 2007 and charged with a lot of things, mainly of being a terrorist. I wrote about that arrest when it happened, and gave a few reasons why it would've been unlikely for him to be guilty.

A year and half later, he was acquitted. He's out of jail. Who knew about it? Nobody. When he was arrested, the whole world knew about the Arab doctor who wants to kill people, and the American media scared the bejesus out of people of those Arab doctors who want to kill people. Watch out for those dark-skinned Middle-Eastern doctors with the accent who want to shoot toxic drugs in your veins.


Now that he's out, nobody is talking about it. I'm used to the American media, they are the garbage of all garbages. A Sawsan Tuffaha news bulletin is better than any news bulletin I've heard on any US news station, but what's disappointing was the Arab and Jordanian media who totally ignored this piece of news.


People judge Asha. He looks scary. He can't fit in well with his community. His patients will be scared of him. He's an Islamist. He hangs out with the wrong crowd. He goes to a "suspicious" mosque. I cannot disagree with that, but that is very different from labelling him as a terrorist who is willing to kill innocent civilians in airports, a very serious crime. He may always have an untrimmed beard, he may always decide to never smile in a picture, but the fact is that he spent 18 months in jail away from his wife and son, his reputation was destroyed, and the future of this straight-A medical student as a neurosurgeon was over before it even started, and all that for a crime he did not commit.

Christmas-iyyat

That's how Mr. Bean sees Christmas:



That's Jose Feliciano singing Feliza Navidad, the only Christmas song that I don't mind listening to before Dec. 24




And this is how Christians in Bethlehem, the birth place of Jesus Christ, are celebrating Christmas. Today's reprt from Al-Jazeera


Merry Christmas!

Voices of No Reason

I was asked to see a patient because he was HIV positive.

"Is it a new diagnosis?", I asked the intern who called me.

"No, he said he had it for 20 years, or 22, not sure, he keeps changing his story. He doesn't have any documentation with him but he has some bottles with HIV drugs. He was admitted last night for gastroenteritis. He's also schizophrenic, big time schizo, and he just came from Phoenix to Tucson and is not saying why. This guy's crazy, so if you can just tell us what HIV meds should we keep him on and if we need to check a CD4 count or other labs as well. Appreciate it."

I went to see that patient at the end of the day. It was around 6 pm. I intoduced myself to this 40-something dude, brought a chair and started chatting. I looked at him: he had a very abnormal face, which could tell his had some congenital disease. I tried to guess what it was but couldn't come up with something. If I had paid more attention in the genetics class in med school I might have been able to tell ( damn those Khateeb lectures were so boring).

Although I love talking to psych patients, I didn't feel very comfortable then. This guy had no facial expressions. I would ask him a question and he'd answer like a robot. No smile, no frown, no emotions in his voice. No emotions in his face.

I was done asking him about what I needed to about his HIV, then decided to go a little bit over the schizophrenia.

"So you have schizophrenia?"
"Yes"
"For how long have you had it"
"Two years"
"Do you hear voices"
"Yes"
"What do they tell you"
"They tell me to ........." and I couldn't hear well
"What?"
"They tell me to hurt people"
"What do you do when you hear them?"
"I obey them"

(I was impressed by the word obey)
"So have you tried to hurt people"
"Yes"
"What else do they tell you"
"They tell me to kill people"
"And what do you?"
"I obey them"
"Have you tried to kill people?"
"Yes"
"How?"
"With a gun, I have a gun"
"Do you have a gun with you now?"
"No, I left it in Phoenix"
"Why did you leave Phoenix?"
"Because I had a court order"
"Order for what?"
"Court order to take my schizophrenia medications"
"So you don't want to take medication?"
"No"
"Why not?"
"I don't like these medications"
"So for how long haven't you taken these medications"
"Long time"
"Do you hear voices when you take the medications?"
"No"
"So are you hearing voices now?"
He paused as if he was listening to someone else
"Yes"
"At this moment, are you hearing voices"?
"Yes"
"What are they telling you?"
Closing his eyes he answered, "lotsa things, lotsa things"
"Are they telling you to hurt someone?"

