Wednesday, July 24, 2013

.....they are getting younger and younger : Primary Myocardial Infarct Angioplasty and Stenting



Zain S A, 33 , KLIA limo driver [ not his real name of course ]
Smokes 2 packs a day, recently diagnosed insulin dependent diabetic on Novo-rapid subcutaneous insulin, 3 times a day and  a long acting insulin, Novomix  12 unit at bedtime. 
Diabetic control seem quite optimal.

11.30 pm just now had sudden onset gripping chest pain while watching TV at home. Wife, who is a nurse brought him to our ER at 1 am just now.

" Doc Nik, we have a young diabetic with an acute inferior infarct for you...", my medical officer in ER woke me up with a start at 0130 hours.
I used to curse quietly under my breath before in my younger days at this kind of  'rude' interruption to my 'dream', but now at 61, I  have somewhat mellowed a wee bit. I now consider this kind of calls  in the wee hours of the morning as a very polite and welcomed 'wake  up call to tahajjud'. 

Patients are getting younger and younger. It used to be ' I am younger than my patients' some 25 years ago, now they are about my eldest son's age! Time certainly waits for no man.

By 2.15am the emergency team were all ready for action in the thearte  and Zain S A already on the table. In 'Manhattan Fish Market' linggo, 'it cannot get any fresher than this !'

Angiogram showed he has a totally occluded right dominant coronary artery. An inferior infact from the right coronary artery occlusion is usually smaller than a left coronary infarct and but a dominant right coronary artery is a 'different cattle of fish'. Patients with these type of occlusion behave badly if not opened fast enough. It is geographical. It supplies more myocardial muscle, therefore its occlusion impacts more. They will be more muscle loss and heart muscle death.

We did not have much time to work on him as his pulse rate was already going 'bradycardic' [ 36 beat per minute ], which duly responded to an intravenous atropine, for the time being. His right coronary artery, being dominant  supplies blood to his SINOATRIAL NODE, the 'natural' pacemaker  of the heart, and ' bradycardia' is it's  way of 'complaining' that it is getting 'suffocated due to no blood flow' and if 'you guys are too slow, I have to call it a day! '. 

Asystole  and cardiac arrest may follow extreme bradycardia..if that happened, we would have a 'wayang kulit' on the table and possibility of instant death , much, much higher, even though it remian that the cardiac thearte table must be about 'the safest place for any cardiac arrest in the whole hospital'!

" Dont get too excited Zain, you just concentrate on your Kul Huwallah, and insyaallah, you will be OK soon......", and I say mine as well. Divine blessing and help is a bonus in this kind of  dicey, life threatening situation.

We ballooned up the artery in no time with a 20mm by 2.5mm balloon, and then duly stented it with a  drug eluting XIENCE stent ,3.0mm by 28mm at 18 atmospheres pressure, x 2

By 3.30 am patient was dozing deeply in CCU helped by the initial dose of morphine given at ER and in the cardiovascular lab for pain management.

This morning at nine he is already asking me when he could be discharged.



What Is A Heart Attack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8P3n6GKBSY

Coronary Angioplasty and Stenting [ cartoon ]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9AqBd4RExk



How A Heart Attack Is Treated
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApJvxgjUOjc



Angioplasty and Stenting of Occluded Left Anterior Descending Artery:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z2DaU0GBAE&feature=related









Saturday, July 20, 2013

' .....show me the straight path '









'Show me the straight path', 
Reminded me some 20 years ago when myself and the late Ibrahim Promet found ourselves lost in the myriad of small lanes in downtown Makkah, going in circles.
We saw an elderly Arab man and approach him, " Ya shyakh !..ihdinassirotolmustakim  ila makkah hotel!? "
The old man understood us and kindly lead the way.
Admittedly, the path to  hotel makkah was neither straight nor short.

Shyakh Ninowy here talks about  "ihdinassirotolmustakim"
In essence, it is not a straight path.     
It is not easy either. 
In fact it is tough. Oftentimes you lose friends as well  
It  is the path one takes after fully immersing oneself in 'Allah's' colouring'

not 50 %, not 60 %.....it has to be 100 %
If it is  just 50 %, 60 % , you get what you get with those clowns in Tahrim Square right now.

And they are Muslims! Almost all of them.
They  think 'ihdinassirotol mustakim' is a continued free lunch from Uncle Sam.











