Starting my life in the healthcare profession.

Since I was a kid I always wanted to be a doctor. Every time some one would ask me what you want to do when you grow up. I d go I will be a doctor. Well I went to school and then university and after an especially grueling time realized that although I really like sciences I struggled with them quite a bit and perhaps medicine was not for me. I had always dreamed of being this heroic figure who went out to the field with poorly equipped hospitals in war torn and ravaged countries and worked tirelessly to take care of the people there. But reality and fantasy are two very different things so I kept on pushing back on my dreams and going well I don't need to help people like this, I can do something else like volunteer.... hmmm,well than I had my daughter It simultaneously opened my eyes to the fragility of human life and the resilience a human being has to fight for his life. It made me realize how lucky I was to have the support I had, my wonderful amazing husband, my awesome mother and sisters and my amazing friends. I was awed by how much progress medicine has made and the untiring effort put in by the whole medical team.

Like a lot of people I used to think the doctors are the real heroes, well they are surely but so are all the Nurses and therapists and every one else who is working in the whole healthcare system here. I was especially impressed with the nurses and their tireless work in ensuring my comfort and the comfort of my baby. I had dili dalied with the idea of being a Nurse for a long time, so after my experience I started to put it into practice. I was not sure how I ll react to sickness and all kind of bodily fluids and grumpy tired patients, so I started slow by volunteering at a hospital and contrary to what I expected, I loved it.

I mean I absolutely love working at both the hospitals I am working at right now. University of Washington Medical Center and Evergreen. I am inspired by the dedication of the health care staff and how seriously they take their jobs. I am impressed by how well hospitals and nursing homes are regulated here. There is always human error, of course that cannot be completely eliminated but boy these folks work very hard to make it as minimum as possible.

I feel satisfied and happier than I have ever been in a long time regarding my career progress. So I took the next step and enrolled in a Nursing Assistant program and well the program is pretty intense to say the least. Lots of information and studying involved but it is also quite an eye opener. I was thinking about how sick my grand parents were at the time they passed away and as in Pakistan the old folks always live at home they were at home. I know my uncles and aunts and my mom did the best they could to take care of them but when one does not know how to deal with a specific situation it can get very hard. Things like proper hand washing can eliminate a lot of infections right off the bat but we don't know how to properly wash our hands.

There is a lot of misinformation out there regarding anti-bacterial agents and that causes people to make bad choices, so does misinformation regarding immunization. I ll say a little bit about immunization and than on to my story, the only way and I mean the only way immunization can work is if every one gets it, if half the population is immunized and the other half opts out, it puts every one at risk. The study that came out regarding immunizing kids and children getting autism due to this was fraudulent. The British doctor who did it is behind bars now cause his study prompted quite a few parents to forgo immunization for their children and these kids ended up getting those very diseases the immunizations were suppose to counteract and they died.

So any ways I just recently started going back to school and it kind of feels like when I was at university when life became all about sleeping, eating and studying. I hope I can be good at what I have decided to do, I still have apprehensions sometimes because it is sinking in how much of an influence I can have on someone's life. I can be responsible for someone's death and one false move on my part can make the difference in someone's quality of life. However, a good job by me can also make some one's life a lot more comfortable and easy. I feel very happy when I work in hospitals. When I started this course one of the first things we learnt was about Florence Nightingale. This lady changed the face of health care. She standardized practices for Nurses and actually gave a face to this profession. Things we take for granted like infection control and cleanliness were started by her. She comforted the sick and nurtured them. These are the main things our instructors keep stressing too, empathy, non-judgmental attitude, cleanliness. Get to know your patient, know what they like and how you can make them more comfortable and happy. I don't know, people tell me I am a nurturer by nature so I hope I do a decent job. Lets see its going to be an interesting ride...

food food and more food

Before I launch into my rant, i want to apologize to all my readers for being away from the scene for so long. I was afflicted by a writers block of sorts and by this massive expectation of my self to write something totally profound and original or something hilarious.

I started many posts and always deleted them cause they never fit the bill. Well i have removed that sort of expectation from my self now and I ll just write whatever I am thinking of at the moment without censorship, it may be funny but again it may not be.

