Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Another one



Antonio Puerta
(1984-2007)
A cardiac arrest on the field, another in the locker room, and today he lost the battle....
Before him, was Feher (switzerland) in 2004:

and Foe (Cameroon) in 2003:
Update: Cause of death of these SEEMINGLY healthy atheletes is related to arrhythmias, which is an irregular heart beat, some sort of abnormal electricity in the heart, or due to an enlarged heart problem called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (not dilated cardiomyopathy-thanks abu el-Qaqish for your alarming message) which predisposes to these abnormal heart conductions.
My 2 cents:
1- These abnormal heart beats are usually missed by the general physcial exam a doctor perfoems in his clinic, even several EKGs (takhteet qalb) can be totally normal.
2- There are currently only TWO specialists in Jordan in abnonral hear conductions (arrhythmias). Many Jordanian cardiologists claim they are specilaists in these but they're lying. Having said that, some basic and common heart irregularities (like atrial fibrillation) can be treated by an internist or a cardiologist, but the more complicated ones like the ones causing death in the players above need a specilaist. Again, two in Jordan for more than six million. Cheeeeerz!

Saturday, August 25, 2007

صراع الجبابرة

الزمان: يوم أريزوني حار جداً
المكان: شقتي الفاخرة
قرر الأهل زيارتي من ما وراء البحار فقررت تنظيف الشقة لأول مرة

أثناء محاولتي تنظيف السجاد قمت بإزاحة إحدى الكنبايات
فوجئت بوجود مخلوق زاحف غريب
نظرت فيه جيداً لعلني أتذكر إذا كنت قد قابلته قبل ذلك
تأملت في عينيه الناعستين و شفتيه الحسناوين فقام بمبادلتي بجحرة دبت الرعب في
قلبي المرهف وأكمل هو زحفه ليختبأ تحت الكنباية المجاورة

اتجهت بسرعة نحو أقرب شبشب كي أقوم بمصع وجهه لكن حجم ذاك المخلوق ولون عينيه الفسفوري أرهبني قليلا
اتصلت مع الأخت سطيفاني إحدى المسؤولات عن إدارة الكومبليكس المتخلف حيثما أعيش

"مرحبا.... وانا بنظف بالشقة لقيت حشرة كبيرة جدا تحت الكنياية"
"واو واو طيب بحكيلك مع البيست كونترول بيجو الثلاثاء الجاي برشولك البيت"
"ما في حدا ييجي هسا يشيل هال حشرة"
"لاء بيجو الثلاثا"
"بس هاذي كبيرة "
"هل هي حشرة ام حيوان"
"بعرفش، يا إما حشرة كبيرة أو حيوان صغير"
"طيب لمن تعرف شو هي إحكيلي لأنو إذا حيوان بحكي مع ناس بيجو بلموه هسا"
"طب مهو كل الحشرات حيوانات"

لم تعلق اسطيفاني على ملاحظتي البيولوجية العقيمة بل أقفلت الخط وتركتني وحيدا أصارع أفكاري وانا أفكر كيف سأتخلص من هذا الكائن
الحي الذي أقسمت بتراب أريزونا أنه لن يبق حيا يعبث في أمني واستقراري
نظرت إلى الهاتف وبعد تردد شديد قررت طلب المساعدة
اتصلت مح أحد الشباب الأردنين

" اسمع لقيت شغلة تحت الكنباي"
"شغلة؟"
"اه صرصور او سحلية او خنفس بعرفش"
"طيب شو المطلوب؟"
"بعرض النور تعال اقتله"
"بتعرفش تقتله لحالك؟"
"لأ"
"كبير؟"
"شوي وبعدين عامل كاموفلاج لونه بني مثل لون الكنباي شكلو صارلو ساكن عندي خمسميت سنة"
"يا خسارة الجيش الشعبي فيك، عم بتغدى مع مرطي بس أخلص باجيك"
وقفت بجانب الكنباية حاملا الشبشب النووي وانا انتظر خروج ذاك الحيوان الفاسق المختبئ كالعواية تحت الكنباية

