A few weeks ago, we packed our bags, sat in a car, drove to another city, got keys to an apartment and settled my daughter in her new room. The next day we drove back home. She did not return with us. This was the first time in her life that she would spend a night on her own. This...
Last night, I went to see the fireworks. The night was festive. Red and blue flags were everywhere. It was a beautiful summer night. The air was crisp. People were jovial. The music was catchy. The Harley engines were loud. The ice cream cones were melty. There were a lot of people there. I met a few. We had great...
My grandfather could not read or write. Still not so unfortunate to be unable to send his children to school. He moved them from the village to the city and put them in a school. Not only did he give his children the opportunity to learn but he also passed on to them the discipline to work hard and excel...
The house that I live in is an old house. It was built in 1939. It is in one of the older neighborhoods in town. Most people that live here are older in age and have been living here for decades. The couple who used to live here, who we bought the house from, became empty-nesters and then retired and...
“Today is a special day Emily. Maybe one of the most important days of your life.” I tried to conclude the clinical encounter. After giving her scientifically derived percentages of prognosis of her breast cancer and answering all her carefully jotted-down questions, I tried to end with a customary parting comment. “It’s been almost a year since you found this...
Note to reader: This is a longer essay that will be best enjoyed if you take your time to read it rather than a quick scroll. Think of it more as a book chapter rather than an internet meme. You also have the option to listen to it if time is a constraint. “In each human heart are a tiger,...
It is almost approaching two decades since I have worked at this hospital. This is where I grew up as a physician. After my home, I have spent most hours of my life within these walls and walking around these hallways. The hospital used to have two main buildings but a few years ago, the administration decided to erect a...
Two women in their thirties meet unexpectedly at a gathering and realize that they are seeing each other after fifteen years. The last time they spent time together was when they were in high school. Then the paths of their lives diverged and they did not keep in touch. Now was a good time to catch up. Their names are...
There is no news that one can hear about oneself that is more dreadful than being told that you have cancer. The mind shuts down for a few minutes. No matter what the doctor is saying, the words do not register. It is like in the movies. The only difference is that the scene passes in the movies, and there...
Some lines that you read or hear get stuck in memory without any good reason. From teenage years of reading Sidney Sheldon books, the phrase “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” has been etched into my memory. The idiom is sometimes attributed to Shakespeare but upon further digging I found out that this is a line from a...
There were times when Latin or Sanskrit were the most widely spoken languages around the world. Today, that claim goes to the English language. When I was growing up in Pakistan, we used to speak Urdu and Pashto at home but since the country was under British colonial rule prior to gaining independence, English was the language that was taught...
No matter what kind of work you do, you likely take a break for coffee or lunch. This is a time when you catch a casual moment with your colleagues. Although this moment is meant to break the monotony of the day, it is not uncommon for your mind to keep going back to the intricately complex interactions you may...
This article was published in The Friday Times on March 7, 2023. Should you choose to read it at the newspaper website, please click here. “A good doctor has to wear three hats. That of a clinician, a researcher, and that of a teacher.” I remember being instructed by the Program Director on the first day of my residency training....
I was recently in Peshawar to attend my younger brother’s wedding. It was a long time, more than a decade since there was a wedding in my family, so everybody was excited, including myself. After spending a week full of festivities and fun, when I came back to Rochester, all my American friends were excited to see the pictures and...
If my grandfather were alive, he would be the same age as Mr. Hendricks. Seventy-eight years old. That’s why when I first met him, he introduced himself as John but I preferred to call him Mr. Hendricks. That’s how I was taught as one of the ways to give respect to the elderly. The “American” way is to call someone...
Sandy was sent to me by her primary care physician for evaluation of anemia. As I reviewed her chart, Iexplained to the medical student that the blood work showed a lifelong benign condition called alpha thalassemiatrait that she was born with. It had no potential to harm her. This would be a quick consult meaning we would have some extra...