So this brings me to today's post. It is about food which i love, I love to eat and I love to cook. Cooking for me is like creating a master piece I feel deliriously happy when I am in the kitchen making some concoction or the other and non of my recipes are ever the same cause I always end up making some change to the original depending on the ingredients at hand. I am very lucky that I was taught how to cook, this skill has served me well it helped me to establish a very successful business and it helped me to survive when living on my own, when I had a seriously tight budget but my knowledge of food and cooking helped me stay healthy. you must be wondering why I am telling you all this, well the reason is that lately I have been watching TED talks and I was shocked to learn that apparently in the USA for the last 4 generations women have literally stopped cooking at home. Its mostly take out, canned food, tv dinners. On top of this most women don't know how to cook. I know its very un fair to pin cooking and house work just on women, men should learn all these life skills too, but more on that debate later.

The health of this country has gone down drastically over the last few years, by the year 2020 more than 70 percent of the population will be obese. Right now new born children are being born obese. What has all this got to do with women cooking you may be wondering, well let me do a quick re cap of history here apparently in the early 1900's women were mostly at home they did the house work bought locally produced ingredients and cooked the food at home over time as more and more women got into the work force tv dinners and canned food was marketed to them to ease the house work load. These foods were generally meat based with tons of other kinds of additives and not fresh ingredients over time this became the norm. The sad part is that as women went into the work force the house work and cooking were still primarily considered their responsibility and hence they were sold on the idea of quick fixes.

I am writing this post for a few reasons one is that cooking is a very under appreciated skill. The other day a friend of mine and I were talking about how perceptions have shifted now. In Pakistan knowing how to cook and keep a good house is considered a very important skill and it is valued. Women who cook well are appreciated and lauded and encouraged. A woman cooking and keeping house here is not really considered to be doing "real work." As more and more women start working the quality of home life will get affected it is key that the men realize this right now and pitch in, if you expect your wife to work than make sure you don't expect her to do all the house work and the cooking. If you don't know how to cook, learn it and most importantly teach your kids, boys and girls to cook. Cooking and food knowledge is key to staying healthy.

The other important thing to remember is what we eat, in Pakistan meat is still considered a luxury so having it once a week is a big deal for some, here meat is much more readily available so our diets change drastically, where we ate meat once or twice a week we end up eating meat on a daily basis. This trend needs to change, eating meat once or at max twice a week is more than enough for our body. It is imperative for health to eat as much vegetable and plant based food as we can.

Dieting? try the kid diet.....

Well its official my child is a toddler. The dreaded stage............ where as one mommy I know puts it you have to save them from killing them selves. Gone are the days when I could cajole my daughter to sleep a few more minutes or hours. Now a days its up at dawn and start running and dont stop till ya drop. I bet she ll make an excellent personal trainer, her clients will be begging for mercy just like her number one client, her mommy.

When she was young I used to take her out for a walk in her carrier to the park where I used to meet other mommy's. At times I would lament about my massive weight gain during pregnancy to which they would reply oh don't worry about it, wait till she starts running all this weight will just melt off. Well we are at that stage now and along with the strenuous training comes the diet restrictions as well. These days my daughters choicest foods are pebbles, sand, buttons, pencil shavings, paper and such deliciousness.

One of my aunts used to say about kids who ate paper that they were little thetaz (person of very high mental caliber). Than come stuff which is on the floor. Food tastes infinitely better when its eaten off the carpet or the floor, the natural sauces of dirt and grime are much better than any Tabasco you might have tasted. Infact I can go as far as to say its better than the tasty treats at Maza grill :)

There is a famous essay by Ibn Insha on children diets. He writes about this man who is complaining of a stomach ache and goes to the doctor. The doctor tell him to start a children style diet. The man goes home but after a week is still complaining of a stomach ache, so he goes back to the doctor. The doctor asks him did you try the children style diet I told you about; the man goes yes but my tummy ache is worse than before; to this the doctor asks what did you eat? the man replies I ate tich buttons, pencil shavings, thread, paper, anything off the floor I could find.....

Even more mortifying than the dietary requirements of my child is her behavior outside the home. I mean I feed her I honest to goodness do, I infact always feed her to the maximum capacity when we are going to some one's place but the moment we enter another persons house she is hungry again. At this point I ll quickly grab a plate and load it with food and bring it to her but she just does not like to eat from my plate, it is always more fun to eat another kids food or food from some one else's plate who is not mommy.

So well these are the latest adventures in mommy town, join me next time for some fun stuff about my little tarzan and her antics regarding jumping on tables...

The Convert.

Ramadan is just around the corner. I wish all of you a blessed Ramadan and I pray that Allah grants us all the honor of reading and understanding his book, the Quran better in this month and we are able to make the most of this wonderful month and take time to refresh our selves spiritually.