Saturday, July 6, 2013

Egypt, Oh Egypt....




oh my lord,
your esteemed messenger once told us
if there are blatant injustice to your creatures, to raise an army
if we cant, then do personal jihad
and  if we still  cant on the basis of being weak , puny and feeble minded,
to raise our voice
and if we still cant,
to feel  the pain in our hearts and soul and pray.....

oh my lord, i am both feeble , weak and puny
in body, mind and soul
hunger,jihad and death are too much beyond me
but i do feel the pain and the anger....
do accept this as my objection and place me along those who believe
register this soul as the one in pain,
pain at the injustice being done in the name of modernity and progress

oh my lord 
i pray let there be a thousand more morsi to replace morsi
and a thousand more martyrs to replace those who have given their lives for You 

oh my lord,
bless me with a heart able to separate  truth from falsehood
bless me  with an eye to view this world through Your prism

ya mukallibal qulub thabit qalbi ala ka taatik
ya mukallibal qulub thabit qalbi ala ka di nik
oh the One who changes hearts, firm my heart in your obedience
oh the One who changes hearts, firm my heart on Your Din








From Ikram Mokhtar, somewhere in Dubai :

Nik,
4 July 02:58
after reading the events of Edward Snowden disclosure and the follow up actions by the USA, the Gay marriage law approval and many other things I cannot help concluding that America is the Great Satan as Imam Khomeini said long time ago .I think the US government is Dajjal as it has all the characteristics as described.


........................................................

Ikram,

we disagree on many issues Ikram but on this I am in full agreement with you.
And why not

I was senior registrar in a Central London  teaching hospital during the dizzying days leading to the 1st gulf war in the late 1980's
I could sense the general mood there: Islam against the 'rest of us' feeling.
If America is the dajjal , Britain is its able bulldog
We Muslims should by now know who our friends and foes are...
Just look at Morsi, barely 1 year in his tenure and the secularists  and the small minority coptics are already after his blood, not helped a little by cnn, aljazira and bbc

Just look at Ghadafi and Saddam, the former had a bullet in his head and the latter stretched by his neck. Their crime:  not wanting to sell their oil in US dollars! I know, you may say the are not perfect Muslims themselves. So what? Who are in this topsy turvy world.

Just look at Erdogan, 15 years at the helm, raising nTurkey's GNP and standard of living many times over, and when he  chose to close the pubs at 10 pm, Turkey is on fire.

And just look at us here, 50 years 'menerajui kerajaan', we even have difficulties passing the 'underage laws for conversion'. and why not?
we still have clowns in the government like nadzri  apakahnamadiadah who thinks he is clever and playing to the gallery. every time he opens his mouth , he reveals his utter ignorance

We Muslims must know who our real enemies are and start using the ballot box to the max.

They want democracy, ok we can have democracy.
We are 1.6 billion going on to 2 billion..let us have democracy
Let us play their ballgame..but 1st let us know our enemies!

Nik Howk



............................................................




Dear Nik Hawk,

I have not been to the Middle East for a quite while and I have no view to offer other than repeating what the Press and the Media is already covering.

I will be there next month, so I will have some 'ground ' coverage to share.

Wassalaam

Nadzru Azhari
In Jakarta



.................................................................


Nadzru dear,

There is a new twist to democracy nadzru..which our leaders here should take note
It is not a blank cheque.
and  to make matters worse,if you have an Islamic bent in Egypt, beware, alBaradei and his band of secularist gangsters can get you in jail within a year.

In my 'not too humble' opinion , is that if we leave Islam to the bloody secular Arabs in 2013, we better say good bye.
I wonder how albaradey and prof fahmy would answer HIM in their  graves in the not to distant future,
" Sir, I put it to you that you have nipped Islam in the bud when it was ripe to be a rose! "
and back home..." as the substantive pm for the last 22 years or so , what have you done to bring MY sovereignty to the  land"
Sri rum is not there to turn and twist.

We now almost forget that we finally all are answerable to HIM
ya mukalibal qulub, thabit qalbi ala kaa di nik
[ oh the One who changes hearts, firm my heart on your Din ]

Nik Howk



............................................................





Dear Nik Hawk,

For the lack of ground knowledge and my 'long 'absence from the 'arab street', I can offer you opinions based on the same cliches perhaps with less 'religious'content in it. Please don't get bored. First, if the crowds can cause the removal of Husni Mubarak+Co , then call for elections and Morsi +Co wins by a simple majority,with the Army standing by voluntarily and not losing an iota of its power and privilege; so can a similar crowd be raised and a demand for socio-political correction be cobbled together and Morsi be antiseptically removed. Just like Husni Mubarak was removed. Democratically elected? So was brother Husni,he won by a'99%' of the votes! The methodology is predictable and must be made aware of at all times. It is the same old wine ( in deference to our arab brethren unto whom wine is an inseparable part of their social culture, piety and repentance notwithstanding) ) in a new bottle. Here, Thailand can offer our Morsi +Co a reprieve and solution. When PM Thaksin Shinawatra was removed by an army coup d'etat , in response to a 'crowd'and 'popular demand that he be removed, parliament suspended and an interim Government led by a nominee of no less than the Royal Privy Council and an ' general election' was conducted and the Opposition Front won and formed a new government to last the rest of the season. Then feeling confident, army in full backing, privy council in tacit approval , the time for the new season of the democratic process came, new general election was held . Against the strong army support, privy council approval and the 'popular' support as seen in the 'red shirt' demonstrators all over Thailand, 'humbled' ( not humble) Mr Thaksin Shinawatra won the general election with an even bigger margin! The army sheepishly returned to the barracks, the privy council went on their normal duties of fixing the honorifiques due to be handed out at the next birthday celebrations and the buddhist waisak day and Mr Shinawatra rules well and good , even when he has to run his administration from office in Dubai, as the decree on his 'persona non grata' still holds. That's is one hope that Morsi+ Co can hold on to,win again, win handsomely. Not marginally, win handsomely beyond reproach from the 'people' of Egypt.

