Annuntio

  Since I wreaked unexpected havoc on my life blogging about wanting to quit life has been a bit of a whirlwind! I have finished cardiac anaesthesia (loved it!), have a wonderful supervisor, and even given a meet and greet at new department (genius!). I am revising for my exam and still receive the odd

What happens after burnout? The Afterlife. In which I reference various mythology

What happens after burnout? Burnout is a label we associate with people being tested beyond the limits of their resilience; working beyond emotional and physical capacity into the River Styx, paying Charon the ferryman our few cents to get out, and back into the land of the living aka NON MEDICINE. I myself always diagnosed

Job Alchemy

My primary school teacher told me my favourite word had been loquacious. That doesn’t obviously lead well to my choice of mainly somnolent patients. But there are times, like now, where thankfully the profession and the NHS is telling us all her stories.  When I think about my happiest times in medicine they weren’t the

Post Mortem of a Career

From the age of 9 I remember my dad sitting down on a summer day whilst I was on the swing on the apple tree and communicating in one of those poignant father-child ways that one of his greatest wishes in life if I could go to Oxbridge. He himself was from a working class

Your gut and Parkinson’s

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3281589/ – in depth review of alpha synuclein https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3281589/ – the appendix/Parkinson’s study in full Why? My partner recently mentioned to me a study had revealed a putative link between appendicetomies and a reduction in Parkinson’s disease. An epidemiological study, but one with convincing numbers involved and a potential mechanism. I have always been quite

Anaesthesia, the brain, and a pinch of salt

We might all be able to describe what it means to be unconscious. However to ask the meaning of ‘consciousness’ is to catch mist with one’s bare hands. The human nervous system is, on a global level, rather organised and succinct. Like most fish, birds, reptiles and other mammals we possess a brain and a

Optogenetics, the immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks, and one’s future cure for Alzheimer’s

Back in the days of learnedness at university, where it was incumbent upon us to learn about the flaws and fallacies of laboratory research techniques in order for us to challenge the currently held models of  the human body, I spent a year dedicated purely to neuroscience. In the years since my  time has been

An Ode to On-Call

Apprehension Anxiety Looking at the clock Flicking through the patient lists Quickly taking stock With military precision the bleep Goes off Several times a minute Like a ten gun salute A fanfare hailing doom Scribbling jobs on my handover, rapidly Running out of room Chase these bloods His potassium is too high! It might be

What drives us? Harness the horsepower

Motivation bridges the gap between desire and action. It derives from one of the Latin roots motivus (to set in motion) and motare (to stir/agitate). Our human happiness is the net product of how many of our desires, spiritual and instinctive, we able able to placate. Motivation delivers us from one to the other, and

Remote Control Brains

  Mind control is an unsettling prospect. Its psychology is far less obfuscated than its biology, which is fantastic for advertising companies and frustrating for scientists. Brains contribute about 2% of our body weight and require 20% of its energy requirement. We recognise early that brains are the seat of our humanity, autonomy and ‘self’