I have an interesting story to share; It has to do with a girl I had met a few years back while I was studying in Montreal. At the time I had a small 1 bed apartment where I used to live, so in order to make ends meet, I used to rent out the bedroom and live in the living area my self. It was during one such time when I was looking for an apartment mate that I met a young lady who had reverted/converted to Islam. She had been a Christian Catholic and her parents and her husband were still Christian. She had little boy and she was looking for a place to rent for a few months because as she told me her husband had taken a keen interest in Islam and wanted to study it now and she did not want to influence his decision on becoming a Muslim or not. I was very impressed by this young lady. I had asked her what had influenced her to become muslim and she had told me that she had started to read about the Islamic civilizations and she was so impressed that she read the Quran translations and that caused her to convert. At the time I had not thought much of this incident probably because my own knowledge about islamic civilization was quite low and I did not really understand her fascination with it.

I guess because I was born in a muslim family and the world sees me as muslim I have never really cared to look beyond the surface and find out for my self what it was all about. These last few weeks I did get a chance to read up on the Islamic civilization and it amazed me. Islamic civilization at its zenith occupied an area larger than the Roman Empire at its peak. It spaned an area starting from China all the way to Southern Spain. It had gone all the way to the gates of Vienna in Europe. I understand now why that girl had been prompted to read the Quran after she had read about the islamic history, it was only because of this miraculous book that muslims managed to do all that they did. The reason for this is simple in the Quran the world most used after the word Allah is ILM which means knowledge. Islam is based on reason; one of the factors that differentiates the Quran from all other sacred texts is its stress on reason as a valid way to faith as well as its insistence on the inseparability of the spiritual and physical and therefore social spheres of human existence. The inseparability of man's daily actions and intentions with his destiny.

The Quran has fundamentally affected the religious, social and political history of the world. No other sacred scripture has ever had a similarly immediate impact upon the lives of the people who first heard its message through them and the generations that followed them, on the entire course of civilization. It united the warring tribes of Arabia and made them into a nation within a few decades, it spread its world view far beyond the deserts of Arabia and produced the first ideological society known to man, through its insistence on consciousness and knowledge. It engendered among its followers a sense of intellectual curiosity and independent inquiry. Ultimately resulting in that splendid era of learning and scientific research which distinguished the world of Islam at the height of its cultural vigor. The culture thus fostered by the Quran penetrated in countless ways and by ways into the mind of medieval Europe and gave rise to the revival of western culture, which we call the Renaissance, and thus became in the course of time largely responsible for the birth of what is descried as the the age of science. The age of today...

I was quite surprised to learn that it was the Muslims zeal for knowledge which prompted them to preserve texts written by Greeks, Hindus and other and it was from Arabic that such texts were translated into Latin which was the basis of the Renaissance.People from all over the world came to study at universities established in Baghdad, Egypt and Southern Spain.

The Islamic civilization was at its pinnacle during the 14 and 15th century, it started to go down in the middle of the 15th century. I believe one of the main reasons for the downfall were the infighting which arose because Muslims had forgotten the important stuff, they were no longer focusing on acquiring knowledge but were now busy with acquiring wealth. The had turned their back on the most important message of the Quran and that message was ILM.

Well the long and short of my blogpost today are basically two things.

This whole event and my subsequent study has made me realized

a) When some one want to come into Islam i.e submit his will to Allah he does so on his own accord and no amount of talking, preaching and pressuring can make some one muslim as was the case with the girl I had met.

b) We have to take time to study the Quran, its the guide book, instruction manual for our life in this world and as most of us are not Arabic speakers we are going to rely a lot on translations for guidance, we need to not just read one translation but as many different ones as we can and approach islam from as many different schools of though as we can because when we are using a translation and its commentary we are getting a specific view point. The point of view of the translator who no doubt is giving us the best that he can depending on his command of the Arabic language, his knowledge of Sunnah and Hadith and History and as the Quran is a book for all times his knowledge of the world in general. The uniqueness of the Quran consists in the fact that the more our worldly knowledge and historical experience increase, the more meaning hitherto unsuspected reveal themselves in its pages.

Hence it is only natural that the way in which one commentator understood a particular Quranic statement or expression differed occasionally and sometimes very incisively from the meaning attributed to it by another commentator. In short, they often contradict them selves in their interpretations but they do so without animosity, being aware of the element of relativity in human reasoning, and of each other's integrity.

