Every dog has his day

Boo Boo
George

George and Boo boo
The world’s tallest dog met the world’s shortest in Central Park when they both made their Manhattan debuts to have measurements taken for the "Guinness Book of World Records."
Giant George the Great Dane, who's almost 5 years old, measured 3 feet 5 inches from the ground to the top of his shoulders, and 7 feet 3 inches from his tail to his nose. On the other end of the canine spectrum, Boo-Boo the Chihuahua measured only 4 inches tall and 6.5 inches long.
“George eats about 110 lbs a week,” the dog’s owner, Dave Nasser, said. At 245 lbs, he weighs as much as above an average body builder.In a stark contrast, Boo-Boo, at 1.5 lbs., is smaller than a slice of a pizza.When the tiny  Chihuahua was born from C-Section, she was a third of the size of the other puppies, and had to be fed from an eyedropper because "she was too little to nurse.”


The two dogs may be different, but both seemed equally confused at the Guinness Book of World Records event.Experts say after the initial confusions,George recognised Boo Boo as a girl dog and showed some interest in her,and probably cast some romantic passes at her.

Khagendra Thapa

Edward Nino

Sultan and Kocoman
The worlds tallest man and shortest woman also met recently during the Guiness event.Both were Turkish.At eight feet three inches and still growing, Sultan Kossesn, 28, currently holds the Guinness World Record for tallest living man.
The shortest woman , ElifKocoman,22, lives with her family in Kadirli. She is just 28.6 inches tall.
Unlike the case of George and Boo Boo,there was no confusion between Sultan and Kocoman. She found a safe place in his lap for the photo sessions.
The current holder of the title of the shortest man is Edward Nino Hernandez, a 24-year-old Colombian dancer who measures just 27ins.But Nino's reign is likely to be short because Nepalese teenager Khagendra Thapa Magar is, metaphorically at least, looking over his shoulder.


Now,there are reasons for dogs to rejoice. At least on records,they are respected the same way as human. As long as Guinness makes  a seperate  book for animals.

Years of pain

Father,not my will, but Thine will be done

Acha,

I had written a long comment-as painful as it was....and then some thing goes wrong with the system and I lose it all....

I was about to curse the turn out of things and then I remembered - "Why should I and whom should I curse - God? -should He be the one responsible for all of this crap that has befallen our lives??"


This is small in comparision to the larger things that go wrong on an on-off basis in life ...(I have been taught that by this period in my life....), so if that loss has hit you, no other loss should!!! And I take what has transpired with a smile and start writing again.....

Sheri- I always used to say was my first baby, though we have our lil Kevini...everything about her was child like - her smile, her innocence, her talks, her reactions to situations..everything!!!

I sometimes ask God-why her? And I sometimes console myself thinking that maybe there was some purpose to be served-do I need to lead a more meaningful life? Should I be of 
use , should I be a source of support for the less privileged ones? Sometimes I think that the answer is Yes - if she has left for heaven and I still continue to be as carefree about life as I was - what purpose did her death serve? And so my choices since then were influenced by this mindset, and so you know...!!!  No regrets - she is happy for me as she always has been..!!!


I miss her in my life beyond what I can say or express..some days are just killing...still I live on...a day will come for everyone...and its easier to accept if one believes in God and HIS unfailing plans...one day..one day..we will surely re-unite...in God's abode..!!! Till then, I guess I have no choice but to play my role in God's plan with unfailing devotion and commitment to the entrusted roles...!!!

Death is no longer scary, if our Sheri can take it, we should too and more readily....so in a sense we have emerged stronger in tragedy!!!  I don't necessarily agree with what has transpired in our lives, and her loss is just outright painful...but there's no choice and when we are are in that state...just remember the saying" Beggars can't be Choosers"...God chose not to give and therefore, let's just hope in all earnest that wherever she is God is taking good care of his daughter who stuck to her faith even on her deathbed...!!!

Sheri loved her freedom, she was like a bird, and I guess she is free now....free from pain, from  the anguish this world gives....I am in a sense happy for her....when I think about the pain that she underwent...!!!God is kind.....!!!

