#genius #medicine #courage #awesome #love #test #challenge #injustice #justice

Knowledge is the Key

Knowledge is the Key

By JFarrell

 

Knowledge is the key to betterment

Whether knowing how to split the atom

Or to open a tin of beans

Without knowing how to do it

You’ll get nowhere.

 

What we ALL see can be changed

War, famine, homelessness, injustice

But, knowing how to change it

Is the tricky bit

Everyone and no-one has answers

 

It is our responsibility, all of us

To LEARN, get an education, gain knowledge

And WE CAN ALL learn

And that also involves

Stopping letting people telling you what to think

 

Your mind is unique and great, as are you

And this is your world too

Please get involved and start making it better

I am making my dreams, a better world, reality

Come and join in, it’s your world too, take some responsibility

 

 

 

Author's Notes/Comments: 

change

You Have The Power

You Have The Power

By Jfarrell

 

(inspired by a class discussion we had today)

 

The power to change the world is in your hands,

All of you;

You, you and, yes, you;

And not one word here is a lie,

Or wishful thinking.

 

Look around,

What do you not like?

What disgusts you, angers you,

Saddens you, depresses you?

 

You name it,

I won’t make suggestions,

I don’t need to,

You know what makes you angry.

 

You can change it,

Make it better;

And you only need to do 2 things:

 

  1. Believe in yourself.

    It doesn’t matter who you are,

    How smart, or not, you think you are.

    Every great person who ever lived,

    Believed in themselves.

    Whether we speak about Einstein,

    Or Bill Gates;

    What makes them different from you?

    Nothing.

    So, believe.

     

  2. Act.

    Give a homeless person some food,

    Help that mum with her buggy,

    Run for election.

     

    Here endeth the lesson.

    Believe and act.

 

Author's Notes/Comments: 

please believe in yourself

Conversation with a bariatric patient

He sits across me

Uncomfortably fitting in the big chair

Still catching his breath

He sounds of a labored old truck going up the hill

I look at him

This catastrophe of modern times

An impending disaster, an epidemic

And ask

How can I help you?

A faint smile plays on his lips

Maybe he did not expect such politeness

After all everyone has told him

It’s his fault

He’s been eating too much

Lazy sod, can’t live without crisps and fizz

Now his urine’s gone sweet and he can’t sleep

Unless the machine that sits by his bedside

With Darth Vader reverberations helping him survive the dark and lonely night

He says he has tried hard

But the damned weight wont move

I sense his motivation

I speak of options, life-changing operations

Restrictive vs. malabsorptive

Their impact on his future

The pros and cons, the risk of dying, the long road he needs to climb

He looks through me

His expressions speak I have had enough

I cant live like this

I want my life back

You have the key to my self-esteem

Somewhere between the lines

I see a drowning man clutching for a straw

And at the far end of that abyss

I see the Bariatric team

Author's Notes/Comments: 

Obesity is now our biggest adversary. A lot has been written about anorexia but obesity is negelcted on such forums. 

Acoustic Neuroma

He loved symphonies, and surgery

And then it started

A trivial fall, first unnoticed

He said he could hear whispers

A static sound, buzzing in his ears

It appears coded he mentioned

Wondered what was going on

May be my ears have gone dry or its wax

The local surgery found none

Prescribed some nasal drops and suggested Valsalva

Would balance the pressure in middle ear

He said he felt the cosmos moving in circles as he lied down

Out of balance, he was afraid to drive anymore

Till one day they found him swaying down the corridor

Then came the CTs and MRIs

And results of the MDT

“It is sitting close to the nerves, the size is too big”

“Can’t guarantee complete excision

And there’s risk of facial palsy, or permanent damage”

“ There are options, Radio Ablation,

Have you heard of the gamma knife?

It can cut within nanometers and the hazards are small”

He said he had to take the gamble

Couldn’t bear the slow decline

A year on I see him,

He sits in quiet solitude

And holds out a paper

Beethoven’s playing the moonlight sonata

Can you hear?

Author's Notes/Comments: 
A new poem after a very long break. It is on a medical theme, acoustic neuromas are small tumours that sit on the hearing nerve and can cause symptoms relating to deafness. Hope you enjoy. Regards 

The test

Folder: 
Mixed stuff

Mario is walking to the class. In other times he would look all the faces around him. He would evaluate them and he would make inferences about their life, about why they act the way they do,  how they end up like that, but not today. Today he is thinking about his future, is the only thing that cross his mind. He is looking to the empty. Even the memory of Samantha´s tender look has gone off his thoughts.

 

He took a while to get to the class. He is finally there and decides to wait in a corner to confront her . All his medicine classmates look at him in a pity way. Mario ignores all of that. His only thought right now is his teacher. Samantha is at a tree located 50 steps from him. She was looking to her friend when in an instant she turns her head and looks directly at Mario with her deep and black eyes. Mario flips his head. He is yelling inside him. In all his life he has never flipped his head when a girl look at him . Why he did that now? He tries to focus on what matters now. A friend get close and ask him “Are you nervous?”. “No, I am excited” Mario says. “Excited? Are you nuts if you don´t answer correctly the questions you are going to fail this class and lose a year” his friend says. “Yes” say Mario smiling.

 

Suddenly, the teacher appears crossing the hallway. Mario look directly at her eyes. She get close to him and says “If you apologizes in front of all the class right now, we don´t have to do this”. Mario says “I will never apologize”.

 

Inside the classroom, the teacher orders to Mario to pass in front of the class. “Mario has questioned my methods of teaching. I will make him three questions, if he mistakes the answers he will get a zero on this class, but if he answers all the questions correctly I will accept my mistake and will change my methods of teaching. Are you ready Mario?”. “Yes” Mario says.

