last night i went to the E.S. Meyers Memorial Lecture. it's a lecture that was established in 1957 in memory of Errol Solomon Meyers who was, to put it briefly, one of the founders of UQ Medical School. this year's lecturer was Dr. Charlie Teo.
charlie's a neurosurgeons with some controversy. let's just say he isn't the most popular neurosurgeon amongst his australian colleagues. he claims to be the best neurosurgeon. let me clarify that. he claims to be the best at what he does. and what he does is what's called minimally invasive keyhole surgery. the basic premise is... instead of performing brain surgery by cutting up half the patient's head, he makes significantly smaller incisions and uses an endoscope. i think what pisses the other doctors off is that they feel this procedure is a more dangerous operation than what is currently the "standard". he is also accused of performing surgeries that are of greater risk and of giving patients false hope. charlie defends that his procedures have similar complication rates as the techniques used by other neurosurgeons. he also says that it is much more effective. as for false hope, he says there is no such thing as false hope. there are only false promises. and he says he never makes false promises and emphasizes the fact that he has never been sued by any of his patients.
i'm not quite sure why there is so much disdain for charlie. when i asked him about it, he said he wasn't 100% sure either. he says it's partly because he's never been very good at "toeing-the-line". i think part of it is also surgeons and their egos. charlie talks about one case in which surgeon X told patient Y that she had removed 90% of the tumour in her brain. as it later turned out in a consultation with charlie, less than 10% was actually removed. charlie basically then called surgeon X an idiot and proceeded to remove the rest of the tumour.
i really enjoyed the lecture. but when i try to pinpoint WHAT exactly i found so great... i can't. i don't really have any aspirations to be this world famous neurosurgeon. nor do i want to be a trendsetter and a person that questions and pushes the boundaries. no. i will (and have) always toe-the-line. maybe it's because he's asian. for as long as medicine has been a boys' club. it's also been a white-man's club. so maybe i find charlie so refreshing because he is so un-asian like. i haven't quite figured out where i'm going with this. but i'm on to something. i'll continue this another time.
if you want more info about charlie, read
THIS or
THIS or watch
THIS. or just do a google search.
oh! did i mention he's a rider? a bike rider. no not like lance. more like house.
so the next time you (won't name names) tell me i shouldn't ride a bike because its very un-doctor like, and then proceed to ask me how many doctors i know that ride motorcycles, i will say ONE! dr. charlie teo!
on a lighter note...
went to the law revue on wednesday night. it's a collection of sketches and songs put on by the law students. unfortunately i'm going to have swallow my pride and say that it was actually better than the MED revue. much better. it was more polished, funnier and more pleasing to the ear. not to take anything away from the med revue, and all the hard work everyone put into that, but you gotta give credit where credit is due.
6 weeks! 6 weeks left of classes. wow.
ps. i don't DISLIKE my short hair. but i miss my long hair.
pps. saw a girl eating a muffin the other day. and all of a sudden had this huge craving for a corn muffin from Coffee Time. add that to my need-to-eat list for when i'm back in toronto.
