HO, MO and Specialist

Case 1Specialist: "HDL and LDL stands for?"HO: "High-density lipoprotein and Low-density lipoprotein."MO: "Highly-desirable lipid and life-destroying lipid."Specialist looked at MO, "Not bad..you're right."Case 2Specialist: "What's idiopathic?"HO: "Means no cause is found."MO: "It's a diagnosis of exclusion, after you've ruled out every other causes."Specialist: "Right, so if you simply use this

Qigong, Biopolitics, and Psychosis

During the early morning, the urban parks in Chinese cities were utilized as "breathing spaces" or places where individuals could practice the healing and social qualities of qigong. The "breathing spaces" of the urban parks mirrored the symbolic "breathing space" that one carves out from the congesting politically-imposed order that manifests itself in all urban cities. Chen discusses the historical context in which post-Mao Zedong China created a high demand for these spaces (physically and spiritually) as a symbolic gesture at restoring individual control over the body as well as the pragmatic need for a system of healing in a time of the growing cost of healthcare. Chen states, "Cultivating qi on an individual basis involves transcending one's everyday thoughts and perceptions to facilitate opening up to a larger cosmological order via breathing" (8). The practice of qigong appears to be a liminal phenomena that is able to achieve a temporary state of transcendence from the imposition of the state while not subverting political notions. The following will attempt to show how, like the practices of Ayurvdeda described in Jean Langford's Fluent Bodies, qigong appears to be a malleable practice that circumvents attempts at essentialization and potential extraction as a viable method of healing. Furthermore, qigong practices, while providing a liminal space for temporary alleviation of the psychopathology of everyday life, do not attempt to subvert the state but rather, at times, appear to align with biopolitical conceptions of health and wellness. Medicalization and the pathologization of qigong deviance are used as instruments of the state to facilitate order and social control.

In Langford's Fluent Bodies, one observes how Ayurveda adapts within the political terrain of post-colonial India, and uses mimetic devices (i.e. parallel institutions) in order to gain political legitimacy as well as negates modernist assumptions of private/public conceptions of medicine, the mapping of medical concepts onto the human body, and the presumption of Ayurvedic practice as a static traditional discourse against the backdrop of scientific dynamism (19). Similar to the malleable practices of Ayruveda, Chen describes the reframing of qigong during various points of Chinese political history. For example, during the Maoist years of Cultural Revolution it was believed that beliefs in mixin or superstition and magic hindered China's progression towards modernization. The divorce of qigong from other related practices such as teyigongneng, was a strategic move that allowed for the continuation of qigong practices during the Cultural Revolution's campaigning against mysticism and spirituality (65). Qigong was able to survive campaigns aimed at destroying traditional practices by reframing itself as a strategy for health. From a biopolitical standpoint, this reframing upheld the ideals of the Maoist nation-state by developing and maintaining strong, able-bodied subjects. The post-revolutionary years, however, marked the transition to a market economy as well as the decline of state services assigned to healthcare. Individuals were pressed to maintain health in order to avoid costly medical services. Citizens were simultaneously discovering new independence through economic agency, as well as the permission to express spirituality and "oneness" with the cosmological order rather than simply with the state. Commercialization and the reframing of qigong as a marketable commodity shortly followed after the Mao Zedong era. Commercial zeal along with spiritual repression appeared to spawn qigong "fever," which in turn, threatened social order thus instigating further governmental involvement with qigong practices. Chen discusses the trend in political lampooning via the means of cartoons in the media (75). Political transgressions imposed on the body included the pathologization of qigong and deviation from qi run rampant.

One can view the taxonomic nature of psychiatry as being instrumental to the pathologization of certain maladaptive behaviors. Maladaption may include any behavior that does not uphold the sentiments and/or contribute to the economic progression of the nation-state. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of mental illness must consistently be reviewed and modified in order to keep up with the changing political, cultural and social terrain in which individuals live. Homosexuality, for instance, was once considered a deviation that required psychiatric treatment. It appears that the emergence of culture-bound syndromes requires a more thorough look at the reification of psychiatry and mental illness in general. Schizophrenia has commonly been linked to spirituality and transcendental experience. The following is the account of a psychotic patient as recorded by Karl Jaspers:

Then came illumination. I fasted and so penetrated into the true nature of my seducers. They were pimps and deceivers of my dear personal self which seemed as much a thing of naught as they. A larger and more comprehensive self emerged and I could abandon the previous personality with its entire entourage. I saw this earlier personality could never enter transcendental realms. I felt as a result a terrible pain, like an annihilating blow, but I was rescued, the demons shriveled, vanished and perished. A new life began for me and from now on I felt different from other people (Laing 95).

