On 2 October 2001, at about 5:30 p.m., I received a telephone call that appeared on my call display as “unknown number.” The female voice addressed me as “doctor” and used my first and last names. She was representing a telemarketing agency, which had been hired by the BCMA to conduct a readership survey of the BCMJ. My home telephone number is unlisted and “double blocked”—my personal information and telephone number could only have been, (and was), supplied to this company by the BCMA.
In a recent editorial by the esteemed JAW I was berated soundly and justifiably for failing to produce an editorial piece when it was my turn to do so. I made a mistake; an error of omission. My excuse that I was out of the country visiting relatives was not truly valid since I had ample warning that my turn was drawing near. The truth is that I prefer to procrastinate. If I write a piece too far ahead, I draft and redraft and fiddle until I have destroyed it. Writing is a bit like painting: if you add too much to it, it loses the original vision.
Over the years I have regularly found myself pleasantly bemused by finding that most high-profile politicians do what you predict they will do. I don’t think this is a startling revelation as these people’s public proclamations are well scripted by their communications consultants and are usually designed to alert us to the party’s future political policies. One of these supposedly predictable individuals, however, has been just the opposite, and his reluctance to do the expected has been a frustration for many of Canada’s keen observers of the medical/political scene.
Pericarditis is a common disease but is usually subclinical. Causes of pericarditis include idiopathic, infectious, and systemic disease, trauma, neoplasm, and iatrogenic causes, both surgical and medical.[1]
The presentation of extrapulmonary tuberculosis (TB) can challenge the diagnostic skills of clinicians and lead to a delay in the diagnosis and management of the disease. Two case reports of extrapulmonary tuberculosis illustrate this problem. Neither case involved HIV infection, although such co-morbidity is common. The first case demonstrates the difficulty of diagnosing tuberculous spondylitis and the second case involves tuberculous meningitis.