 

Samantha is in the middle of the classroom. Her beautiful black eyes make that Mario feels a little nervous. While the teacher prepares the book ,Mario remembers the incident. The teacher had put them in groups of three. She asked one of the members of the group one question about the class of Biochemistry. If he doesn´t answered correctly the question  the group would have a zero. Mario always studied all the chapters, and all the questions the teacher asked he knowed them. He accumulated 3 zeros in that class and in front of all the students he said that this was wrong. All his fellow students were surprised. This teacher was the most strict in the campus and no one has never said something about her methods of teaching. She said to Mario that he has to prove her that she was wrong. She would make him 3 questions about proteins.

 

The teacher is ready and asks the first question. “Name the three essential aminoacids that the body uses as source of energy in starvation”. Mario answers immediately “isoleucine, leucine and valine.” The teacher looks at Mario´s eyes and says “Are you sure?”. “Yes” Mario says. The teacher looks at the window and makes the next question “What is the only aminoacid that is essential and no essential?” the teacher asks him. Mario answers “Arginine”. The teacher looks at a sheet of a paper in the desk and smiles , Mario looks at the class, he noticed that outside the class, students of other semesters are watching inside. “Last question. Mention the four  enzymes that produce gout when they doesn´t  function normally.” “Four? Four?”,the class murmur something that Mario already knows, the principal book of this class only mention three regulatory enzymes. The teacher smiles and Mario answers “PRPP synthetase, glutamine PRPP amidotransferase,  HGPRT and …glucose 6 phosphatase” . The teacher´s look changed. “Correct. You can sit”. No one could believe it. The teacher accepts that her methods were wrong. All are surprised.

 

Mario feels great, his friend asks him how he knowed that last enzyme, and Mario says that he studied all the books in the library even the book that the teacher studied when she was in medicine school. Samantha who sits close of Mario flips his head and smiles to him. With the confidence earned he returns the smile.

 

This story was written by Irvin Iván Estrada Hernández

View irvinestrada's Full Portfolio

The test

Mario is walking to the class. In other times he would look all the faces around him. He would evaluate them and he would make inferences about their life, about why they act the way they do,  how they end up like that, but not today. Today he is thinking about his future, is the only thing that cross his mind. He is looking to the empty. Even the memory of Samantha´s tender look has gone off his thoughts.

 

He took a while to get to the class. He is finally there and decides to wait in a corner to confront her . All his medicine classmates look at him in a pity way. Mario ignores all of that. His only thought right now is his teacher. Samantha is at a tree located 50 steps from him. She was looking to her friend when in an instant she turns her head and looks directly at Mario with her deep and black eyes. Mario flips his head. He is yelling inside him. In all his life he has never flipped his head when a girl look at him . Why he did that now? He tries to focus on what matters now. A friend get close and ask him “Are you nervous?”. “No, I am excited” Mario says. “Excited? Are you nuts if you don´t answer correctly the questions you are going to fail this class and lose a year” his friend says. “Yes” say Mario smiling.

 

Suddenly, the teacher appears crossing the hallway. Mario look directly at her eyes. She get close to him and says “If you apologizes in front of all the class right now, we don´t have to do this”. Mario says “I will never apologize”.

 

Inside the classroom, the teacher orders to Mario to pass in front of the class. “Mario has questioned my methods of teaching. I will make him three questions, if he mistakes the answers he will get a zero on this class, but if he answers all the questions correctly I will accept my mistake and will change my methods of teaching. Are you ready Mario?”. “Yes” Mario says.

 

Samantha is in the middle of the classroom. Her beautiful black eyes make that Mario feels a little nervous. While the teacher prepares the book ,Mario remembers the incident. The teacher had put them in groups of three. She asked one of the members of the group one question about the class of Biochemistry. If he doesn´t answered correctly the question  the group would have a zero. Mario always studied all the chapters, and all the questions the teacher asked he knowed them. He accumulated 3 zeros in that class and in front of all the students he said that this was wrong. All his fellow students were surprised. This teacher was the most strict in the campus and no one has never said something about her methods of teaching. She said to Mario that he has to prove her that she was wrong. She would make him 3 questions about proteins.

 

The teacher is ready and asks the first question. “Name the three essential aminoacids that the body uses as source of energy in starvation”. Mario answers immediately “isoleucine, leucine and valine.” The teacher looks at Mario´s eyes and says “Are you sure?”. “Yes” Mario says. The teacher looks at the window and makes the next question “What is the only aminoacid that is essential and no essential?” the teacher asks him. Mario answers “Arginine”. The teacher looks at a sheet of a paper in the desk and smiles , Mario looks at the class, he noticed that outside the class, students of other semesters are watching inside. “Last question. Mention the four  enzymes that produce gout when they doesn´t  function normally.” “Four? Four?”,the class murmur something that Mario already knows, the principal book of this class only mention three regulatory enzymes. The teacher smiles and Mario answers “PRPP synthetase, glutamine PRPP amidotransferase,  HGPRT and …glucose 6 phosphatase” . The teacher´s look changed. “Correct. You can sit”. No one could believe it. The teacher accepts that her methods were wrong. All are surprised.

 

Mario feels great, his friend asks him how he knowed that last enzyme, and Mario says that he studied all the books in the library even the book that the teacher studied when she was in medicine school. Samantha who sits close of Mario flips his head and smiles to him. With the confidence earned he returns the smile.

Author's Notes/Comments: 

I think this is my last prose. I put it a lot of effort. Enjoy it