The socio-cultural-contextual view of psychosis elucidates the concept of qigong deviation in a non-pathogenic way. R. D. Laing suggests that individuals in society are "pseudo-sane" or not truly sane in that we are living under conditions that promote false consciouses and uphold aquired cultural and social complexes in which individuals must learn to rationalize via the socialization process (35-37). These complexes, such as the industrial-millitary complex may be devastating to inner sensibilities and thus may hinder individual potentialities (36). Laing states:

Having at one and the same time lost our selves and developed the illusion that we are autonomous egos, we are expected to comply by inner consent with external constraints, to an almost unbelievable extent (47).

As mentioned previously, qigong practices provide a liminal space of transcendental healing, temporarily removed from state-imposed control over individual bodies, all while maintaining civil social structure that does not subvert the state apperatus. Constructions of qigong deviance, however, depict the penetration of the state, once again, into the personal lives of individuals. As commercialization of qigong along with spiritual repression of the Mao era promoted a feverish reception of yangsheng, or life cultivating acts, a sense of disorder that threatened state function was imagined and the consequent legitimization of qigong was used as a method of control and surveillance.

Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

Beijing 08 Olympic Games are finally around the corner. Just to share two related songs:This MV is really tears-stimulating..so touching! I think Andy Lau can be considered the best role model in HK entertainment industry..his forever positive image, very very hardworking, always humble, and never stop contributing to the society. Salute him.And I like one part of the lyrics:Everyone is No. 1

The Story of Poor Doc

This is a story about the A&E poor doc again.Busy day as usual. Admissions piling up, Red and Yellow zones are full, Green zone patients' faces are turning green for waiting too long. The poor doc was trying his best to see patient asap, and totally no time to rest (hands are getting cramp)/ take glucose to prevent hypoglycemia/ go bathroom (impending bladder rupture).Incident one:Suddenly a

Best of Russell Peters

I think beside Stephen Chow, the only person who never fails to make me laughing out my tears is Russell Peters, the world's comedy superstar. I used to think he's the Canadian version of Stephen.Russell Peters' comedy focuses largely around his Indian upbringing and racial stereotypes, as he often parodies his parents and South Asian culture. Much of his material explores the cultural divides

The Politics of Medicine: Post-colonialism and Science as Morality

The choice of syntax and vocabulary is a political act that defines and circumscribes the manner in which "facts" are to be experienced. Indeed, in a sense it goes further and even creates the facts that are studied.

R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience

Jean Langford originally sets out to do a comparative analysis between modern biomedicine and traditional Ayurvedic practices and their incorporation in post-modern India. In Fluent Bodies, Langford discovers the complexities and ultimate refusal of Ayurvedic concepts to be enframed within a Western epistemological framework. Langford states, "my modern assumptions were reflected back to me through answers to my questions that resisted their epistemological thrust" (19). The unfolding of Langford's ethnography depicted a practice that appeared to trivialize such westernized conventions such as mapping medical concepts onto the human body, transcend the public/private dichotomy of biomedicine, and elude the modern perception of traditional "ethnomedicine" as relatively static against a dynamic scientific backdrop. Langford depicts patterns of Ayuvedic integration within the biomedical model as well as post-colonial resistance to the perceived hegemony of allopathy. Ayurveda appears to elude modernist tendencies towards compartmentalization and reification. Langford distinguishes her methodology as resisting the temptations to "police" the boundaries and demarcations of authentic Ayurveda. Rather she sets out to take a deeper gaze at the forces that create authenticity within Ayurveda. It appears that the reverberations of colonialism create a dynamic that attempts to incorporate biomedicine in order to achieve institutional clout in a post-colonial setting, while simultaneously attempting to ward off hegemonic devices of classification and control. Langford discovers ranges of this incorporation and resistance within the practices of Ayurveda that manifest themselves in the sentiments of their practitioners, whether it be a vaidya who received his credentials at a mimetic institution of Ayurvedic medicine or a rural Kaviraj who sells mixtures of boiled sugar and passes them off as "authentic" Ayurvedic pharmacopoeia (207).

It appears as though there is a state of ambivalence for the post-colonial consumer of healthcare. The consumer may perceive some value in biomedical approaches but may view procedures as invasive, dangerous, and even short-lived as many biomedical approaches are perceived as only riding the body of the undesired symptoms of affliction and not the source of the affliction. The healthcare market, consequently, has been forced to adapt to the needs of the ambivalent and multi-dimensional consumer in order to ensure its own economic survival. It appears as though many practitioners of Ayurveda are reluctantly subjected to packaging and essentializing Ayurveda, to the expectations of their customers, while simultaneously resisting the political categorization of Ayurveda by imperialist ideologies. Scientific rationalism, under the guise of objectivity, may be used as an agent of coercion to facilitate adherence to the dominating political doctrine of the occupation, or the ideological remnants and the institutional frameworks left behind by the occupation after independence. Collective experiences, observations, and practices are perceived as shaping the social and political terrain of a population. Langford, rather depicts how the social and political terrain of post-colonial India shapes the experiences, observations and practices of the population.