ابتعدت مسافة آمنة وانحنيت على الارض مبحلقاً لعل وعسى استطيع التعرف أكثر على تفاصيل ذاك العدو البغيض فبل المواجهة الدامية لكن
هذا اللعين استطاع تحصين نفسه من المراقبة
فكرت بوسيلة حربية لاستفزازه ليخرج فقمت برش ما تبقى من علبة الديودورنت تحت الكنباية لكن العدو لم يحرك ساكن واستمر في تصعيد الحرب النفسية إلى أعلى دراجاتها
بعد عدة دقائق مرت كالدهر وصل الصديق المناضل لابسا الشبشب في قدم وحاملا الفردة الاخرى استعدادا لخوض المعركة

"وينو؟"
ودون كلام أشرت بسبابتي نحو الكنباية البنية فاتجه إليها ذاك النشمي ودون تردد رفش الكنباية جانباً ليبحث عن العدو الماجن

"ولك هاذي سحلية!"

أغمضت عيني وانا استمع الى أصوات زئير الشباشب وهي تقصف عمر العدو الخسيس

بعد عدة ثوان من الصمت الرهيب فتحت عيني سائلا، "شو صار؟ مصعتها؟
" لاء، شكلها شّلفت"
قررت لحظتها الانضمام للمعركة

"اسمع أنا يدور بالمطبخ وإنت دوّر عليها تحت الكنبياية الثانية"
وقبل أن نبدأ بتنفذ الخطة استعملت السحلية عنصر المفاجأة وباغتتنا بالظهور على الحائط والالتصاق به
"أقلك روح جيب مسّاحة أو مكنسة"
قمت بالطيران نحو الخزانة و أحضرت المكنسة وناولت صديقي الشطافة واتجهنا بقلوب من حديد نحو الحائط ثم انهال عليها بالشطافة وفصل رأسها عن جسدها ثم أكملت عليها بالمكنسة فاعصاً إياها ومنهياً آخر فصول حياتها البغيضة مكللين المعركة بنصر آزر واختلط العرق بالدماء ورغم أن كلاً منّا يعيش على الطرف الآخر من الشارع إلا أننا توحدنا و رفع كل منا شطافته أو مكنسته محتفلين بنصر لن تجرأ كتب التاريخ على نسيانه

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

The Art of Testing !


Although the ten-hour American Board exam that I just had was probably the most important test in my life, I went to the test as if I was going to a regular day of work.


It's not my cool tempers, or over-confidence, it's just the indifference any doctor develops after a while.


Since I joined medical school, and for the past 11 years (ages 16-27) I, and my colleagues, had plenty and plenty of different kinds of exams, tests, and challenges, that makes an eight-hour MCQ exam sounds like a computer game.


Exams like rotating around a big room with human heads, shoulders and legs placed carefully on tables in the morgue where medical students having to identify the different structures in a human body.


Exams like cutting off frogs' heads , watch their legs move while they're beheaded, or just examining carefully urine samples....

Exams where examiners are brought from outside hospitals even outside Jordan especially for YOU, to evaluate YOU, and give a grade for YOU.


After college, it's time to think of going to America. There's those freaking USMLE exams, where you're supposed to get a very high score, or else you'll never specialize in the US.

If you get a low score , you have the option of repeating the test, in SEVEN YEARS.


These are crazy 8-9 hour tests each costing over 700 dollars, that you got to spend a year or two preparing for them.


During residency we got an 8-hour test every year, the purpose of which is unclear. Really even those who fail it are not affected. It's just a test because we have to have tests although we were done from medical school a few years ago.


So today I felt a bit tired from doing exams, until I heard from one of the cardiology fellows, a married guy with 2 kids, who was preparing for his 14-hour cardiology exam, and then I thought that I was lucky.


It's 8 pm now and I have slept only for one hour in the last 48 hours. I'm so tired but I drank so much coffee that I can't sleep! I feel my eyeballs will pop out from my head and fall on the keyboard!


I'll go listen to some Fairuz....