As the prophet said "The difference in opinion Ikhtilaf among the learned men of my community(are an outcome of) divine grace (Rahmah)" which clearly imply that such differences of opinion are the basis of all progress in human thinking and therefore a most potent factor in man's acquisition of knowledge.

On my part this Ramadan I have made a pact with my self to not just stand in prayer at night and read the Quran in Taraweeh, to not only fast but to read a commentary of the Quran and try and understand its meaning better because as I understand it, that is the true purpose of Ramadan to begin with. It was in this month that the Quran was revealed to us and we are to use this month to reaffirm our relationship with the Quran.

I had quoted liberly from the Foreword by Mohammad Asad from the Message of the Quran and if you want to learn more about the scientific feats accomplished by muslim scientists get the book "1001 inventions muslim heritage in our world."

websites

www.1001inventions.com

www.MuslimHeritage.com

The documentaries by PBS on islamic civilization and the city of light are a great resource as well as the ones done by the History Channel.

Until next time.....

WHO is stopping you?

The only one stopping you from achieving all that you can be is you. All of us have experienced that little voice inside our heads telling us, hey are you crazy you cant do that; you ll make a fool of your self etc etc etc. We may attribute all of this negativity to people around us and project our feelings of in adequacy upon them. We can blame circumstances but if we truly desire something we will go after it.

Just the other day a few friends and I were having a discussion about how a lot of times women tend to give up on their careers after they have children. I was furious at him at the time, because I thought he was saying that our roles as wive's and mother's is not important. Thinking about the conversation afterwards, I realized that all he was saying was our roles as mothers and wives are important but we should not let those roles and responsibilities derail us from our personal goals. Over time what happens is that we get so caught up in our roles and we keep telling our selves that if we don't live up to the standards set on us by society or our families, if we don't live up to our roles we are not good parents, or good people. The person who suffers the most in the end is us, me, myself and I.

I think the thing I miss the most about my teenage years was my passion for life, I was gungho about everything, I felt the world was my oyster. I was going to learn to ride a horse, I was going to learn to fly a plane. I was going to go sky dive and bungee jump. I was going to work with Doctors without Borders but over time as I met with the realities of life, had a couple of set backs failed at thing I started to get jaded. I stopped believing in my self and stopped going after my dreams.

I read a great quote the other day which was something like this, a life lived in fear of failure is a life of mediocrity. So today I am making a promise to my self that I will no longer be afraid, I will return to my age of innocence and seize the day. I believe in my self in my destiny and I will go after my dreams. I will shut that voice in my head which is telling me I cant do this or that and I will do all that I had desired at one time.

I want my daughter to grow up and look up to me and say my mom is a a real cool chick. I do not want to sit on the sideline any more but to go out and be all that I can be. I don't think my role as a parent will suffer because I want to achieve personal goals as well, in fact I think it will be good for my relationships all around because I will be happier. A happy person spreads positive energy all around. Take home message from all this ranting it this; go out of your comfort zone because that is the only way to grow as a person don't be afraid of disappointments because failure is still better than sitting on the sidelines and not doing anything at all.

CARPE DIEM......

Sister Marco Polo and Sister Robin Hood.

Sisterhood is a beautiful thing. Although my mom tells me that when my younger sister was born I was consumed with jealousy and did everything in my power to bring her points down and be my parents favorite. Being a rosy cheeked baby with golden curls that was never hard. I was out going while she stayed in the shadows. I ll talk incessantly while she would sit and listen or as mom says play with ants. Perhaps my sister was thinking ooooh when will she shut up.

Growing up too, I always had stories or some other thing I had to talk about. So I hogged all the lime light and my sisters had to be content being in the corners. WE fought like wild cats on everything as children and also as adults; but with all this came the territory of complete trust and utter affection. IF I was ever out of cash I could just take the money they kept in their secret stash, cause it was an unwritten rule that this was ok. If they ever wanted clothes to wear they could go and grab my ironed shalwar kameez and be off. Getting ready was always a riot with one small bathroom in our rented house and three young ladies trying to put on mascara and such, not as easy as it sounds people. It was when I moved away from home that the worth of my sisters truly started to sink in.

I had a whole support system all my life, some one who was there every time I had a story to tell a heart break to relate to and now I felt utterly alone. No one understood my humor like Sister Marco polo did and no one understood my off key songs like sister Robin hood.