For this our Brother Anwar Ibrahim+Co have to very careful, for he can be Al-Barada'i + Co and instead Najib + Co can be Morsi +Co ! Whereas our Brother Anwar a Morsi he much a wanteth to be and Al-Barada'i he like a plague avoideth to be!

Talking about Egypt and its political intrigues, it is not uninteresting. It is one of the main reasons why I put a son in college there in Cairo. I want him to have the best socio-political education and Egypt is offering him the best. ' Religious education' as it is popularly understand here, is not my intention. I recall the biography of Gur Dur a former President of the Republic of Indonesia and that of Malek Bennabi a socio-political activist from French Algeria,that,' Cairo offers the best 'street' and 'popular' education and socio-religious +political consciousness! Gus Dur and Bennabi hated the rote and stulthifying Al-Azhar education and both picked up the best of arabic language education and Islam in its socio-political challenge from the 'streets' , Opera house, the movies + theatre, the libraries and publication houses of Cairo. So that is still Cairo right at this moment of time!

Do not ask from Cairo and the Egyptians what they since post-Ottoman times, cannot give, not able to give and will continue not to be able to give. Let us rejoice with Egypt and Egyptians in what they are giving us now. We learn from them and become far better then them. They are destined to be our 'laboratoires' and such is their lot.

Wassalaam

Nadzru



........................................................




nadzru,

very good sum up from an arabist par excellence.
sorry about my religious bent, cannot help it nowadays. the more i spend listening to the likes of hamza yusuf, shyakh ninowy et al , 
the more skewed i get. my apology.
look like i have to change my 'glass'

just that egypt to me is a deja vu' of algeria some 15,20 years or so back
for morsi and his muslim brotherhood though, to sum up what doc rosli of pas wrote to me some years back, 'the nawaitu is there,they have tried their level best, the result is immaterial, it is beyond them'.

in the final court of law they can stand up with their chins turn upward and say, 'my lord, we have tried our best, the world is just not '...cking' ready for YOU"
....and perhaps the late asri,haji fathil,tgna, tuan guru hadi et al can also join them in this rarefied group as well, consisting of luminaries such as sayyid qutub, mawdudi and a few others. even though in the secular sense of the world, they are failures.....

can we, nadru? can we ?

nik howk



....................................................................


Nik Howk,

I beg to differ Dr Nik as they may not be failures in the eyes of Allah Swt, In Shaa Allah as we have the comfort of knowing half of those in Shurga will be ummah Mohammad though we are trying very hard to be one of those so permitted by Allah Swt.

Sent from my iPhone
Nadimah Nik Adeeb


...........................................................................



Nadimah,


 in the secular sense of the world, they are failures....

this is just a metaphorical expression


i do agree with you.
they are the successful ones, placed alongside the ambiya and the shuhada, insyaallah......allahualam

we, where are we??

always looking at things from the secular perspective, reading situations forever with cynicism and disdain.
always looking from the perspective of the'stomach' rather than the spirit.......
we, where are we heading to??

people like prof khalid fahmy, who sold his religion for a few penny, who think the syaria is outmoded and that the muslim brotherhood should disband themselves,
people who one time ago lamented that kelantan would be inundated by 'sup tangan'

we, where are heading....?

as muslims, if we have no confidence in the syaria, we should just keep our mouth shut and be damned....this is no small matter...it is aqidah...if we want to remain muslim. and if you are pm and you have to open your big mouth, reexamine your soul 1st before you become pm, is it worth it??
we open it, and we have to explain later.......

who wants to be pm still??
or mrs pm??
that is a lot of baggage....

nik howk




............................................................