He paused again and looked straight at me, again without any facial expression. I started the process of crapping on myself, and wished I had stopped at the HIV part and left the room. It was dark, the room's door was closed and because it was the night shift there were only very few nurses around. I was 1-on-1 against this man. He was well-built, with a sign "6th street gangster" tattooed over his back, and quite a few scars on his face. I thought to myself if this dude jumps on me now and rests his big hands over my neck he can send me to floor minus two (the morgue) in 20 seconds and I will end up being a headline on the local newspaper.

Instead, he answered, "No" and kept listening to the voices and added, "they're not telling me to hurt people"

I left the room, as I opened the door I turned back and said, "Ok, nice to meet you sir"
I was not expecting a reply but he said, "Nice to meet you too"

I called his intern.

Intern: "So does he need HIV meds?"

"Yes, he also needs a psychiatry consult and you need to call the cops"

This guy may end up in jail for violating a court order, but they won't admit him to a hospital unless he was actively contemplating suicide or homocide. If he had thought of it a few weeks back they would still let him go back to the street.

Here's the equation: in our city of nearly one million, there are only 2 hospitals with very few beds reserved for psychiatry patients. Each night costs 500 dollars. Meanwhile there is much more room in jail, and a night there costs 10% of what a night in a psych hospital costs.

There's a reason why I don't like walking alone in the street and why I make sure doors are well-locked at night.

Hareega's Bi-Monthly Video: Palestine's Independence

Yasser Arafat announcing the independence of Palestine in 1988.
Plenty of hopes, plenty of expectations at that time,
the rest is history.

What Else Can You Transplant Other than Hearts, Kidneys, Pancreases, Lungs and Faces?

I had a patient with severe diarrhea. She had a condition called C.diff colitis. This results from people taking antibiotics that eventually leads into a severe inflammation in their colon (large bowel), and it can be very dangerous.

I went inside the room, and found the daughter, and started explaining.
"You know your mother has that C. diff infection that is causing here to have this severe diarrhea. We have been treating her with several medications for so long and nothing is working. She lost so much weight. So we looked in the medical literature and we have very few options left...."

The daughter opened her eyes, and seemed excited at the potentially good news coming.
"So one thing that has been shown to work, is what we refer to as stool transplantation"

I paused. I was thinking to myself, "Please God I hope she have really heard of the procedure , please God tell don't let me explain it to the lady"

"What is that doc?"

"Ok .... this infection is caused by a sudden alteration of the number and type of bacteria in the colon, so we have to restore that as naturally as possible"

"So how do you do that?"

"We bring a stool specimen from someone else, and give it as an enema: we will give it from behind, up your mother's rectum, in an attempt for the normal bacteria there to overtake the colon. There are some studies showing that this works very well in refractory cases, like your mother's"

The daughter did not look too happy, but she asked, "So where would you get the specimen from?"

"It should be someone who lives with her, so who lives with your mother?"

"It's only me"

"Do you eat a similar diet?"

"Yes"

"Ok so you have to be the donor"

"Uhm OK, but why?

"Because if you eat the same diet, you produce the same feces, so that would match your mother's colon the best"

"So what if it didn't work?"

"Well in another study they dropped an NG tube from the nose to the stomach and they gave the stool in liquid form down that tube. It works"

"And what if it didn't work, what should we do?"

" We can try again. Maybe we can use the same stool sample and give it on different days" - I was able to hold myself from saying ,"hence the term : same shit, different day"

The daughter didn't have any more questions, so I told her that we soon will be contacting her to arrange for the first stool transplantation in our hospital. I left the room thinking to myself, "Well maybe this would be a chance for her to show her true love for her mother".

Morale of the story: Don't take antibiotics unless you really really have to, they can KILL you, or at least place your doctor and family members in some really embarrassing situations.

