Demystifying Women’s Health

If you want to rile me up, you should talk about women’s health. Even the word, Women’s Health, annoys me. Why should only issues relating to my genitalia and my baby-making organs and my female hormones be referred to as Women’s Health, but the rest of me is… what? Men’s Health? And for that matter, why

Follow Friday: On The Other Side Of The Desk

I started blogging as a way of debriefing myself and in the process discovered a whole world of medical blogging. I have found mentors and colleagues all over the world, but I have also met people from the “other side”. I have gotten to know –  by means of what they choose to share with the

Scaring Kiddies… Unintentionally

When I rotated through Paediatric Oncology during my elective, I had some trouble. Remember how I wrote about the incredibly late detection of tumours – well, that is largely due to the fact that the Eastern Cape has a large rural population. Also, a lot of these children are first taken to traditional healers and

Paediatric Oncology in a South African Hospital

I’m spending some of my elective-time at a Paediatric Oncology ward. It was the thing (and incidentally also the exact ward) that started my tentative steps into the world of medicine many years ago. In South Africa, common childhood malignancies include ALL (Acute Lymphocytic Leukaemia), Wilm’s Tumours (Nephroblastoma), malignancies of the CNS and Retinoblastoma. I

Book Review: The Emperor of All Maladies

In 2012 I participate for the first time in a bookish challenge. Click here to see the different catagories.  For the History category I read The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee. The Emperor of all Maladies is a biography: not of a person or a company, but of a disease – one of the most

Discussion with a Medical Oncologist

During a visit to Oncology…  On curing cancer: “People will tell you that cancer can’t be cured. But I’ll tell you this: Cancer is about the only disease that can be cured. By and large, most diseases are not cured, they are managed. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Book Review: Steve Jobs

As a rule, I do not review non-medical books on this blog, unless it forms part of a Top Ten Tuesday. However, since my recent discovery of the myriad of book blogs, Goodreads and the ability to read while maintaining my schedule has led to me rather bravely attempting a bookish challenge, I have decided

Back to the Beginning

Remember how I wrote that a book inspired me to finally accepting placement at med school? Well, long before that, I had often said that if I were to study medicine, I would like to be an oncologist. I was a member of my school’s Interact club and spent a weekly afternoon with the kids