Dear Nik Hawk,

I have a litlle bit of a problem if I have to divide my opinion in the cliche of religious bent, of the pious and the unpious ,as a lot of men and women of piety are with Al-Barada'i and among the officer class of the Egyptian Army. The rank and file of the Egyptian army is the biggest employment destination of egyptians who graduated from the Al-Azhar campuses in Cairo, Tanta and Zagazig. The most prominent corner of the Army Officers Club in the Gezira, is the club mosque! So is the Police Club there and the Air Force officers club in Heliopolis! So good are the lectures by visiting al-Azhar scholars at the club auditoriums, so attentive and solemn are the good brother officers! The General that got promoted to the Chief of Staff was vetted by Morsi's own corp of religious advisors! And that Brother General was ever so happy to antiseptic ally extricate Morsi with a knife and scalpel away from the Presidential Palace. I attended a wedding of Suzanne Mubarak's niece at one of those clubs in 2011 and I can tell you it does not lack the 'religious observances' of any pious rich Islamist NGO activist in Kuala Lumpur. There was a sea of elegant ladies in headscarves and foulards! Morsi's and Al-Barada'i flock is not a divide of islamists and secularists, the Egyptians are too steep in islamic roots to be so divided into good cheese and bad chalk.

The Egyptians do not have our history of civil obedience and obeisance to law and order when that is enacted among themselves for themselves, when that was done by the colonialists on them, they were the best obeisant and servile types on earth.For all our weaknesses the ASEAN society ( olde Malaya is too small for me to talk as a base case) is an enviable one in terms of civil order and respect for 'democracy' if ever that can be a base case, since religiosity is not my forte. Save a bad spell of Khmer Rouge Cambodia and authoritarian Myanmar, we are admirable in the way we take to the culture of electoral campaigns, ballot boxes and respecting the outcome, give or take a period of stadium demonstrations. We have Presidents and PMs that actually retire, though belated at times , save HE Thaksin Shinawatra who was surgically removed like that done for HE Morsi.

Let us be fair to the Egyptians by not giving their current political noise a 'religious' content. There are manifestos and political party mission statements and they are all good, they have to be. I believe it is the inability to accept Morsi's electoral victory and that he is indeed by popular count the 'people's choice that prompted those that got defeated by popular count to dismantle the elected government before the tenure is over and they had discovered that the 'demo at tahrir square' is a very effective tool. Why do egyptians behave this way? Because they are egyptians! If we know that and accept it as is where is, I believe we will be less fatigued following their events. Take it as our distant learning in socio-political intrigue and manipulation education, give or take a few deaths on the streets.

We can go on with the cliches of ' foreign intervention', the 'israeli hidden agenda at work' done on the egyptians. Let us not dwell on that, just stick to looking at the folly of our Egyptian brothers and sisters and learn what to do and not to do. Let us not put too heavy a weight and measure of Heaven and Hell for them.

Wassalaam

Nadzru B Azhari




........................................................






i am used to   tall stories  in my everyday work nadzru, but you version is too tall.
but you are the arabist. me, i am just a dreamer.


anyway, time is on morsi 's  and the muslim brotherhood's side
come next 'erection' they will win hands down, insyaallah
unless they ban ikhwan just as they tried to prevent him from becoming president by putting a clause about being 100 % egyptian in the 1st place
certainly the muslim world are disappointed with what is happening in egypt, 
but islam is an idea that is long overdue....it will prevail, even in the land of the pharaoh

as for albaradai, he once was a stooge for the west with respect to sadam's alledge nuclear ambition, by being less definitive and wishy washy on iraq's nuclear capability, thus giving a leeway  and window of opportunity for bush and blair to act.
now what....
leopards do not change their skins.

nik howk

ps: 
and by the way morsi is not your ordinary kopiah wearing islamist carrying banners around. he is an active  post doctoral fellow with several research thesis to his name, and used to works for nasa. his research papers ,even the heading i cannot comprehend.
in egypt it is possible to be a 'nik aziz' in term of spirit but has a phd in engineering and research and be a consultant engineer as well.
'muslim brotherhood' is his other call-card, and that my friend, negates him from the high office of the land of the pharaoh.
" the whole world my lord is not ready yet for YOU ".


i am not alone nadzru,
but of course , islam is not fashionable
and even sheikhul al azhar can be bought as most ulama are





..........................................................



from Ikram Mokhtar in Dubai,


Another Syria in the making?
I wouldn't bet on the impossibility
MB vows non-stop protests in Egypt
www.presstv.ir

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood vows non-stop protests until Morsi returns to presidential palace.











......................................................


Ikram,

frankly speaking when i see the sheikhul al azhar alongside the general and the head of coptic church and albaradei on tv yesterday, i almost vomitted.
my only consolation was that i was not alone with this sentiment.
tok guru nik aziz also must have felt the same.
we obviously are in the minority but it does not matter
as long as the 'people in the higher plane know it and register it', that is all that matters.

egypt, oh egypt.


nik howk