“Mark my words. AI (Artificial Intelligence) is more dangerous than the nukes.” Elon Musk. The other day, as soon as I walked in to work, already running my usual ten minutes late, I was hustling from my office to the clinic when I saw one of our physician assistants in the hallway. Otherwise known for her calm composure, it seemed...
Our first meeting: My first recollection of Donna is when she came to the Cancer Center for the first time. She had been recently diagnosed with cancer that had already spread to her liver. As I walked into the room, I found an energetic and charismatic person who had the ability to become the center of attention of any gathering....
It’s not a good feeling when as a doctor, you cannot do too much for your patient. That’s how I felt when I walked into the room to see Valerie for the first time. She was in her 60’s. She was flanked by her two adult grand-daughters who you could tell were very close to their grandma. You could tell...
Is it just me or does it look like everybody is getting overly opinionated nowadays? Everywhere I go, discussions are robust and quite heated. Everybody is part of multiple WhatsApp groups nowadays which has helped rekindle old friendships and has brought families together despite living many miles apart. It is supposed to be a good thing but then it looks...
This article was published in The Friday Times on April 12, 2022. ***CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE AT THE FRIDAY TIMES WEBSITE*** The first Grammy for a nation of 220 million people should be celebrated no less than the first Nobel Prize or the first Oscar. Thank you Arooj Aftab to show us this day. Not too long ago,...
It was not too long ago, but it seems like decades when traveling for a CME conference was a routine part of being a physician as looking up articles on UpToDate or giving patients bad news. But like so many other things in life, the reality of CME conferences has changed. Most training programs give allowance to physicians for CME...
***CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE PODCAST*** “I understand that the biggest fear you have about going through chemotherapy is losing your hair. I just want to tell you. You will be fine. Trust me. I know it’s barbaric. Why don’t we have medicines to treat cancer that will not make you lose your hair in this day and age? Strange,...
Visiting Peshawar after six years I left Peshawar and went to the USA for medical training just a couple of years after 9/11 in 2001. Since I left, over the last two decades, I have visited this historical city a number of times but then, as life events happened and for various reasons, I did not get a chance to...
Ephemeral: adj: lasting for a very short time – Oxford Little Dictionary Ever since we start to read and write as children, it is imposed on us that we should be on a lifelong quest to improve our vocabularies. And why not? The more words you know, the better you will be able to express yourself. The more you rely...
Friends get each other talking I’m trying to remember how it came about. Some of my friends who have been friends for four decades, that is, since elementary school, but living in different parts of the world now, have come up with a routine. We talk by WhatsApp video chat every now and then. Last week, as we were talking...
Dear patient, I understand that the biggest fear you have about going through chemotherapy is that you will lose your hair. I just want to tell you. You will be fine. Trust me. I know it’s barbaric. In this day and age, why don’t we have medicines to treat cancer that will not make you lose your hair? Strange, right?...
*** CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE PODCAST*** “At the hospital, the nurse is the one who is at the patient’s bedside around the clock. When the patient has to go to the bathroom or needs help to sit up in a chair, he or she calls the nurse. The nurse is the one who is changing the diapers for the...
“They are firing me for not getting the COVID vaccine. I can make more money working at Michael’s than I do at this job. I was only doing this because I like to help people. But this is it for me. I’m quitting. I’ll miss the patients, but I cannot be forced into doing something that I don’t believe in.”...
***CLICK HERE*** TO VEW THE PODCAST “I was a bit nervous about how she would perceive my advice. She could find it inappropriate and report me for making personal remarks. But I believe she sensed the sincerity in my words and appeared invigorated, uplifted, and excited. She was smiling now and exclaimed, ‘Doctor, you will see now how I get...
OK this is very cool and definitely a first for me! Thanks to Farid Jan, my friend for four decades (yes since kindergarten) who is close friends with Ali Zafar (one of the top Pakistani A-list singers), I was asked to translate this Pashto folk song into Urdu. CLICK HERE FOR A LINK TO THE SONG ON YOU TUBE
I cannot claim to be someone who knew Tom most closely but I can claim to be a person who asked Tom’s permission to write a few words about him a few days before he died. To which he agreed. Also, to call him a Social Worker would be a disservice to have as a title for his eulogy because...