Friday, August 17, 2007

He knew..... and we know that he knew

This man is Nostradamus, he had excellent predictions of what was going to happen in this war in Iraq.
The only problem: he's Dick Cheney!
This interview was back in 1994

Thursday, August 16, 2007

Funny stuff

The Japanese are the most creative.
Here is a candid camera clip, where a hundred people start running after a person and see how he reacts.
I liked the reaction of the old man in the beginning, he didn't care at all!



Remember FRIENDS?



This weather lady is a total embaressment to the station!!

Monday, August 13, 2007

قرار منع بيع الشاورما قرار متخلف


يعني إذا زادت حوادث السير هل نهد الشوارع ونسحب رخص السواقة من الجميع؟
لو رسب طالب في امتحان هل من العدل أن نُرسب كل الطلاب

في مطاعم بالبلد كل عيشتها تعتمد على بيع الشاورما وحالات التسمم من المياه والغذاء والهواء سببها فشل الحكومة والحكوات التي سبقتها في تطبيق القوانين

زهقنا شغلة أنو المواطن يتحمل مسؤولية تياسات الحكومات المبجلة
الحكومة لما اتيس هي المفروض تتحمل السؤولية مش تروح تسكر كل الابواب اللي بيجي منها الريح عشان تستريح

بعدين من وجهة نظر طبية أهم سبب لانتقال العدوى هو العامل نفسه إذا مثلا ما غسل إيديه واذا بطل يبيع شاورما فما زال من الممكن ينقل العدوى عن طريق الفلافل والحمص والزيتون والسم الهاري

مهو لما اتظلكوا تحطوا مهندس وزير للصحة بعمرو ما حدا راح يفهمكوا هالحكي

Sunday, August 12, 2007

How we need to honor..... honor crimes


She was 25.

She was fighting for her life. Rushed to the emergency room in a critical condition with a low blood pressure, bleeding inside the abdomen was suspected. The surgeons and gynecologist (woman's doctor) took her to the operation room and opened her abdomen.

They found multiple adhesions (eltisakaat) and a pregnancy that could not progress because the baby was implanted outside the uterus, that's called ectopic pregnancy.

The doctor had no option but to remove her uterus (ra7em), ovaries and tubes.

It would become impossible for this young lady, with no children and two previous unplanned abortions, to become pregnant again.

She was tested for what could be causing this, and turns out she had a sexually-transmitted disease.

Again, she's 25, and she comes from a conservative environment.

We turned to the husband, who also comes from a conservative background. He confessed that in some of his travels outside Jordan for work, he had sexual encounters with some women in the Far East.

He got infected but wasn't too concerned, sometimes these infections don't cause symptoms. He took some pills and the infection was gone, but prior to that he had passed the infection to his wife not knowing he had one, and of course not telling her about the women he'd met in his trips.

I saw her, as a student, a few days after the operation.
I asked her, "How old are you"?
"Twenty-five and a half"
I was surprised why did she emphasize "the half"
"For how long have you been married?"
"Ten years, exactly ten, I was fifteen and half when I got married"
"Do you know what happened?"
"I know everything"
".... the infection...?"
"Yes" and she looked up as if she didn't want to comment further.

She was laying there, in a bed out of six in a crowded room in one of Amman's hospitals. Silent, broken, shaken, phsycially healing but emotionally traumatized.

He did it, he slept around, and betrayed her and her got the infection, but she's the one who suffered, maybe because life is unfair and maybe because you don't always receive as much as you give even if it was your teenage years and half of your life, or maybe she was just lucky that she would never get pregnant from that man, called husband.

Beside her was the husband, the strong powerful teenage-loving macho, who can travel and sleep with a woman after another without being responsible for the consequences.

He was looking down, maybe ashamed of what he did, or maybe just planning a new marriage, how he can get rid of this woman, this machine which had become useless after it lost the capacity to have kids.

I was always against honor crimes.

Now I'm having second thoughts. The only thing is that they might be directed against the wrong gender.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Don't touch my Falafel

Steal the land, kill the people, terrorize the kids, occupy the villages and cut off water and electricity from everyone, but don't ever think of stealing my food!












And the great, fabulous and charming Israeli Kofiyyeh! (Thanks Marcy Newman for the link), didn't wanna post the picture here, there's already too much pollution in this entry.

