In the office of Dr Jeilan Mohamed, Director of Cardiology Services at Aga Khan University Hospital Nairobi, I ask what is the leading cause of heart attacks.
He mumbles some technical jargon that evaporates as soon as it hits my air space because I am itching to tell him the leading cause of heart attacks is hearts. Because without the heart you cannot have a heart attack. He laughs because a) it’s funny but b) while he is serious with his work, he doesn’t have to be serious while at work.
Take for instance his dressing. He is in tracksuits because he never misses a chance to run. This is just one of the many things he does, atop of walking, playing the piano, and Djing, he even does a live mixing on his phone of David Guetta’s Play Hard and a song from Prince which I don’t quite get—venturing into the shores of our unexplored interiors—like putting together night and day.
In the elevator, someone whispers to me, “That Jeilan guy is a genius, isn’t he?” As an objective journalist, I remain noncommittal, but this is a man whose career you can either do or you can’t—just as it’s easy to look at a Picasso and conclude that the only difference between him and us is his brushwork.
Why DJing?
I write music, I play the piano and I DJ all the time. I make remixes to songs. If I am bored, I just pull out my phone and start DJing. I started in campus, back in the United Kingdom.
How did you pick this up?
I have always loved music. At some point in my journey, I was not as slim as I am and while other people were dancing, I was in charge of CDs, making sure we had the correct CDs. I’d burn CDs, illegal as it was, and I ran a small biashara in the black market.
Is this still an active part of your life—the music, not the bootlegging?
Haha! Now I am writing a musical, I can’t tell you what it is about, however. It shall be my first musical and I need about 65 songs. I have only written four so far, but it shall be purely original work.
How does this complement your cardiology career?
Good question. There is a huge connection between music and health. If you are trying to be a doctor with a certain kind of memory like I do, you can remember words if they are in lyrics.
Medicine is a lot of memorisation of anatomy and relationships and you can figure out ways of writing lyrics to match what you are trying to remember, mnemonics.
I like to chant certain things to help me remember. Music is good for your health, like when I want to run for an hour, I got a mix for that hour, with the music changing relatively with my mood—I start with mellow stuff and end up with HipHop.
It’s a great distraction. There is a study called the Mozart effect. Do you know it?
No.
Well, it was a psychology assessment to see whether the ability of the subjects improved after listening to a sonata by Mozart. There were definite benefits from spending 10 to 15 minutes listening to that, for those who did that their performance was better than the people given slow, relaxing, tomes—the sort of stuff you could hear in a spa. Some music opens up certain parts of your brain.
Is it true that the beat of the song can sometimes match the beat of the heart?
I am not aware of that; I don’t think it can happen. Technically it’s probably possible in theory. There is an American footballer who was punched in the chest at the right spot and they went into cardiac arrest because the chest wall hit the heart even though the heart wasn’t damaged. It never happened and he didn’t need any other treatment other than a shock.
Do you have a happy moment that has stayed with you while DJing?
When you have a very responsive crowd, and know when to drop the next beat.
Do you have a special ritual or song you play before surgery?
No. I just go in because we have to be responsive to unblock arteries immediately. On Tuesday I was headed home at about 4 PM and I had to come back and do four procedures, which was strange because we are not usually that busy. Each procedure was different, somebody’s heart stopped just before the procedure so we had to resuscitate her.
Dr Jeilan Mohamed, Director of Cardiology Services at Aga Khan University Hospital Nairobi, pointing at a file in his office.
What is the most important decision you made that led you here?
Accepting to study medicine. I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do, I was just good at passing exams. I knew medicine was interesting, my family thought I should be a doctor, it was just the most natural option, but I also wanted to stay in university for a long time, hence why medicine [chuckles]. I also didn’t do well in medical school; I passed but I wasn’t as attentive.
Until someone collapsed on my third day as a doctor and the nurse said, “Mo, Bill’s collapsed.”
There was a senior guy, Stewart, who told me he had gone to the toilet and I followed him there, knocking on his door haha! That was when I realised I have a responsibility to people, so I overstudied how to deal with people who have collapsed and within three weeks I learned what people maybe five years into their medical careers had learned.
How scary was that?
Very. It took about 15 minutes for Stewart to finish what he was doing to come and save Bill haha! I am not an open-heart surgeon so the complication rates of my procedures are much lower.
What habit has best served you in your life?
Recognising how easy it is to slip out of a good habit, and being scared that I may slip out of that good habit.
Five years ago, I started walking before graduating into running. I’d walk to the hospital from where I lived, and that took me about 50 minutes—unless it rained, which is when I would walk on a treadmill.
One day I decided to run to the hospital, about five kilometres away, and I knew this was a habit I couldn’t drop. It’s difficult to relearn a good habit, so be obsessive about it, that’s why I am in a tracksuit, if there is an opportunity to run, I take it.
What have you learned about yourself from your exercise habits?
I have seen how people from all walks of life live. I am quite sociable with different people, and they are surprised when they discover I am a cardiologist. I love walking in the forest, it’s peaceful and I mix up my rhythms: running in Karura, on the treadmill and the streets.
When was the last time you did something for the first time? Good question. I went to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and did a bungee jump.
Let me be honest, I didn’t do an upside-down bungee jump [chuckles]. The rope is an elastic spring, it just wants to pull you out, I don’t think I’d do it again. But out of five guys, I am the only one who didn’t cower out.
When you get to where you are going where will you be?
I am here already. I am not trying to be a billionaire. I’ve got an exceptional team, most of them were my students and many of them are better than me at certain types of procedures. They are as good as it gets.
If you could teach the world one thing, what would it be?
That’s tough. Give me a few seconds. Patience. That is what I would teach. Patience is an underrated virtue, there are people with mundane jobs who are satisfied, and there are others in high-energy jobs who are impatient and unsatisfied. Empathy is also an important attribute; you can see things from other people’s perspectives. But patience is for you.
What tests your patience?
Having to explain the same thing to the same person in different ways and struggling to get through. I rarely lose my cool, because it’s embarrassing to see someone angry haha!
What do you love most about yourself?
Every strength is a weakness but I like the way I like people, I enjoy people, but I am not a populist. When patients come to see me, I want to be friendly—what’s going on? When they speak to me, I want to understand their life, and how that symptom affects them, then you can really understand how to help your patient.
What’s your insecurity now?
You quickly learn as a doctor that death is around the corner. I am worried about diseases that might change your life—a major stroke and being paralysed, that could upset me.
What did your first heartbreak teach you?
To value people who are with you because you don’t know how long they will be with you. Spend as much time with people who are important to you. And record those moments, it becomes an opportunity to reflect.
Who do you know that I should know?
[Thinks long and hard] Some cool guy that I met when I was working as a junior doctor in an oncology ward. He had lymphoma, which can be managed by chemotherapy but it is quite unpleasant. He was around 55 years old, and he went through chemotherapy three years before I met him, with six weeks of treatment, he lost his hair and then he got better.
A year later, the lymphoma came back and he went through chemo a second time, and got better. I met him the third time, and he asked for his options, he had about a 25 to 30 percent chance of working.
The next day he told us he doesn’t want to go through chemo again—it is quite tough. How long do I have? We told him about six months.
What can I expect as I approach death? Breathlessness and weariness, we can give you a blood transfusion. Every three weeks he’d come for a blood transfusion which takes about six hours, and he’d be reading a new novel.
I was thinking how does somebody who has a few weeks to live find any interest in anything? I realised you can approach your mortality as you choose. It is inevitable and he taught me that. And then he died.