Under the guise of altruism, one can be reminded of countless examples where biomedicine has been used as a tool to uphold oppressive political doctrine. For instance, Nancy Rose Hunt discusses political campaigns in Zaire during the early 1900s, that were employed to encourage birth rate and to increase African infant survival rate. Mothers were given milk as well as medical knowledge regarding the health of their child. Missionaries worked tirelessly to circumvent traditional practices of birth spacing or post-partum abstinence. Birth spacing had been established in African cultures to ensure optimal care for the child, however, since Zaire experienced a morbidly low population during the years of early twentieth century colonialism, missionaries adapted strategies that would delineate from the traditional pattern. Interest in the medical well-being of Zaire's population proved to be one of "Imperial importance" (Hunt 289). Colonists were addressed by the president of an organization that emphasized healthcare for mothers and infants with the following statement: "Help us by all means in our ability to protect, to care for the child while educating indigenous mother, it is a duty. We need black labor....To protect the child in the Congo is a duty, not only of altruism, but of patriotism" (Hunt 289). One can observe how medicine quickly delineates from a pattern of objectivity to a politically motivated tactic that promotes the efficacy of establishing colonial dominance.

In the Politics of Experience R. D. Laing states, "The colonists not only mystify the natives....they have to mystify themselves." He continues, "We in Europe and North America are the colonists, and in order to sustain our amazing images of ourselves as God's gift to the vast majority of the starving human species, we have to interiorize our violence upon ourselves and our children and to employ the rhetoric of morality to describe this process" (36). It appears that scientific objectivity and biomedical expertise have become our post-modern rhetoric of morality and are used as gauges to measure the sophistication of culture. Langford's book shows how the fluid and adaptive quality of Ayurveda, both in practice and in theory, transcends and "spills over" all attempts at encapsulation.

Psychotic Attack!

What an incident today.Just 10 min before I finished my shift, one man suddenly walked in and asked me, "Dr, I have cough and some mouth ulcers. Can give me medication?"Noticed that he just came without registering himself, I said, "Can, but please register at the counter first?"You won't believe what then happened. He suddenly "mengamuk" (in psychiatric, it means going mad, or you can imagine

My Fav Song..and It's M'sian Product!

Well, I could be outdated..but who cares. The song i'm putting now, is one I really like, and have been addicted to it for reaaaally quite sometimes. First time when I heard it, i really thought it's from some Taiwanese singers. (No offense to M'sian singers, but this really sound different..i mean, much better actually hehe)Until I found out it's a song called "一起飞" by Henley 许俾文 with 陈威全. I

what is magic medicine?

I’ve been thinking for a while now that every once in a while I should post a bit about what I mean by Magic Medicine.
Originally it was another word for art-making, but it’s evolving. It’s always been about using daily experiences as inspiration for art. Now it’s becoming more grounded in the idea of every experience as an opportunity for illumination.
By paying attention to what is happening in our lives, what choices we’re making, our relationships, and how we are in the world, we inch towards self realization. As we do, creative energy is activated. We live more fully as we shed whatever has been keeping us disconnected, yet always yearning for our truest selves.
As we embrace ourselves and work through the muck, it’s easier and easier to tap into what inspires and brings us joy.
Art is life. Life is art.
May the Magic Medicine of your day bring you closer to your true self.

creatively challenged?

Oh, I hate to admit it, but it feels like weeks since I've done anything remotely creative. But here's the thing. When we get into a bit of a groove with creative habits, we start overlooking them. They become routine like everything else.
And then of course, there's the natural ebb and flow of life. Practices by nature are repetitive, and the more we do them, the better. But absolute consistency isn't necessary. It's the long haul that matters.

And it helps, like it does in all things, to be mindful of what's getting in our way. Is it avoidance, or just a too busy schedule? What tiny thing might we do or make that would break the pattern, mix things up? Sometimes it's just a matter of reminding ourselves of an on-going project that's fallen by the wayside. We don't need to make Herculean efforts; a little goes a long way.

I'm going to follow my own advice, and just tie one more found object onto an assemblage in the making.

May your day be filled with Magic Medicine.

What Exactly is Housemanship?

