Dragon

I previously marked my diary to be examiner for the medical professional examination today. When I realised I’m not called upon this time, I decided to make good use of time carved out from my schedule. After two days of conference in Macau, I opted not to stay abroad. A day off in Hong Kong can also be a gift for myself.

You might have thought I’m using hyperbole to make my point. No, I’m serious. Think Hong Kong and I can name so many scenic hiking trails. I ended up hiking the famous Dragon’s Back today. As Asia’s best urban hike named by Time magazine, this trail is also highly rated by Lonely Planet and CNN Travel. That’s a guarantee for vantage views of sun-drenched beaches and close-up concert front row “seat” for an orchestra of big waves upon descent.

It's obviously one of the best hikes for those who have an unquenchable love for photography. It's also obviously offering respite, for me, from the deluge of email at workplace.

Nomenclature

I want to be very, very blunt with the word renal here: there is very little role for "renal" when our patients can comprehend the word "kidney" much better. Forget the false sense of professionalism endowed by speaking the jargon.

This is a tall order, but it's not impossible. "Renal" is a Latin word which has permeated our medical language usage. We've all been getting used to terms like "hepatorenal syndrome". As mentioned in a recent letter to editor of The Lancet, we aren't enforcing Orwellian-style medical vocabulary control of scientific communication. We are asking ourselves to change "renal patients" to "patients with kidney disease" or "renal failure" to "kidney failure" in our Instagram, Twitter, or daily communication with lay people.

In other words, say kidney when its meaning is equal to renal. What matters is what our patient can comprehend.

Drop the word "renal" please.

Ladies and gentlemen, if not now, when? If not us, who?

Offline

As a person who loves hiking, I've witnessed big changes in our navigation: long before the availability of sat nav and all the way to the current offline map apps.

I don't know about you, but I have navigation skill no better than that of Hansel and Gretel - which means it's often a must for me to have a map if there aren't bread crumbs. But if, like many of us, you have been using Google Maps, you don't need to bring a physical map. My antique collections of 1:10,000 country side maps are now hidden in the corner of my bookshelf.

That may sound too good to be true for most road trips, but a number of hiking trails are remote and without mobile phone coverage. My family have just bushwhacked a trail without signposts in the northeastern New Territories today. Most of the time, we were hidden in the bushes. We didn't (okay, nearly) get lost because of the offline map apps. Such apps have made off-the-beaten-track travel a lot easier. The offline map apps allow us to download maps ahead of the adventure, and will work even without a data connection during the actual hike.

Offline map apps, it seems, is a must-have tool for travel nowadays - even if we might prefer occasional bread crumbs (or red ribbon marking, for that matter) along the path.

Tomorrow

"Life is very long, unless it is not."

Is there better tautology than this one? 

That's what I came across reading Gabrielle Zevin's novel Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.

Sadly, I started the first chapter of this book after paying last respects to a much-loved nephrologist. Everyone was in tears during the funeral ceremony, and I was no different.

We listened to the eulogy for this stoic doctor, and appreciated that the lived experience of illness can be short but meaningful. The greatest obstacle to living - I think the Roman philosopher Seneca sums this up perfectly - is expectation which hangs upon tomorrow and wastes today. My teacher didn't lose the battle with cancer. He beat cancer by how he lived, why he lived, and in the manner in which he lived.