The Educated Drug Dealer 🫀🫁🩺💉🩻

The 3Cs of life right now- Cranky, Coffee-Dependent, and pre-exam-Cramming. Being cranky during exam prep is practically a requirement. But hey, at least you’re not alone- Out there, millions of other students are also hating life, overindulging in snacks, and reading their notes for the nth time while crying Amazon rivers inside. Remember: you’ve survived 100% of your bad days so far. So, grab another coffee, channel your inner overachiever, turn on the bixxh mode and keep going. You’ve got this… probably(smirk to myself!). Studying for exams is a universal rite of passage—like puberty, but somehow more awkward and soul-crushing. If you’re currently buried under a mountain of notes, fuelled by equal parts caffeine and existential dread, congratulations- You are living the academic dream! Far from bagging a Nobel prize for it though. Well thankfully, there is my better half nearby, to shake me down to reality on days I feel like I am sitting on the Iron th...

  That infamous dinner party scene from Hannibal—the one where Dr Lecter, the ever so refined host, performs a pseudo-awake craniotomy with the finesse of a Michelin-starred chef. While it’s horrifyingly fictional, I found a grim fascination in that… Ahemm, I know what you are thinking- this guy needs a psych assessment to rule out sociopathic tendencies. Well, of course, when you watch endless videos of people chopping away at others, that is quite so normal, isn’t it? (Huge Snort). On a more serious note, Hannibal is quite the man- to chop your own hand instead of that damsel’s hand requires a ‘Macho-man’ courage, which, unfortunately most of our male homo sapiens think they possess. God gave the male counterpart two ‘heads’ and most probably, blood supply to one head is more. You can guess which one based on the number of theatricals the male earthling is involved in, for example, petting a wild lion or a croc. Well, at the end of that day, the world balance is restored- you w...

Cardiopulmonary bypass, CPB or the heart-lung machine- that miraculous contraption that lets us casually stop the heart while pretending we (the Anaesthesiologists) are gods… As if we don’t have enough of a Zeus-complex already. It is a testament to the triumph of human ingenuity (and a lot of errors probably!) over basic common sense (as I often say, is not so common) because, really, who looked at a heart and thought, “I bet we could turn this off for a while and still have the patient survive”? The story begins in the 1800s (yes! You heard right), when brave (and potentially foolish)—surgeons and engineers started tinkering with the idea of mechanically replacing heart and lung function.  One of the earliest pioneers, Dr John Gibbon, is often credited with inventing the first successful CPB machine. Dr Gibbon’s inspiration? Watching a patient die in 1931 during pulmonary surgery(pulmonary embolectomy). He probably thought, “I could build something better than God’s creation!” ...

  The little perverts will think of the F word. Others will be tempted to shout out: Love. Well, you don’t need love to define your existence unless you are Romeo (and are fond of poisons). And here it comes- drum roll and curtain lift- Life… Anti-climatic, I know. Well, what is life? Life, the four-letter word that encapsulates the chaos and beauty of all living beings. It can be the greatest mystery, the cruellest joke, and the warmest embrace all rolled into one messy, glorious package. But let’s not take my word for it; let’s stroll through the musings of literary giants, because, after all, “A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone” (George R.R. Martin). Shakespeare, the original bard, quipped, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Life, then, is a theatre without a script. One moment, you’re delivering a speech about unrequited love and the next, you’re tripping over your cape and spilling wine at the banquet. Shakespeare’s metaphor remin...

  Ah, biostatistics, or simply put, medical statistics —the noble(snorts!!) discipline that turns chaotic clinical trials into digestible truths. For me, it has the opposite effect- indigestion to a level it could possibly turn my ass into a cannon ball shooter. It is both a lifeline and a lingering thorn in the side for most of us. Why is it useful? I would be tempted to say: it has no use whatsoever for me, I’m not a particular fan of statistics ever since my high school years. Yet, I would be lying. Ever wondered how your go-to anaesthetic cocktail for that particularly complex case is truly superior or if that’s just personal bias? Behold! Biostatistics steps in like the Sherlock Holmes of clinical data, separating causation from coincidence. The great thing about it- It mocks you like Sherlock Holmes when you do not grasp what is supposedly an easy affair… Well, easy affair my ass. Between evaluating p-values, confidence intervals, skewed distribution and the mystical “power o...

  The history of anaesthesia is a blend of brilliance and accidental discovery—akin to your first time placing a spinal. Weirdly enough, it involved quite a lot of surgeons! Long before anaesthesia as we know it, the best pain relief options were opium, mandrake root, or good old alcohol. In ancient Egypt, surgeons used poppy extracts; in China, acupuncture might have been the go-to for some relief. Meanwhile, in Europe, you’d be lucky to get a hearty serving of mead before someone started hacking away at your leg. Speed was the motto- hack away, my surgeon, my knight in shining armour, so my pain can later on go away… or more likely, I go away. In ancient times, surgery was not so much a calculated medical procedure as it was a daring leap of faith with limited understanding of anatomy and a lack of antiseptic practices. Every operation was a risky affair. Death loomed over every incision, turning surgeries into high-stakes gambles for both the surgeons and the patients. What abou...

  In the grand coliseum of life, the blame game is often and sadly enough, the most cherished sport. Sometimes it is not even two people. It can be just be the two sides in our own head- the devil and the angel. Sure, the devil looks great: Damn Lucifer is ripped and witty. (Well, you will forget how great he looks when he told you there is no need for a morning pill because he was in total control. Four weeks later, surprise surprise when you are peeing on that little stick in the morning and seeing those red lines appear!). No muggle can succeed without a knack for tossing responsibility across the aisle, like a hand grenade lobbed to explode just precisely beneath the next-in-line’s ass. The good news is that he will not make a damn noise when he farts, ever again. Today, I bring you the tale of two titans in line for the next village head – Bob and Tom– both hell-bent on preserving their pristine reputations while branding each other as the architect of chaos: the modern Thanos...