Summer in Israel means really hot weather..and reality television. Subscribers to Yes satellite are treated to all sorts of guilty pleasures. I am not exactly sure what makes it interesting. Perhaps it is the same human instinct that makes us turn to the side of the road as we pass the scene of a crash. But whatever it is, it has me watching. (I just find it ironic that the way in which I relax and escape from reality after an exceptionally long day in the office, is to watch a reality television show!)
Luckily, my wife and I are by no means hooked. But one show that we do occasionally watch is called The Swan. The premise is that each week, two”unattractive” women (and I use the term loosely because this is a subjective notion) put themselves under the surgeon’s knife and undergo all manner of plastic surgery. In addition, they undergo therapy, dental surgery, and fitness sessions. This all occurs over a three month period, during which time they are not allowed to see themselves in the mirror. At the end of it, the new-look contestants are paraded through a hall while the doctors and therapists applaud. When they are emotionally prepared, a mirror is unveiled, and they view their new selves for the first time. At the end of the episode, one of the women progresses to the “beauty pageant”, which I assume will occur at the very end of the series.
One of the things which amazes me about this series is how these women are willing to put themselves at the mercy of plastic surgeons. I assume some of them are so unhappy with themselves that they are willing to try anything. But what happens if they botch the job? I guess these are the episodes you don’t see..
It is not that I don’t have faith in the medical profession. It is just that doctors are human like anyone else, and in some cases make mistakes. Take this one for example:
A Romanian surgeon, in what is being described as a fit of madness, cut off a patient’s penis during a procedure that was supposed to rectify a testicular malformation. The surgeon, Dr. Naum Ciomu proceeded to cut the penis of the 34-year-old man in several pieces, hospital officials confirmed on Friday.
The surgeon lost his temper after making a mistake during the routine testicular malformation procedure , which led to the fit of madness, it has been reported.
Or this one:
A doctor employed when he was almost legally blind treated more than 1000 intensive care patients before he was sacked.
Despite being too blind to read or drive, Dr Graham Fetherston slit throats to insert breathing tubes and medicated critically ill patients.
He worked his way up from part-time doctor to deputy director in four years in Frankston Hospital’s intensive care unit in Melbourne.
Nurses and medical staff read drug vial labels, patient charts, medical histories, and handwritten notes to him because he struggled to read.
“I could see, but it was like looking through a thick black lace curtain,” said Dr Fetherston, a former heart surgeon.
Staff raised fears of the dangers after he was seen guiding a scalpel with his fingers to slit a patient’s neck for a tracheostomy, and struggling to insert a central line to another’s heart.
Court documents reveal Dr Fetherston’s boss was aware of his vision loss, but felt “sympathy for his disability”.
Even the powerful and famous have been affected by negligent doctors.
There was no plotting by royalists, no arsenic and no murder. Instead, Napoleon Bonaparte was killed by incompetent doctors and too many uncomfortably large enemas, according to a new study.
One of the world’s most enduring conspiracy theories may be laid to rest if research conducted by the San Francisco medical examiner’s department proves accurate.
An autopsy performed straight after Napoleon’s death, by his personal physician, revealed that he had died from stomach cancer. But over the decades historians have disputed this explanation, suggesting either that the exiled leader might have died from toxic ingredients in his hair ointment, or was killed by his confidant Charles de Montholon as part of a plot to prevent his returning to seize power in France.
But after a detailed study of the medical records kept during the illness that blighted most of Napoleon’s final years in exile on St Helena, where he had been banished after his defeat at Waterloo, forensic pathologists in California have focused on the daily enema he had to relieve the pain caused by the cancer.
“They used really big, nasty syringe-shaped things,” Steven Karch, head of the researchers, told New Scientist magazine.
In the final crisis of Napoleon’s illness, five English doctors were brought in to see him. They gave him regular doses of antimony potassium tartrate to make him vomit. But this treatment would have depleted his potassium levels, and may have caused a lethal heart condition in which rapid heartbeats disrupt the blood flow to the brain, the scientists say.
The doctors’ decision to administer a purgative of 600mg of mercuric chloride (five times the usual amount) on May 3 1821 would have further reduced his potassium levels – and may have been fatal. He died two days later, aged 51.
I guess you could call it a bad news week for the medical profession.
