Chinese Takeover - The Gay Pornography Video
7/1/05

Eight years ago today, Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule after 156 years as part of the British colonial empire. On that very day, I was there in Hong Kong, attending a medical conference on HIV/AIDS prevention and research. I was elected to co-conduct a potentially controversial safe-sex seminar following a far more bland primer on the virus's particular transmission mechanism.

After an early morning lecture, I was sitting in the opulent hotel bar looking out the window as a bright red Chinese flag was slowly being cranked and hoisted into the humid air. The bartender turned on the television in anticipation of a speech by Tung Chee-hwa, China's choice as Hong Kong's new chief executive. The news showed a multitude of events that had already begun the previous night, including fireworks with laser light show displays, operas, martial arts performances, and what was apparently the world's largest karaoke event. Given the pro-Chinese emphasis of the whole spectacle, I wasn't sure if the brief clip of a Hong Kong man singing Queen's "I Want to be Free" was simply an oversight -- or a deliberate echo of the strong democratic protests going on that day.

A handsome man with dark hair and bright blue eyes sat down next to me, smiled, and introduced himself as Adam -- a Hong Kong citizen whose parents came to the island from Great Britain many years ago. After telling him that I'm Chinese, he pointed at the television screen and winked, "Well, since I'm a Hong Kong native, I guess I belong to you now."

I inadvertently rolled my eyes and then lifted my backpack to make a polite exit. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that my bag was open and out cascaded a flood of over 400 condoms, packs of lubrication, and dental dams that I was planning to distribute right after my HIV prevention seminar the next day.

"My, my, it looks like you have a fun week planned," Adam quipped as he was immersed ankle-deep in condoms. "Mind if I tag along?"

The whole scene smacked of a set-up for a bad gay pornography video. It turns out that Adam was an internist at a local medical practice, and we ended up sitting next to each other at a lecture on protease inhibitors. We marched in a democracy protest together the next night and sat talking until morning on a quiet pier overlooking the glittering Hong Kong skyline.

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Tragedy at the Annual Charity Benefit
6/18/05

Last night, the RYT Hospital Hooligans played the Clinic City Scalpels in a soccer game benefit for the International Children's Health Consortium. The old and musty gymnasium at the community center was surprisingly filled with a vibrant crowd of friends, colleagues, and children -- all of whom were paying scant attention to the evening's proceedings. I saw one of our otorhinolaryngologists' sons (he had twins about five years ago) climb over his head and hide under the bleachers, while peeking his head out intermittently to throw Cheetos at John, my department chair.

The players tended to be the younger medical students, interns, and residents, but this year, there were actually quite a few middle-aged attendings courageous enough to don the cleats and soccer uniforms. I watched their thin, pale, and hairy legs stick out of their poofy black shorts like tongue depressors, and whenever one of them would look around and feel a bit self-conscious, their pot bellies would be inhaled inside of them for a few moments before filling quickly back.

I had somehow been nominated as RYT's team captain this year and had failed to organize even a few practices beforehand. A certain radiologist (you know who you are) justifiably chastised me for our lack of preparedness and pulled out complex field diagrams and strategic plans right before the game started as we were all getting dressed. He began setting up a computer and video projector in the locker room to show us a 30 slide Powerpoint presentation he prepared for us the night before.

"I think it's too late for this, David," I said while giving him an affectionate hug and pat on the behind. "So, who wants to be goalkeeper?"

Near the middle of the game, Vincent in RYT's information technology department kicked the ball so it landed about 20 feet in front of me. He looked at me in exasperation for failing to get the ball, but fortunately, one of the Scalpels fumbled over the ball before it went out. Our referee, a burly nurse who used to glare at me daily in the ICU, blew her whistle.

I stepped out and passed the ball back to Vincent who was quite close to the Scalpels' goalkeeper, a handsome and fast-talking cardiologist named Alex who's on my referral list. He kicked the ball, and it looked like it went in. I raised my arms to cheer until I realized that the ball did not go through the goal; it dropped beneath it.

Alex had also fallen through the gymnasium floorboard and clung to the broken edges with his head and shoulders barely visible.

"Get back!" I ordered to everyone as both teams gathered quickly around. Vincent was still closest to Alex and reached out to him. Vincent wisely laid down to better distribute his weight on the sagging floor while someone tried to grab his feet to keep him from slipping down as well. Vincent grabbed Alex's wrists and as he tried to pull him up, but Alex's weight pulled both of them down and the ground swallowed them whole.