Lately, the new batch of housemen does not seem to be happy. Apparently some housemen (yes, THE new batch) are very unsatisfied with their jobs. Ya they have been making noises, but lately they're making more. Most of them made complaints about long-hours work, too much workload, always got to miss meals, always get scolded, work stress is depressing etc. And one of the HO's parent (apparently

Miracle (2)

"An Indian man has survived an operation to remove a 1.5-metre (five-foot) long iron bar that stabbed right through his chest, reports said Friday, calling it a medical miracle.The rod was lying on a construction site when the taxi Supratim Dutta was travelling in smashed into it on Saturday.The bar crashed through the car's bonnet and dashboard before hitting the 23-year-old, who was sitting in

A Beautiful (or Colourful?) Mind

Tell me what would you do if you were me.Busy day. Admissions non-stop. Then I saw this patient (the unlucky me).20 years old. Student nurse."Doctor, i noticed something funny with my stools. Over the past one week i've been passing darkish stool..but not really like malenic you know? More like dark BLUE..with some mucous..i'm not sure whether it's mixed with some tissue debris? And that day i

on being an aunt

Every summer my niece comes from Isreal for a few weeks. She stays with my parents, and I spend the two weeks driving back and forth, all over the county, trying to show her a good time and having a blast. This year she's brought a friend to keep her company.
Yesterday we drove 2 hours to go to the Woodstock museum (which isn't in Woodstock, but on the site of Woodstock in Bethel), spent 2 hours there, drove 2 hours back, then to the movies to see The Dark Knight (loved it).
Sitting on the deck by the pool at my parents, I listened out of one ear while the other adults agonized over oil prices, other people and politics. I was so relieved to be able to focus my attention elsewhere. What I noticed, is that 17 year old girls are perfectly comfortable with silence and doing nothing, in a way that adults are not. They were just sitting on the raft in the water. Not talking, not paying attention to anything in particular. Just sitting and being.
So I sat, watched the breeze in the trees, listened to the cicadas, and finally the adults wandered inside to the air conditioning, and we had the real world to ourselves once again.
Having my niece here is my vacation from adults. I'd drive her to the ends of the Earth, any day. And I think she may be the only person I know who is really happy to just spend time with me doing absolutely nothing.
May your day be filled with the Magic Medicine of being.

Courses & Courses

Let me see..this month is really a rewarding month! Up to now i've been sent for 4 courses in this month alone..ever since I joined emergency department.2nd July - Short course in Pre-hospital Care, a joint workshop by Emergency and Traumatology department Hosp Ipoh & Taiping8th July - Course in Triage Guidelines14th July - Medical-based Emergency care Update, by Medical Dept Hosp Teluk

Jones Criteria

MO: Medical officer; HO: House officerMO: "Tell me about this case."HO: "This is a 10 year-old boy, presented with migratory joint pain and fever. ESR is raised. ASOT positive."MO: "So your impression is?"HO: "This is suggestive of acute rheumatic fever, as the Robert Jones criteria are fulfilled."MO: "Robert WHO?"HO: (confidently)" Robert Jones. It's the criteria to diagnose rheumatic fever." (

What is Casulo?

Imagine this thing arrived at your doorstep. What you think it is?Take a look at the tutorial on how to use it.Casulo, the "Mobile Living Furniture" is a collaborative project of the two German designers Marcel Krings and Sebastian Mühlhäuser.Cool isn't it. I respect creative people who brings constructive ideas to the world. Brilliant job!

Combination of Durian and Alcohol Kills or Not?

It's durian season again..so the popular myth about whether durian mixed with alcohol kills, is kinda brought up for discussion again.
I read it from MMR's Durian and alcohol - the death mix myth, then I just further did a little bit of research about it. Just to show some extracts:

"In 1981, J. R. Croft wrote in his Bombacaceae: In Handbooks of the Flora of Papua New Guinea that a feeling of

link love

I've gotten really interested in drawing this summer. Another thing I've avoided (for years!) and am really re-fired up about.
So I find myself more and more interested in what others are doing with drawing. And I notice that my own notions of what a drawing is can be so confining.
If you live in New York, The Drawing Center in Soho can be great for breaking open your head on that subject. I remember seeing a piece there which was essentially a tent in which small holes had been poked to allow light through. Inside, you saw "the drawing".
And seeing the word in quotes like that makes me wonder about the etomology of the word. How is it that an art form is named with a word that also refers to a process in which we are attracted, absorbed, changing shape, to name just a few synonyms.
What draws us in? What draws us out?
May your day be filled with the Magic Medicine of drawing.

Mad Referrals (2)

Mad referrals are back! Recently i saw these two:#1(I think i can put the whole content here because it's very "simplified")"Dear doctor,Thank you for seeing this 14 year-old girl, who's previously well,currently unwell.Kindly do the needful."Look at this. Fantastic isn't it. Patient's problem is perfectly summarized. I just feel like replying to him, "Dear doc, thanks for your referral. I think,

fighting spirit

I did something this weekend that I really love, have a lot of fear around, and haven't done in a year and a half.
Sparring is one of my favorite things about karate. But also a big button pusher. Why? It's so easy to get hurt. I'm not that good at it. I'm a girl, no brothers, didn't grow up throwing or taking punches.
But, despite all that, there's nothing like it. And I can't wait to start taking kumite (sparring) classes at the dojo again.
Yes, I'll get a little battered and bruised. I'll wonder why I do this to my body and my being. But I'll get over it. And I'll go through a cycle I go through over and over again, until I get a little too beat up for my own comfort and I'll back off until I have to gear up for another promotion again.
That's the way it is with me and sparring. But it makes me wonder. What else do I really love to do, but avoid like the plague until I have to? What am I really waiting for? And why?
May the Magic Medicine of avoidance awareness reconnect you with your heart's desires.

