Synopsis
● Cardiologists make sense of a three-dimensional organ – the heart – by taking two dimensional snapshots and viewing them at a variety of angles to get the complete image: often using an oblique view.
● Day to day life in a cardiac unit is the same; often mundane, sometimes dramatic, but always amenable to being examined with a different slant. How do common cardiac drugs get their name? What sort of music do surgeons choose to listen to as they operate? Just how close to reality are all those TV hospital dramas? What personalized number plates adorn doctors' cars, which accents best suit which specialties and what should you call a disease in order to ensure that it is your name that is immortalized in the medical textbooks for years to come?
● This collection of musings touches on these, as well as many other aspects of cardiology. They do not attempt to make sense of any of them; they aim only to broaden the mind a little by taking a sideways glance at medical life. |