By the time I got down to the lower floor, Alex and Vincent were on their backs surrounded by clinicians, and I could hear ambulance sirens. Elizabeth, a brilliant RYT ER attending, had taken charge and had a brief argument with another physician who wanted to take them to City Clinic. Alex and Vincent were stabilized and taken away by the paramedics, Elizabeth, and several of her team members (to RYT).

I'll post an update on their condition if I get permission from their family members.

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Ebola Dream
5/21/05

I dreamt last night of a patient coming into the emergency room with myalgia, a maculopapular rash, desquamation, hepatomegaly, and pharyngitis. And she was bleeding from a strange split encircling her entire neck. While nurses and residents started showing the same signs of some acute febrile illness and collapsing onto the floor, I was calmly sitting in the middle of the cacophony looking for polymerase chain reaction products in the patient's vaginal secretions.

My half-blind mother and I are then walking through the Hospital corridors, and she starts removing flyers she can barely see from a bulletin board. "So silly putting paper on walls, no?" she asks. "I'm going to make a web site for the Hospital." She explains how the entire site will be composed of word fragments that billow like leaves from tall trees that land into tidy little piles of color-coded information.

Exasperated, I begin describing the actual mechanics of information architecture and design usability like some wayward geek only to find that she has disappeared. I shuffle quickly from the Hospital's main entrance and ride each of the major elevator banks to every floor of the building.

I walk past a large group of medical students, who I recognize as friends from high school. S is yelling to J across the tables. "Maybe you wouldn't need my help in molecular biology if you weren't busy last week auditioning for American Idol, huh?" she says. J belts out Trisha Yearwood's How do I live without you? in response.

I find my mother in a dilapidated room filled with hay and wandering sheep and goats. Dozens of nurses, interns, and attendings walk by ignoring her. She pulls me aside and points to a young African American girl in the corner. Despite being anemic and convulsing herself, my mother says, "Please help that young girl, Phinny. Her name is Lindsey. She plays the violin."

I try to help my mother into the bed, but she protests, "I'm fine. Go make her better."

I lift Lindsey's head from the floor and her neck is covered in blood. She is the same patient from the emergency room and the bustling Hospital staff members all around me finally stop and turn to face me.

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ARTSTAR
2/28/05

My artist/filmmaker collaborator, Virgil Wong, and I threw our collective hats into the ring for a TV reality show about the New York art world. ARTSTAR is seeking eight artists to participate in a group exhibition at Deitch Projects.

The line of artists wrapped around the city block this wintry morning during open call, and I had to treat a rather androgynous young man in leather and white frills for hypothermia. Several other artists had to be brought indoors before they nearly became cryogenically frozen.

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Rose-Tinted Bush Goggles of Afghanistan
8/2/04

I turned into C-Span yesterday to watch some internal medicine colleagues appear with George W. at a Pittsburgh re-election rally this weekend. Clad in their pretty white coats, several rows of them sat behind the president and applauded politely on cue. When W. indicated his support for legislation crafted to curb frivolous malpractice lawsuits (in a transparent attack against the Democratic vice-presidential candidate), they looked at each other sheepishly before giving that particular remark a standing ovation -- which was presumably the primary reason for their presence on-camera in the first place.

Sure, Bush's embrace of this particular issue is obviously a matter of convenience rather than conviction, but his comments about Afghanistan were the most disturbing. He claimed success in bringing democracy to the country and even cited his recent visit with a young girl from Afghanistan, who was in the U.S. to compete in an international youth sports competition.

Did I hear all of this correctly? Again, he's declaring victory ... this time in Afghanistan?

Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader, are roaming free somewhere. The opium trade is rampant, and most of the country is being run by warlords.

The extraordinarily courageous group Doctors Without Borders is leaving Afghanistan after 24 years because five of its staff members were murdered and the government refuses to bring the killers to justice.

On Friday the U.S. government warned American citizens against traveling to Afghanistan because of the danger of being kidnapped or killed. A British parliamentary committee has warned that Afghanistan is likely to "implode, with terrible consequences."

And you thought things were bad in Iraq?

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Subway Follies
3/2/04

This afternoon, as I was emerging from the subway exit directly adjacent to the main RYT Hospital entrance, the rotund woman in front of me unwittingly dropped her cyan-speckled scarf. I picked it up and reached out to her, intending to tap her lightly on the back. Given the incline of the stairs, however, I ended up patting her squarely on the rump.