Pachelbel's Canon (Canon in D)

Read a post in shinyin's blog which she was playing her piano. I think she did a very fine performance.I'm sure everyone's familiar with the song?Pachelbel's Canon (also known as Canon in D major), is the most famous piece of music by Johann Pachelbel. It was written in or around 1680, during the Baroque period, as a piece of chamber music for three violins and basso continuo, but has since been

Interesting Chest Xray (3)

This is a Xray of a 60 year-old lady who presented with severe breathlessness. It's pretty straightforward, think a 4th/5th year medical student should be able to describe it. It's basically a massive pleural effusion of left lung with mediastinal shift. But what I wanna show here is the marked trachea deviation, and if you look closely, even the carina can be seen!


P/s: If you wanna see a

Ritualistic Medicine: Science, Religion and Magic

...the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?

Mark Twain

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

Albert Einstein


In A General Theory of Magic, Marcel Mauss attempts to distinguish the concept of magic as a social phenomenon that encompasses certain aspects of science, technology and religion, all the while, maintaining a distinct social system with its own definable terms. Mauss elaborates on the work of Sir James Frazer who classifies magic as a form of "pre-science" originating in "primitive societies"(15). Magic, according to Frazer, is the simplest, purest form of human scientific thought. The evolution of human thought appears to have sprung from the creative nature of the human mind and the attribution of creative mysticism to the totality of the natural world. "Immediately [man] endowed his universe with mysterious powers, of the kind he once arrogated to himself" (Mauss 17). Religion perhaps precipitated from the inevitable fallibility of humans. Since humans could not create in nature what they could create in their minds, humans may have created a third party, essentially gods, as a reason for their fallibility. The most recent event in Frazer's proposed genealogy of human thought involves human use of causality as a tool to collect and organize a posteriori knowledge into a systematic and reproducible form - namely science. Mauss goes about his objective of producing a distinct definition of magic by examining many systems of magic, beyond sympathetic rites such as contiguity and similarity, and formulating his essential elements of magic, the magician, magical rites or actions, and magical representations. Mauss explains magic in terms of collective phenomena similar, in this aspect, to religion. Magic, however, may be distinguished from religion in that its rituals serve technical objectives rather than serve to symbolize worship of a sacred notion. Magic, in this regard, does not contain a notion of the sacred, but rather serves as means to a desired end. Magic may involve the use of gods, demons, and religious icons within its practice, however, there is usually a technical objective. Mauss points out this objective as being a key similarity between magic and science. The following will briefly attempt to illustrate how, using Mauss's classification of magic, one may view systems of western biomedicine as "magical" when viewed through the lens of a differing embodied metaphor of illness than that of one governed by biomedical rationality.

Mauss asserts that magic has representations or laws that are governed by syllogistic logic and may be viewed as variations on the mechanisms used to distinguish science, namely experimental causality or a posteriori knowledge. The example I have chosen to elucidate the similarities between magic and western medicine, as viewed by an individual embodying a differing metaphor of illness than is typical in western society, is the procedure of hemodialysis. I spend much of my working week at a dialysis center for patients of various cultural backgrounds. Recently, I came across an article that sought to shed light on the seemingly irrational beliefs that are commonly expressed by dialysis patients. I personally identified with the article and was reminded of the qualities of magic as defined by Mauss. In the article, "The Body's Insistence on Meaning: Metaphor as Presentation and Representation in Illness Experience," Laurence J. Kirmayer discusses how the different metaphors for illness may formulate how one interprets and experiences illness. He shows how understandings of the mechanisms of these metaphors may assist in the elimination, or at least significantly decrease, the existing tensions between Western biomedical rationality and the individuals own attempts to rationalize their illness within their own cultural, social and personal ideology. Kirmayer succinctly illustrates the experiences of the hemodialysis patient:

"The patient witnesses his blood leaving his body and traveling through plastic tubing into the hidden depths of the dialysis machine. The machine has nervous habits: it blinks and twitches--shifting registers, clicks, and beeps mark the progress of blood through the machine. Once processed--transformed by the machine--the blood returns to the patient to be contained and hidden inside the body once more" (Kirmayer 328).