Some people spend their entire lives doing stuff to earn a place in God's abode, some do more than their share...such people HE calls early....simply put that's it!!!

Our angel lives forever in our hearts.....she has left a mirror image of herself for us to remember her by - our Kevini-let's be thanful we have him!!!

God Bless!!! 







This was the comment my son had written on my post " A night light in darkness". I had mentioned the pain of everyone in that post,except his.

Five years of painful memories!

Be a good boy



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Our house was getting painted.We had forgotten to paint the house for long.Life itself had lost colors for some time.


Kevin was busy with his own painting.He would insist on the largest of drawing papers and fill them all with all sorts of colors.Once finished, he will find some glue from the kitchen and fix it on to the center of the wall they had just finished.And every time, he would choose the newly painted clean walls. 

I got angry and scolded him.


"Why are you spoiling the walls"?


He said " Appuukka, you pack your bag and go back to Dubai.This is my home "


" But you are the one who always say, pack my bag, I want to go to Appukka", I said.


"Oh, that was when you behaved like a good boy"!





A Good Death






Let life be as beautiful as summer flowers
And death as beautiful as autumn leaves.

~Rabindranath Tagore







Few days back, I received a mail from the European Society of Critical care. The mail was to inform us members about the family of a prominent doctor affected by Ebola virus and now in critical condition. He was a European doctor with so much of contributions in the field of medicine and had volunteered to work in Liberia on Ebola virus.

And just the week before that, Dr. Samuel Brisbane died of Ebola leaving behind his wife and kids. He was a Liberian doctor, took care of Ebola patients and died from Ebola, the horrible, nightmarish disease. Since Dr. Brisbane's death, we've learned that other doctors and nurses have also contracted Ebola and have died or are being treated in the types of rudimentary facilities we see on the news. As we live in dread of the disease, questions about how we die and what we're willing to die for, are weighing on us.

 When the whole medical field is being criticized for lack of value and dedication, we do not see the faces of those doctors who choose to work in dangerous circumstances, far away from their own homes.

Doctors and nurses have a duty of care toward their patients. We're expected, on the basis of our training and an unwritten social contract, to fulfill that duty even in very difficult circumstances - in the face of depleted resources, for example, or undesirable patients. But we also have a duty to our families, and ourselves and when our work becomes life threatening, we have to decide what benefit we will be to our patients and what cost it will exact from us. In such circumstances, we cannot be expected to uphold the same duty of care.

The ancients had a concept of a “good death” - dying for one's country, for example, or gloriously on the battlefield. For emergency medicine clinicians like us, the concept of a good death can seem too abstract, intangible. Rarely are the deaths we see good or beneficial. We see young people who die in the throes of trauma; grandparents who die at the end of a long, debilitating illness; people who kill themselves; and people who die from their excesses, whether of alcohol, food, or smoking.


The natural history of birth and death is now rewritten.

Births used to happen at home. Then modern medicine intervened and what was once a natural event,  has become institutionalized. In the process, maternal and infant mortality have dropped, which was a good thing.
Nowadays, women have a variety of choices about how they give birth. Some routinely go into labour at home, supported by midwives, and give birth in their own beds. Others start at home but head to a hospital when contractions are acute, deliver the baby, and leave a few hours later. Still others plan caesareans, or hospital birth with enough drugs not to feel any pain during labour and delivery.

Death, too, started at home. But now majority of deaths occur in hospitals, even though how we want to die is as varied as patients themselves.

Some of us will fight disease to the end with chemotherapy drugs coursing through our their veins. Others will opt for terminal palliative sedation, an induced, coma-like state to ease anxiety and ragged breathing before death. And a great many of us, especially who are aging in their own homes, want to die there, or in a hospice.

Unlike pregnant women, though, dying patients don't have a due date.

Rabindranath Tagore, the Nobel poet laureate of India wrote: “Death’s stamp gives value to the coin of life, making it possible to buy with life what is truly precious”.

Dr. Sam Brisbane's death made me think. About life, work, responsibilities and family. About those doctors who work selflessly in far away, desolate corners of the world, away from their families, in epidemics and war zones. Seldom do we remember their faces. We only know those affluent, sought after physicians who practice in the luxury of their office rooms and for whom we wait for months to get an appointment.