Mikro-Blogging: Alasta Wa3adtani Ya Qalbo Etha Ma Tobto 3an Layla Tatoobo,Fa Ha Ana Ta2ebon 3an Hobbi Layla, Fa Ma Laka Kullama Thokerat Tathubo.Baa2.

- The incident of a man throwing a shoe at Bush was of personal interest. As I saw Bush ducking away from a shoe thrown at him, a few memories from childhood came back to me.

- I don't have hot water in my house, haven't had it in a while now. You may be a good shower singer, but nothing makes you a good dancer like showering with super cold water at 6 am.

- Jordanian doctor Mohammed Asha, who was charged with conspiracy to murder and cause explosions and was linked to terrorist organizations, was found not guilty. So he spent one year in jail and probably won't be able to continue his residency because of a crime he did not commit. On the bright side he now has his own page on wikipedia.

- Royal Jordanian should build up a few fancy bathrooms next to their gates and encourage all of their passengers to drop their biggest possible piece of shit in these bathrooms instead of doing it on the plane heading to the 13-hour flight to Chicago.

- Excuse me, but if you're a woman who decided to have many kids that keep playing around, scream their lungs out and cross streets in my neighborhood without any supervision, then I will give myself the right to go and squeeze back that little kid up there from the exact the place where he came from.

- I've discovered the best time to do Christmas shopping: January.

- I keep trying to convince guys my age that they shouldn't look at the mirror when they shave. By now they should have figured out how their face's texture looks like and how and where exactly to shave. They still don't believe me, not sure if this has anything to do with the 2 cuts I have on my upper lip.

- I cannot believe that the Lebanese haven't figured out who assassinated Al-Hariri in 2005. Here's how you do an investigation the Jordanian way: grab everyone within a 10-kilometer radius from the crime scene, beat the crap out of them, then take the first guy who screams "I'll say whatever you want me to say but take out your stick from my shusmo" to court.

- Some towns in the US are taking special measures to collect the extra trash that people will leave during the holiday season. In Jordan we have solved that problem long time ago. We have collected our own trash from all over the country and piled it up in a huge building on the 4th circle and called it the Parliament.

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P.S. In the picture above is a sad picture of Charlize Theron. This picture is a proof how bad the economy has become, where even rich smoking flaming hot celebrities like Charlize are losing their clothes one piece after another and have barely any left to cover up. All what we can hope for is for the economy to keep getting worse and worse and worse.

Why Do We Throw Shoes at People?

Because we're pissed of them, that's why.
Because we cannot protest injustice without being afraid of suffering some consequences.
Because one of the worst leaders in history flew to the country he had destroyed as if that land was his own, expecting people to greet him as the liberator who brought them the same beautiful democracy that elected him as president twice despite his single-digit IQ.

Right after the incident, it was ironic to see that AL-Zaidi who only throw a shoe at a jerk being arrested and dragged out of the room as if he was a serial killer while the man who divided a whole country upon itself, caused the death of a 100,000 people and called this war of evil a war of liberation that Iraqis should thank him for was standing there making jokes about the incident and was later defended by many empty-minded self-centered Americans who feel they were personally offended by this attack.

I don't think I totally agree with what that shoe-thrower did, but I sure was hoping for that both shoes to hit their target right in the face.

Mikro-Blogging Li Yawm El Ahad Sita3sh Thul Hijjah Alf O Arba3miyyeh O Tes3ah O Ishreen Hijri, Al Mowafeq Lil Rabe3 Ashar Min Kanun Thani, 2008 Miladi

- I really hate it when I think I'm listening to a new mix of a song on the radio, only to realize 3 minutes later it's just an ambulance behind me.

- I wonder why that smoking hot nurse on the 3rd floor keeps repeating "I'm single" six times in every sentence. She only mentions it when she talks to me. Does she think I'm stupid? Why does it only repeat it to ME like I'm a retard or something?

