Sunday, May 29, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
Nairobi!
Today a team of us from the Evelina Children's Hospital will fly out to Kenya for 8 days. The plan is to do open heart operations on children born with cardiac defects who would not otherwise have access to this sort of surgery. We will be based at the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi and will take over one of their operating theatres. My role will be to help run an improvised Paediatric Intensive Care Unit on one of the wards there. And we will try and blitz as many operations as we can in the time available. This will be my fifth such trip. It will be very hard work but it is an adventure!
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Neverland Matrix.
I was once caring for an 8 year old who was critically ill in Intensive Care; Ventilated, on multiple inotropes and on CVVH.
A relative was keeping a vigil by her bed side during the night. In the small hours when everything was quiet we got to talking. He held the young girl's hand and quietly shook his head.
'When I watch TV and I've had enough sadness - I press the doofer and its gone and everything is happy. When I'm fed up with the news and all that stuff I just go...' He mimed pointing a TV remote control. 'One click...', he clacked his tongue, '...and its gone from my life'. He sighed.
'Well... I keep clicking and it is all still here.... it doesn't go away!' he said.
The world as presented by TV is a double illusion. It not only portrays a distorted sense of reality; it also implies a distorted measure of control of that reality. Cocooned from the hardships most humans face daily a viewer drinking deeply in the media well may sincerely believe that 'all is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds'... and if it isn't we can always turn over.
It is only when real reality intervenes that our perspective is reorientated and both those perceptions, a false reality and a phoney sense of control, are shown to be illusions. How many people go through life mired in illusion, thinking that perception is the reality? What does it take to wake people up?
I was once caring for an 8 year old who was critically ill in Intensive Care; Ventilated, on multiple inotropes and on CVVH.
A relative was keeping a vigil by her bed side during the night. In the small hours when everything was quiet we got to talking. He held the young girl's hand and quietly shook his head.
'When I watch TV and I've had enough sadness - I press the doofer and its gone and everything is happy. When I'm fed up with the news and all that stuff I just go...' He mimed pointing a TV remote control. 'One click...', he clacked his tongue, '...and its gone from my life'. He sighed.
'Well... I keep clicking and it is all still here.... it doesn't go away!' he said.
The world as presented by TV is a double illusion. It not only portrays a distorted sense of reality; it also implies a distorted measure of control of that reality. Cocooned from the hardships most humans face daily a viewer drinking deeply in the media well may sincerely believe that 'all is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds'... and if it isn't we can always turn over.
It is only when real reality intervenes that our perspective is reorientated and both those perceptions, a false reality and a phoney sense of control, are shown to be illusions. How many people go through life mired in illusion, thinking that perception is the reality? What does it take to wake people up?
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