Great short poem


I woke early one morning,
the earth lay cool and still,
when suddenly a tiny bird,
perched on my window sill,
it sang a song so lovely,
that slowly all my troubles
began to slip away.


It sang of far off places,
of laughter and of fun,
it seemed his very song,
brought out the morning sun,
I pulled back the covers,
and crept slowly out of bed,
and gently shut the window,
and crushed his freaking head,
I'm not a morning person

(Dedicated to everyone who has to wake up at 6 AM. Poem was copied from somewhere else)

Friday, August 10, 2007

Bloody

I can't forget the face of a friend and a colleague, a doctor who worked with me in King Hussein Cancer Center, a day after he was beaten up by the sons of a patient he had seen before in the Emergency Room.

He saw the patient who was terminally ill with cancer, and after carefully evaluating her case he figured that there was no reasons for he to be admitted to the hospital since the hospital has nothing more to offer.
He passed this information to her 10+ sons and relatives waiting outside who were still in denial of the whole condition. They insisted on her coming in to the hospital. My friends refused because of the shortage of beds and more importantly because there was nothing else to offer to a lady who has cancer in every cell of her body.

The sons followed him upstairs and, while the young tough security guy was watching, the doctor was beaten up and developed a large hematoma (blood collection) behind one of his eyes and a brain concussion.

The patient died 2 days later, given that and in addition to a cup of coffee the case was dismissed.

That was not one incident.

Twenty-seven doctors were beaten up this year in Jordanian hospitals.

The last incident occurred in al-Basheer 3 days ago when two doctors and one nurse were beaten up by 4 brothers.

It's still happening, and will keep happening.

I can tell you something: a doctor will never feel comfortable or think properly if he knows there's a ganweh waiting for him in the visitor's area.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

قواعد أساسية

إذا ما بتعرف ترسم....فممنوع تطلع عالتلفزيون ترسم
وإذا عندك ضعف في مستوى الذكاء....فممنوع تطلع عالتلفزيون متظاهرا بالذكاء
وإذا عمالك تنتقد من يتكلم قبل أن يفكر فممنوع عليك يا أستاز تطلع عالتلفزيون وتبلش تحكي وتتفلسف قبل أن تفكر





قبل ما تطلع عبرنامج بتفرج عليه أكمن مليون بني آدم مش غلط تفتحلك كتاب تاريخ الصف الرابع بدل ما تحرج نفسك وتحرج معك مرتك وولادك وشعبك كله



Tuesday, August 07, 2007

The day I wanted to Kill Batir Wardam


I really wanted to kill this guy.

It's not like when you tell your friend "Oh why didn't you tell me about the party, I wanna kill you!".

No, I wanted to kill Mr. Wardam as in : I wanted him to disappear from the planet or at least be kidnapped and tortured and nobody would hear from him again.

To start with, I am a big fan of Diego Maradona. He wasn't only my favorite football star, but my childhood hero. At certain times in my childhood I adored him more than my parents (whom I love so much and I hope they haven't read this).

In 1990 Argentina, lead by Maradona, were playing in the World Cup. I was fanatic about reading al-Rai newspaper, it was the best source of World Cup news given the absence of satelitte dishes that time. I was 11 years old.

Some people didn't like Maradona, some of whom were the neighborhood kids I played football with and intentionally shot the ball really hard into their stomaches until they cried because of that.

But in Al-Rai I noticed this writer , Batir Wardam, who had a strange feeling of hatred towards Maradona. Almost all of his articles were directed against my hero.

I wondered who was that German (excuse my ignorance) who writes in Arabic to express his disgust with Maradona. I was hoping someday he'd stop writing or the newspaper would kick him out, but he kept writing.

Argentina lost to Germany in the final match of the 1990 World Cup. That was a catastrophe. I was extremely upset, but what made really angry is al-Rai's edition two days later (it was July 10th if I'm not wrong as the game was played very late on July 8th). It had a title that the game sucked, and the German performance made Maradona cry.