- Some Americans are dumb. Some are very dumb. Some are worse, Bush-dumb. But the dumbest of all are the group of Americans who have been to Dubai and still refer to it as a country.

- People should stop taking pictures from the plane window when they're flying. The only time I want to see such pictures is when the engine is on fire and your plane is crashing into the ocean, those pictures would be frickin awesome.

- It doesn't feel good when I see some of my patients fall asleep while I'm talking to them.

- The good thing about living next to the airport is that it takes a few minutes to get there. On the down side you'll hear most planes arriving and departing and you may, on very rare occasions, tell when a flight is late.

- Jordanian mothers should stop cussing America and El Ghorbeh whenever something bad happens to their kids. Chances are that your little spoiled Shmesani kids screwed up when they started facing something you never prepared them for: it's called real life. "Ooooo my little boy started drinking and getting in fights and shooting heroin, Oooo look what this America did to him"

- That song "Viva La Vida" by Coldplay has some outstanding lyrics. The song should be renamed "History of the Middle East".

- Movie critics are losers, all of them. They are a bunch of wanna-be-actors, wanna-be-directors, wanna-be-writers and wanna-be-producers who failed miserably in all of their attempts to become something so they ended up writing columns to tell people which movies to watch and what movies to like even before you watch them.

- I know quite a bunch of Arab men in the US who married American women just to get the green card. All of them are having some serious problems, usually from their wives who didn't like getting deceived. Whenever one of these men starts complaining to me I tell them how sorry I feel for them while thinking to myself, "I hope she screws you over and over again, and takes all of your money then gets you deported you cheap opportunistic son of a bitch".

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P.S. In the picture above is my girlfriend. Her name is Adriana and she's Brazilian. She hopes to become a model, please help her achieve her dream if you can. Thank you.

Good-Bye Polaroid

Sixty years after Polaroid introduced its first instant camera, the company's iconic film is disappearing from stores.

Maybe I'm a bit old, but really the pictures I remember best from my childhood were those few ones taken with a Polaroid.

Jordanian Bloggers, Politics and That Guy

If you're a Jordanian blogger who discusses or have discussed politics, you either have a passport of another country that really really protects its citizens or you just know how to shut your mouth and resist saying a lot of things that you feel like saying every while and then. I have self-censored myself on my own blog more than a Saudi TV station would have censored Britney and Madonna making out.

Our freedom is not that limited. There's always a Parliament you can trash, and a government that you can criticize (be careful not to trash). And again, if you're not politically strongly associated with communists or islamists, you've got less things to worry about. But you have to be very selective in your language, and the more important the person you're discussing the more careful you become. Besides, there is no anonymous Jordanian blogging. We all realize that everyone is watched in Jordan, which very occasionally may be necessary.

The freedom we have as blogger is unlimited as long as you agree with the government. You're always very free to praise the government. Once you disagree you have to be very selective in your language in saying so. Now when it comes to discussing that guy, you have to be extremely careful. You have to watch every word you say and make sure it cannot misunderstood. I have deleted a couple of my own entries days after I posted them just because I felt some readers may feel that I was criticizing that guy when I actually was not. The thing is, I'm not looking for people to start criticizing that guy. I like that guy. I really think he's doing a great job especially in a country like Jordan, which has little resources and a weak military in comparison with other countries. But sometimes I feel like I want to say a few things but I stop from myself from saying them. I feel like other people too may want to say things but they really cannot express them. That guy may be like your father, you really like him and hope he'll be always be around, never hoped to have a different father, but if he has a bad friend, or if he's investing his money in something he shouldn't be investing in, or you felt someone is planning to hurt him and hurt your brothers and sisters, you'd really like to say so. You would want to tell him to do this and not do that. Maybe it won't change much of what's going to happen, but you just feel like you want to say, at least to get it off your chest, and that indeed makes you feel more like you belong to this one big family where everyone cares about the other.

I hope you had a nice weekend and Happy Eid.