Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Priceless




So former President Clinton went to North Korea and returned with the 2 journalists who were otherwise sentensed to 12 years of hard labour.



Elsewhere in the USA, you have yet another gunman who open fired at a dance exercise class, killing three.

2 saved, 3 died.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Tako-Tsubo par excellence


Stress cardiomyopathy is an increasingly recognised differential diagnosis of an apparent acute coronary syndrome.

A 50 odd year old man with long history of addiction originally from Northland, in the city for 1 week waiting to check into alcohol rehab. He presented to Auckland City Hospital with few hours history of chest pain after giving a speech at the local AA meeting.

Arrival ECG showed some ST elevation in the II, III and aVF. Angiogram within one hour showed no culprit lesion but mid ventricle ballooning.

A few hours later, confined in a side room in CCU, he wanted a smoke. Nurse gave up convincing him and paged the registrar at 0630hrs instead (the feeling of course is if they are up working, so should the lazy registrar). After a few standard exchange the patient then poured his heart out saying he left Northland because his family literally kicked him out because of his addiction troubles, and for the first time this 50 year old man revealed a bit of his secrets which he blames as the cause of his addition at the AA meeting. What follow was of course his heart attack.

His emotional burden, the telling of his secrets, literally caused his heart to be broken.


"No matter what struggles have come along in what has been, I think, quite a turbulent life, I got up very early in the morning and did my job professionally. It was a matter of honour to me. No matter what was going on, I was there every night on the telly. I make no claims of heroism in telling you this. It was just the way I considered life to be. No matter what ghastly times marred my journey, the work had to be done, the show had to go on. You pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. You smile though your heart is breaking, and all that".

Like him or not, what Paul Holmes says make sense. I always wondered whether it was the money that kept him going - waking up for his breakfast show on Newstalk ZB during week days for so many years. Alas, "it was just the way I considered life to be". And indeed, how one views life really depends on one's term of reference.