An individual is essentially "machine bound" as they are dependent on the dialysis machine to rid their bodies of toxins that would otherwise be ridden by healthy kidney function. Many patients have confessed their general distrust in their medical care and yet it is obligatory that they remain "machine-bound" for approximately four hours out of their day, three times a week. Some patients distrust is not necessarily unfounded as many had acquired kidney failure as a result of too much medication (usually Lithium, a salt prescribed in the treatment of bipolar disorder). Kirmayer tells the story of a dialysis patient called Mr. Y. Mr. Y is anemic and refuses to have a blood transfusion based on his belief that the blood of other individuals contains genetic material and thus will distort his personality (325). Mr. Y's physician has difficulty in viewing Mr. Y's presumption as anything other than irrational as it does not follow accordance with his/her biomedical explanatory model of illness.

Mauss describes the objectives of magical acts as either an attempt to expedite or create the occurrence of specific phenomena or to carry the involved objects out of a potentially dangerous state (76). Magic may be called an art of changing. The physician, like the magician is attempting to change the course of action of a particular occurrence, or in this scenario, attempts to deter death. Like the magician, the physician is distinguished from his/her colleagues by the specific procedures s/he performs (74).

Mauss extensively depicts how magic contains aspects of both technology, science and religion and yet remains its own separate social category. The above example depicts how traits of magic are similar to traits in western biomedicine. These similarities, however, seem to dissipate if one looks further into the principles causality and the variation of this principle associated with magic. For instance, Mauss describes science as based on knowledge acquired through repeated experiments, or a posteriori knowledge, whereas magic, like religion is based on belief, or a priori knowledge. When perceived through the eyes of an individual who does not possess an embodied metaphor of illness that is governed by the assumption of the superiority of rationality, the various technologies of medicine are seemingly inseparable from the rites of
magic.

Link to full-text essay by Mark Twain

http://grammar.about.com/od/60essays/a/twowaysessay.htm

Couple Jokes

Let's have some light moments. Saw these somewhere.#1Wife: "Dear, we have married for so many years."Husband: "Ya..."Wife: "Tell me, which part of me you like the most? Is it my beautiful face or my gorgeous body?"Husband: "...I think I like your sense of humour."#2In an art gallery.Wife: "I think the portraits are overall excellent."Husband: "Ya..."Wife: "But there was one I saw just now was

Public Health Education

I was surfing the net and went into a forum and looked around. It's a local famous forum with more than 100,000 registered users. Most of the topics are technical stuff-related, so I have not much choices but clicked into the "Health & Fitness" area and see what's inside. To my surprise, after a quick look on the discussion, I was horrified by the contents, and get almost arrhythmic.The topic

Analysis of Nuffnangers

I've observed nuffnangers for quite some time. I think if you wanna know about what does a person like, you need to know his/her personality, and vice versa. Meaning if you wanna know one's personality, you can somehow know it from observing what he/she likes.I spent some time looking at innint posts, which had climbed the popular rank. Surprisingly they have kinda similar features. The

inside and out

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. He who looks outside, dreams. He who looks inside, awakens.

I'm not sure that I can add anything more meaningful to this brilliant quote from Carl Jung. It just captures so much. And while I love to dream, and believe in dreaming as a powerful tool toward manifestation - the wisdom of awakening just kind of blows my socks off this morning. I love the idea of noticing whether I am dreaming or awakening in the course of a day, a week, and of course a lifetime.

May the Magic Medicine of your dreams lead you to awakenings.

And may this week's link discovery lead you to both: 37 days.

Welcome to the Mad House

This is what happened when supposingly 3 ppl doing the shift, but one went to do the post-mortem and one went to attend some courses. Left a poor doc in the department, running like a mad dog."Doctor, patient's BP high la..260/120mmHg. Complained of vision blurring.""Doctor, patient complained of chest pain la..ECG looks not good.""Doctor! Patient's fitting! Fitting!""Doctor, I think you should

Must It be Private Hospital?

My emotion is quite affected by one incident today.A man brought in by ambulance, 40 year-old Chinese, alleged MVA (motor-vehicle accident) - car vs lorry, sustained a bleeding forehead wound. GCS on arrival was 8, with unequal pupils, showing that head injury with intracranial bleeding is likely. We stabilized him, then I called up surgical team and spoke to radiologist to arrange for an urgent

wire-less

My first thought when I realized I'd left my cell phone at home this morning, was "Oh, shit." The second was, "What a relief." It's just nice not be tethered to the thing for a day. And I don't even have a Crackberry.
This coming weekend I'll be computer free, too, which will be a dream. I'm a little too connected right now. Love it when I'm forced to give up technology for a few days. It's really a gift.
After two mornings of cabbing it to work, I took the bus this morning to give myself some life drawing time. Low tech at its best. Pen and paper. Hand and eye.
May your day be filled with Magic Medicine.