Dear medical student (or student in any other field that requires public dealing): I was in your shoes twenty years ago. At that time, I thought that becoming a doctor was all about gaining medical knowledge. When I started my clinical rotations, I was convinced that the “history of present illness” is the most important aspect of patient evaluation. As...
I was on inpatient service and had already seen most of the patients on my list. I just had to see one more before I could call it a day and rush out just in time to take my daughter to her tennis lesson. I reviewed the patient’s chart to find out that her cancer had spread to her spine,...
We first met about two years ago when she came to see me in my clinic as a new patient. I glanced through her chart and reviewed her scans and pathology reports. She had one of the worst possible kinds of lung cancers, called small cell lung cancer, that had spread to both of her lungs. Her disease was incurable,...
Excited to appear as a guest at The Podcast by Kevin MD. We discussed the issue of “COVID vaccine doubters.” Among other noticeable guests at this podcast was Samuel Shem, the author of the iconic book “The House of God.” As of March 17, 2021, it has already been viewed more than 6000 times on Facebook Watch. Kevin Pho is...
The slow and painful death of Hand-writing. It was a particularly busy day at work. I was moving between patients quickly making sure that I was not appearing rushed and was trying to give each patient the time and attention that they deserved. The email inbox was overflowing and the phone calls were relentlessly interrupting. The secretary reluctantly walked into...
Seeking Non-Muslims’ help to solve the Muslim-Extremist Cartoon Problem Some predicaments are inter-cultural and to seek their potential solutions, you have to rely on people who understand both the cultures at play. I am a Muslim having lived half of my life in Pakistan and the rest half in America. I understand both the Eastern and Western cultures quite well...
January 14, 2021 COVID Quarantine is not meant for you to become an alcoholic! Interview with Dan Gross from Channel 8 RochesterFirst.com about the rise of alcohol intake during the pandemic and unawareness amongst surveyed women of the link between alcohol intake and higher risk of developing cancer. Click on this link to read the transcript of the interview and...
December 23, 2020 Can you tell the difference between an “anti-vaxxer” and a “vaccine-doubter”? An anti-vaxxer will outright deny and reject vaccines and may be quite rigid in their views. In contrast, a vaccine-doubter understands the importance of vaccines but has many valid inquiries. The latter may be more accepting of meaningful discourse, so here I am, trying to have...
June 7, 2020 I am neither black nor white. I’m brown. I can choose to stay silent and indifferent, but the human and the American in me urges me to express my feelings and opinion about the current situation in the country resulting from a series of unfortunate events, particularly George Floyd’s blatant murder in broad daylight. I immigrated to...
June 3, 2020 Until about 50 to 100 years ago, the tradition was to name diseases after the doctors who used to describe them for the first time. Such diseases are called eponymous diseases. There are numerous examples, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Marfan’s syndrome, and Wilson’s disease, to name a few. Often, specific signs and symptoms were named after certain...
May 29, 2020 “You forgot your stethoscope!” The medical student dutifully pointed out as we were on our way to the patient room. “I don’t need it. But let me grab it anyway to pretend. But don’t tell anyone I said that!” I replied. Her eyes widened with disbelief at the blasphemous statement. At the turn of the millennium, the...
May 18, 2020 Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Badshah Khan or Baacha Khan) was an iconic leader of the Pashtun people who lived a selfless life and was one of the greatest freedom fighters against the British Colonial rule. He was revered by many but misunderstood by others. However his contribution to the freedom movement and his love for his own...
March 22, 2020 I like to play games. When I am with my friends or family, I try to throw out some topics and try to have them debate opposite sides of an argument. I have bought a few card games that are “conversation starters “. You would be surprised at how people will respond to questions and situations what’s...
My grandfather could not read or write. Still not so unfortunate to...
Two women in their thirties meet unexpectedly at a gathering and realize...
Some lines that you read or hear get stuck in memory without...
I was recently in Peshawar to attend my younger brother’s wedding. It...
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