Sister Robin Hood and would make long tableaux and songs of weird funny things. We created funny dances with funny names like the wedgy sister dance cause we all had gotten wedge cuts.

It was also when I moved away from home that I realized which sister was the adventurer and which one was the explorer.

Although to be brutally honest we all are adventurers and explorers, so that is not quite the right distinction to make. So let me rephrase;

Sister Marco polo: She is the one who likes to go into uncharted territory , always the one who would take up the road least traveled and push boundaries. I admit that I on my part have also done quite a number of things which can be attributed as going against the grain of social norms but sister marco polo has the grit to go ahead and forge her own way. She started talking about environmental stuff when no one in our family had really heard about it or cared to do much about it. She managed to turn all of us pretty much into tree huggers like herself. She convinced me to buy and compostor which is practically a big bin full of earth and earth worms and we kept it in our tiny basement apartment and composted anything that could be composted. The funny story is how we got it. We bought it and trudged back from the bus stop about 1.5 miles to our home. It soon became a favorite with our land lady too and she would bring all her food to compost as well and soon the poor worms were suffereing from a bout of indigestion. It was fun times though, I guess I have a ton more stories to tell about her because she was my room mate for 3 years when we both were living in Canada. Although I have lived with her almost all my life until I got married ofcourse, but those three years really put me in touch with the kind of wonderful person she is.

Sister Robin Hood: Well this sister of mine is always rooting for the under dog. The social reformer who will go to great lengths to bring about a social change. Always on the move championing a cause, and training in the martial arts along the way. As kids there was a couple of times when I being the big apa was able to really give her a beating but now; the tide has certainly turned I will think twice before I do anything which would anger this one. She used to use me as her practice dummy when she was training for ROTC and had to learn to carry a fallen soldier. So yes, you can imagine ........

Joan of Arc: According to my sisters, I am the only one in the family who has the capacity to fight in the way of religion and be burned as a heretic at the end of it. I guess they are right I have come along way from the girl who was following everything by the book and started thinking about things from different points of views and reading different books. I used to the the most religious one and in many ways I still am, I guess I am more inclined to look at things more spiritually than dogmatically.

So as I said before sisterhood is an amazing thing you have adventurers and explorers all living under one roof and then one by one charting their own course in life but that strong bond always remains. Onward we go my sisters :)

Moving towards World Peace.

Last week was my birthday and I was dwelling on the fact that I am fast approaching the big 3 zero..... What have I accomplished? my idealism is fast being replaced with realism and sarcasm. I was supposed to be Mother Teresa re-incarnated and here I am doing absolutely nothing to eleviate world poverty or illness. I was actually dwelling on this when one of my friends in jest asked why so serious? and then asked how can we have world peace.

I did not have an answer for his question at that time because honestly I never really really thought about it. His question was the catalyst which oiled my brain gears into motion. I am no Socrates but I think that world peace is a real possibility if we concentrate on just three things.

Human dignity + Tolerance + Compassion = World Peace, that is my formula.

Let me break it down for you, human dignity by its very meaning is the idea that all humans are deserving of respect, love and recognition regardless of gender, race, color, creed, caste, religion or any other distinctions. They deserved to be treated well because all humans have inherent worth and it does not have to be earned by status, class, culture or creed.

If we all started to treat each other well simply because we are human and not keep creating divisions amongst each other based on nationality, class, culture, sex, gender, creed, religion. If we do not sit in silence when we see mistreatment and injustice we will move towards world peace.

Next up is tolerance, why tolerance you may ask because tolerance simply means to allow another person to have a point of view. It may be completely opposite to your point of view but you allow it to exist, you do not have to agree with it, you do not have to like it but you let it be within some boundaries of course. If someone believes in infanticide you will of course not sit ideal while they go and bury the kid alive.....

The last in line is compassion, I think in order for someone to be compassionate they have to believe in human dignity and be tolerant to begin with... compassion is the idea the one feels someone else's pain or mishap as acutely as one's own. Of course you just don’t sit and feel the pain you do something about it, to help. Compassion is one of attributes of Allah and He placed compassion within our hearts so we treat one another with kindness. The idea behind two main tenents of Islam is also based on compassion, Zakat and Fast. We are told to give out of our earning to the poor so they can live better and to Fast in the month of Ramadan so we can feel the pain a hungry man feels.

So this is my view, if we all manage to have these attributes within our selves we may be closer to world peace.