Dislocation

Anne Fadiman tells the tragic story of Lia Lee, a Hmong child, who becomes the site of negotiation between two seemingly opposed worldviews or explanatory models of medicine. In her book, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Fadiman portrays the tragic circumstances involving grave cultural misunderstandings and misconceptions of two cultures, immigrant Hmong culture and American bio-medical culture. Lia’s parents attributed Lia’s illness as qaug dab peg, which is roughly translated to, “the spirit catches you and you fall down,” which is then temporalized into the western medical term - epilepsy. The author explains that Hmong culture generally regards one that exhibits symptoms of quag dab peg as potentially destined to become a tvix neeb, divine healer, or someone who can slip into the spiritual realm. Fadiman states, “Becoming a tvix neeb is not a choice; it is a vocation” (21). Lia’s illness did not improve in spite of the efforts of the American medical system. Her family was channeled through painful avenues of American bureaucracy that were ill equipped and seemingly inflexible to the task of handling culturally discordant metaphors of illness.

Fadiman’s book has captured and inspired readers both as an ethnography that contains all the elements of a tragic drama and as an effective portrayal of the urgent need for a culturally sensitive approach to Western medicine. The book has been used to facilitate discussions among medical anthropology students as well as students of biological medicine (Taylor 162). It has inspired models of “cultural competence” that have infiltrated Western hospitals. Author Janelle Taylor points out the complications associated with the “cultural competence” model and the reification of culture. In her writing, "The Story Catches You and You Fall Down: Tragedy, Ethnography and ‘Cultural Competence,’” Taylor defines culture as a dynamic ever-changing process rather than Fadiman’s reified, static view of Hmong culture. Fadiman states, “…the Hmong have responded to persecution and to pressures to assimilate by either fighting or migrating—a pattern that has been repeated so many times, in so many different eras and places, that it begins to seem almost a genetic trait, as inevitable in its recurrence as their straight hair of their short, sturdy stature ” (emphasis added, pg.13). She notes that the essentialization of Hmong culture, depicted in Fadiman’s book, should be viewed not as “solid lumps of congealed truth,” but rather as “invitations” to interpret relevant messages of meaning to the dynamic nature of culture, not static and by no means genetic (Taylor 179).

Fadiman provides historical accounts of Hmong involvement as American allies in the Vietnam War and the resulting migration of many people, including the Lees, from Laos to Thailand and eventually Merced, California. Upon finishing the book, one may begin to view similar themes of dislocation as contributing to the lack of comprehension between two cultural belief systems. The geographic and emotional dislocation of Hmong-American immigrants is juxtaposed with the American dislocation of the individual from society, the physical from the spiritual, and the mind from the body. Western biomedicine is compartmentalized and the individual becomes viewed as essentially dislocated from nature.

“..in Western cosmology humans have been exclusive possessors of a spirit, or a soul, or conscious intentionality, rendering other animate and inanimate aspects of the natural world spiritually dead or merely instinctual” (Henry 39).

The collectivism displayed and valued in Hmong culture clashes with the drive for individual autonomy and the individual versus society model that is observed in American culture. The metaphors used to describe illness vary cross-culturally and are often diametrically opposed, as in the case with American metaphors of illness and Hmong metaphors of illness. In the article, "Measles, Hmong, and Metaphor: Culture Change and Illness Management under Conditions of Immigration," Rebecca R. Henry, contrasts the “warfare” metaphor utilized in Western medicine with the Hmong metaphor of “harvesting crops” and the interrelation of the natural and spiritual worlds (34). The human immune system in Western terms is described as a militant counter-attack on invading organisms (33). The Hmong, however, tend to view the course of disease as cyclical, in tune with other environmental factors, such as season change, and as a natural process that needs to take its course (33-34). There, however, are human interventions that may expedite the course of nature. For example, in the treatment of measles, Henry points out that the Hmong view the presence of a rash as the “growth” or natural and necessary progression of the disease. The “growth” must be allowed to run its full course or else it runs the risk of lying dormant in the body inevitably causing illness later in life (38). Fever is explained in terms of the heat needed to allow for the progression of the disease, like how heat and sunlight are needed to facilitate plant growth (41-42). Henry indicates that Western approaches of treating fever with Tylenol actually compound the illness as it interferes with its natural course (42). Hmong belief systems regarding illness etiologies and treatments may be disregarded by Western medical practitioners due to language barriers and, consequently, misconstrued as medical non-compliance, as demonstrated in the case of the Lee’s.

Fadiman’s book appears to capture the social drama between the “collision” of differing views of health and illness and transcribes it into an aesthetic drama containing the pertinent elements of tragedy. I like to think of the book as a liminal piece that transcends the rigid classifications of reified culture and serves to provide a holistic interpretation of a patient as both a biological and cultural being, where prevailing science and cultural belief systems compliment each other, rather than remaining relatively mutually exclusive.