"Oh, my!" she gasped as her high-heeled red shoe slipped from the ascending stair, and she came tumbling toward me. I braced myself to support her, but gravity, momentum, and her considerable mass swiftly overpowered me. I caught a glimpse of sunlight from the street above before plummeting back down into the subway station floor.

Fortunately, whenever an accident occurs near a Hospital, you will find a copious stream of doctors or other healthcare professionals rushing to the rescue. The lady's elbow was still firmly pressed against my nose when a physician assistant appeared at our side.

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Prescription for the Physician
2/27/04

For someone who has been studying the human body for as long as he can remember, I have always relied heavily on my kind metabolism and only spent scant attention on my own health and wellness. Basic science and patient care work are both surprisingly sedentary, and perhaps through the course of professional detachment, physician scientists often seem to envision themselves as great floating brains distinct and immune from the deficient bodies they endeavor to heal.

Last summer, I signed up for a food delivery and nutrition program called Nutropia. For $23 a day, three delicious and healthful meals -- along with two tasty snacks -- greet me on my doorstep in a little cooler bag every morning, usually stationed happily on my copy of The New York Times. Each meal is a new daily delight and prepared precisely to my fastidious standards and that of my personal, no-extra-charge Nutropia nutritionist (who will become your new best friend ... or perhaps more accurately, Mom). I feel as fortunate as my bourgeois Park Avenue friend who employs a personal chef; this is as seductively filling for a fraction of the cost. My mood often turns on a muffin these days. My cheery today began with two fresh strawberry muffins with crisp green melon on the side.

My first food delivery was the morning after the 2003 blackout, when fifty million people did not have power in the conterminous United States. Failing to hit the ATM prior to the electricity failure, I was without cash and had to cobble together change to buy a sandwich for myself and my disabled neighbor. In the still dark morning after, I opened my front door to find my first bag of meals. There was no New York Times, of course; the building superintendent refused to come to any upstairs floor because of the walk-up; the city was at a stand-still; and yet, Nutropia arrived exactly as promised. I opened a bottle of red wine when I got down to my moist-perfect protein brownie.

In addition to my flawless food intake, I began taking classes at the gym every night on my way back home from the clinic or lab. An instructor at the gym has even been weight training me four times a week in exchange for some consultation work. Classes in Pilates, body sculpture, aerobics, weights, and kick-boxing have all been steamy and stimulating, but one activity in particular became endlessly fascinating.

Nia is a fitness program that incorporates movements from the martial arts, dance arts, and healing arts. It is a fun and energizing way to cross-train the body through movement. I've become so devoted to this discipline that I spent a week of vacation time last month to become trained and certified as a teacher. Certain days would include learning aspects of Akido, Tae Kwon Doe, and Tai Chi; other sessions would be focused on examining how human anatomy lends itself to specific systemic movements. High impact activities, such as professional dancing, aerobics, and many sports, may be conducive to injury whereas Nia is about moving in healthy strength/flexibility-enhancing ways.

I don't have any empirical data to support this contention (and my board certification may be revoked for this statement), but there is clearly some age-defying power to the art of Nia. Practitioners of Nia in their 60s appear younger and more vital than many of my patients in their 40s. Perhaps my telomerase-studying colleagues will allocate a bit of their research time to peer into the eternal fountain of Nia at some point.

Airline attendants instruct passengers to first secure their own respirator prior to assisting others. Clearly, physicians must care for their own mind and body as rigorously as they do for those of their patients.

Melinda, my one patient that I see at the gym, is 63 years old and can jump rope in the egg-beating style of boxers and the Amazonian women clad in halter-tops from my kick-boxing class. After trying to jump rope tonight to my mercurial crawl of "one-mississippi ... two-mississippi," I complimented Melinda on her remarkable health and physique. She said to me:

"Child, our bodies are beautiful. Beautiful. I ain't fighting tooth-and-nail against this aging business; that struggle is what makes you old. I am a partner with the aging process; that's why ... even as a great grandmother ... I am still buff and be-au-ti-ful."

After a brief pause, Melinda added, "Well, you help a little bit, too, I guess." Then she slapped my back (hard!) and laughed heartily.

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NOTE: This is a personal log by an RYT Hospital physician. Actual patient names have been changed and specific details about any medical cases may have been altered. RYT Hospital is not responsible in any way for the content on this web site. Please do NOT contact Dr. Liu for healthcare advice or information about any clinical trials; he is not permitted to respond to any medical-related inquiries. Your use of this website indicates acceptance of these terms and our medical disclaimer.

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