With apologies to his wife and family, who saw him die horribly and unjustly, and despite the deep loss we feel, I believe our friend died a good death, as did all the nurses and doctors who have sacrificed themselves caring for patients with this awful disease.











A Knock on the Door






Live life so completely that when death comes to you like a thief in the night, there will be nothing left for him to steal.


A recent bout with an unexpected illness has brought to mind one of the fundamentals of frugality:  preparedness.

It was all so sudden. I was at the clinic and had a bout of cough. I had this cough and cold for few days. I didn’t take it seriously first. But then I felt like sweating and then, a vague discomfort in chest.

Just the previous day, I had done my 6 kilometer regular walk followed by an hour of swimming. And I have been walking and walking for the last fifteen years, and unusually fast. I never had any problems. And I never thought it would come to me.

I was lucky.

To have thought about it, for being a doctor that I could make the diagnosis myself, to be close to the hospital, to have some wonderful doctors to take care of me and above all, to have my daughter with me at that time.

My daughter would have passed this place in transit dozens of times in the last few years. But just this time, when I went to see her at the airport, she decided to let her husband to go on with the trip and stayed back with me. We spent few days together and were supposed to take the flight home the same evening.

Do things happen for a reason? I have no clue why my daughter decided to stay back with me. And why it should happen in the morning time, when all the doctors were ready and available. When I was at the hospital, I had wondered if it had happened during my travel or at somewhere else with no access to a hospital. That is the luck I call the grace of God.

Looking back, I don’t think I was frightened. My daughter was with me all the time. And then our friend Christine who was such a blessing at that time. There was a kind of numbness about the whole episode. While I was lying on the hospital bed, many thoughts had passed my mind.

Mostly people whom I wished I could see and bid farewell before I left. Those I wanted to stay in my eyes before it closed forever. Things I had forgotten to say to some one. Apologies, which were long pending.

Here's the truth of things: if you ever had to face death, you have been brought face-to-face with the realization that tomorrow is promised to no one. This awareness can help you keep in mind what is important in life, so you don’t get lost in trivial matters and lose sight of those things that are most important to you.

It is ironic but one consequence of such sudden event is that it can make you appreciate life more than you ever would have if you had not undergone such an experience.
There is nothing like suffering and hardship to cleanse and purify us. It takes us back to the essentials of life. When everything is going well we tend to take home, job, spouse, children, health for granted. We take God for granted too.

When everything is going well we may feel we don’t need God so much. We may stop thanking him. Stop acknowledging that everything we have is God’s gift. We might get proud over our achievements or what we have accomplished. And then believe that they all happened because of our capabilities. We may succumb to the illusion of self-reliance that we no longer need God that much.

For some, death doesn’t bother knocking; it just barges in the door unexpected and unwelcome. For others, something like a cancer diagnosis can become like a knocking on the door. You get the warning, but the guest is still unwelcome. Death is the kind of guest that if you see it coming down the driveway, you lock the door and hide behind the curtains, hoping it will think you are not home. When the sound of the knock first came though, there were a few thoughts that came into my mind.

The knock made me more aware of others that had been in this same situation. Knowing that I was still at the beginning of another journey, I thought more of others who had dealt with what I had faced and how they appeared so composed and real in the light of dealing with issues that can seem quite surreal. I have to say, there is a difference between making a choice when you are healthy to when you make one after you are seriously ill.

My preparation for the inevitable does not mean I am opening the door and inviting death to come in and take a seat. I am hoping for a better life and I am looking forward to everything I was looking forward to before, only now it is with more intensity. When I hear the knocking again, I am not expecting to hide behind the curtains. But I can’t say that I won't be turning up the music either.

In the book of Revelation Jesus  says “I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me” . Sometimes, His knocking is a light tapping in our spirit. But other times, when we are inattentive, He may use a pounding fist of adversity to turn our focus to Him.



















Every dog has his day

Boo Boo George George and Boo boo  The world’s tallest dog met the world’s shortest in Central Park when they both made t...