Miracle

"A 70-year-old from Muzaffarnagar, India, became the world’s oldest woman to give birth after she delivered twins Friday. Omkari Panwar, the wife of a retired farmer, delivered the twins — a boy and girl — via Caesarean section.Panwar, who has two adult daughters and five grandchildren, underwent in-vitro fertility treatment so she could produce a male heir.Her husband, Charan Singh Panwar, 77,

Dear Mr. President

Just to share a great song..although this has been released for about 1 year, when i now listen back to it, I still find it very meaningful. Here it goes: (turn on your speaker!)Dear Mr. PresidentCome take a walk with meLet's pretend we're just two people andYou're not better than meI'd like to ask you some questions if we can speak honestlyWhat do you feel when you see all the homeless on the

jenny holzer at mass moca

I'm always a little embarrassed by my politics: I'm an ostrich. I don't like political conversations because they are most often argumentative. I have my opinions, pretty much keep them to myself, and kind of wish everyone else would, too - not in the world, but in my presence.

I subscribe to Move On but delete all the messages. I donate to world hunger, and Burma out of compassion for humanity, not politics. In fact, I was recently working on a campaign for China Care, and though we're not presenting it (too politcal), my favorite headline was: *@!# politics, save babies. Pretty much sums up my overall world view.

So it is always a beautiful thing to me, when politics go straight to my heart, as it did in this Jenny Holzer installation at Mass Moca. Being in the middle of the room on one of the ginourmous bean bags was like looking at stars in the sky on a hot summer night.

Standing and watching the text felt overwhelming. Truth presented like propoganda.

The quote that caught my heart: Even when you take to the woods, you're taking political steps on political ground.

You can follow Jenny Holzer on Twitter. I think this may be the best use of Twitter ever.

May your day be filled with the Magic Medicine of ideas that change your mind.

undoing

Three day weekends are a special treat. That extra time gives me a day to do absolutely nothing. So yesterday I spent mostly on the porch reading. It was a rainy day, perfect for nothingness.
At one point I noticed myself feeling a wee bit guilty for not using the time more creatively. Starting a new project, doing some quick sketches, whatever. But later in the day, while playing my harmonium, I spontaneously composed a chant - my first ever!
We've been talking a bit in my coaching training about the need to loll around, and let the creative juices cook. I've always thought of it as composting time.
As my yoga teachers at Om would say: "Can you do less?"
What small steps can you take today to scale back, lay off, goof off, and give yourself a break?
Whatever you're doing, wherever you are, may your day be filled with the Magic Medicine of a little R&R.

New Members Join Taiping IMU Gang

(Pic from my convo mag, shot by Shawn)Just wanna say a big welcome to Dr. Teh KY (2nd right), my batch's Gold Medalist and his wife, Karen, who have reported duty to Taiping Hosp on Friday, joining surgical and emergency department, respectively. Karen is gonna work with me!(Steven is still in O&G, as happy as shown in the pic)Gonna have a gathering dinner later today!Update:The dinner is

A Taste of A&E

3 days passed. But I felt it's much longer. A quick conclusion: Emergency medicine is..hectic but interesting! Some adaptations need to be made are now working is by shifts, hence slightly less working hours but the sleep-wake cycles need to be adjusted. Otherwise, hmm althought one shift is 7-10 hours, it's not easy at all. Basically the flow of patients will be continous, with various severity,

linkalicious

I'm short on words this morning, so here are two links to get your creative juices flowing. Sharing our personal stories with others is mega Magic Medicine.
Rita Farin's blog
Elaine Yu's new blog
If I don't post again have a great 4th of July weekend.
May your weekend be filled with fireworks and Magic Medicine.

resistance is futile

In this first few weeks of immersion into a creativity coaching certification, I'm noticing that I have a lot of resistance. Here's what I'm pushing up against: taking a class on the telephone, posting assignments to a Yahoo Group, learning new ways of doing things.
The last one is a real whack upside the head. Isn't creativity all about new ways of looking at the same old, same old?
I'm also noticing that I'm resisting asking questions, out of self consciousness and fear that I'm being difficult. Isn't creativity all about asking questions, too?
Here's a quote from Robert Moses' The 3 Only Things:
To be creative in life does not require us to follow a particular line. You don't need to be a writer, an artist, or a musician to be creative - though you may be in thh process of discovering that you are those things, too. To create is to bring something new into the world.
May your day be filled with the Magic Medicine of discovery.

You Made Us Proud

A record was made.For the first time in the history of Malaysian advertising, a Malaysian television commercial, directed by Yasmin, was awarded a Gold Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival, 2008. The commercial was entitled "Tan Hong Ming In Love" and i'm sure everyone is familiar with it.Another commercial in the same campaign, "Race", was given the Bronze Lion in the same category.I'm truly