In the bottom of the page was a separate article trashing Maradona, written by... Batir Wardam. I was really mad, felt like someone wasn't glad enough that such disaster happened to Maradona he even wanted to humiliate him more and drive people against him.

At that point I was hoping to be a MAFIA member (although I was still 11) to go and assasinate Batir. Chop his head or shoot him in his stomach fifty times 7atta yakoon 3ebra leman la ya3taber. I still have that newspaper back home and whenever I used to see his name next to Maradona's picture I would feel like throwing up.


Many years passed by and I didn't read anything for him until recently when I found his blog. It turned out that he wasn't German and that he wasn't that "football terrorist" that I want to murder. I still cannot forget those articles from 1990 but I believe he is a nice guy that still deserve to live. Congratulations Batir ... I gave you a second chance!

Assasination of King Abdullah-I

This is a rare video of a British news bulletin following the assasination of late King Abdullah-I in Jerusalem.
(It's funny how they used to play music while presenting news!)

Monday, August 06, 2007

In Arizona




The news reporter talking on this clip is reporting from a helicopter for a local news channel in Phoenix, Arizona. He was covering a live story of a man stealing some vehicles.

There were other channels covering this story live from theri helicopters. Because the helicopters kept changing position as they were follwing the thief, something bad happened.

Two helicopters of different news channels collided in the air and crashed.
There were four people abroad, they all died.

Why some Iraqi kids get to miss school ....





Saturday, August 04, 2007

Jordanians are drinking ... Why I'm not saying Cheers


Drinking is becoming more acceptable in Jordan (at least Amman). I'm not sure if it's more common, because people always drank but it was something frowned upon in Jordan for the past couple of decades, unless you're Christian then people assume you drink, but you shouldn't be encouraging it or bragging about it.

I respect every adult's choice to drink, or smoke, or dance naked on a table inside his house, but we should know better that with freedom comes responsibility.

Teenagers as young as 15 years of age can drink and get drunk in many places inside Amman. I'm not really aware of the drinking age in Jordan because I was never told, even in the driving lesson classes, that it mattered.

People do drink and drive in Amman's streets every night, and people do have accidents because of drinking. Policemen do not investigate and driving under the influence unless the smell of alcohol is all over.

I drink. I adore Fuhaisi wine or a good cold Jordanian Amstel (could never find anything like it in the US), but our society is more tolerant to everything bad that comes with drinking (and smoking) than most societies in the West.

In Germany if you're caught driving with even a very minute amount of alcohol in your blood, your licence is suspended for 2 years. In the US you pay a fortune and attend classes and if it happens again you'll go to jail, and still pay a fortune.

In Jordan, unless you cause an accident, it's "frowned upon".

If you diagree with me go check some of the cheap bars where taxi drivers stop by at night, get a few drinks and then resume driving. If you're saying "A votre santé" several time at night, you probably don't mean it to others.

Friday, August 03, 2007

في أميريكا

صارلها أسبوعين بتشتي عندنا وكل يوم عم تنقطعلها الكهربا أبو ساعة زمان وبتتعطل الإشارات.... وقفت شتا امبارح
اليوم محسوبكو وعلى غير عادتي قررت أتحمم وانا بتحمم انقطعت المي
خف إيماني، مسكت التلفون وحكيت مع الاستاز كريس من إدارة السكن قلتله إيش يا حبيبي يا كريس مش عملة أقل ما فيها ابعوتلنا
مية المنشية نتحمم فيها
حكالي كريس الذي يتميز بصوت أنثوي جدا في ماسورة فقعت فالمية مقطوعة عن الجميع يعني أبو ثلاثمييت واحد ساكن بالكومبليكص
نشفت الصابون من عن مناخيري وهيني هسا قاعد عالجاعد في الفرندة وفي وضع فاضح للغاية مخلف لعاداتنا وتقاليدنا احتجاجا على
انقطاع المياه والكهرباء وأعلنت اضرابا عن الاستحمام في انتظار عودة المياه إلى مواسيرها

On September

Roba got July, Qwaider got August, I'm just reserving September, there's nothing to say now because its end is 2 months away,

Just do me a favor and ....