The ENTing

I'm done with ENT. Yay!

The end posting exam was an unpleasant experience I would definitely not care to repeat. The highest point of the exercise was when the examiner gave me a clue to the answer (pilot) and asked me to name the person who flies in the sky. Unfortunately, I grew up on a diet of comic books, and still need a fix every time I feel down. Nothing like people wearing underwear over their clothes to cheer you up. Things went downhill from there. Technically, I did give a correct answer, but the examiner misconstrued my enthusiasm for the man of steel as impudence, and soon, I found myself being bodily ejected from the room. I hope she gave me a pass mark for correctly identifying the radiograph as an X ray of the chest, with a neck attached to its upper end.

The ENT department would have been a nonentity without that St Clair Thomson guy, which, if you ask me, is a very silly name for a man. Every other instrument seems to be named after him. It could be 2 people, St Clair and Thomson, the bestest of friends since Thomson and Thompson. But I still maintain that a man named St Clair would have been regarded with contempt by his peers, but not Thomson, who would have had forceps stuck up various orifices had he expressed his disdain. So we have St Clair Thomson quinsy draining forceps, St Clair Thomson adenoid curette, St Clair Thomson long blade nasal speculum, St Clair Thomson post nasal mirror, etc. By the time the surgeon finishes asking for a St Clair Thomson adenoid curette without guard of a different size, the patient would have half bled to death. But wait a minute an hour. Here comes Mollison's blunt tonsillar dissector and anterior pillar retractor to assess the damage. Hold that bleeding point with the Waugh's long dissecting forceps with tooth, while I get some gauze to stuff up the area using my hands. ENT is a weird subject.

I'm afraid all this rejoicing is useless, since I have Orthopaedics next. As if I haven't had enough of nailing and hammering with all the work being done at my neighbour's place. If any male wants to make a sexist remark like 'Orthopaedics is a man's work, you had better stick to Ob-G', please give yourself a castration. No, you won't need any surgical skill or anaesthetic. I promise you, it will be painless. I do not want to look back when I'm 70, and think, I think I spent a total of 3 years probing somebody's vagina.

I wish we could have all those kutti/chhottu/tiny 2 week postings again. Except for the Family Planning one, naturally. I do not want to watch an abortion being performed again. The sight of those tiny feet lying in the dustbin were more than what I could handle. There are genuine cases, when the pregnancy has to be terminated, but most of the women attending the FP OPD wanted to get rid of an unwanted baby. Why the **** don't they use contraceptives if they don't want more kids? I don't blame the FP guys for forcing contraceptives on those murderers. Doctors aren't hired killers.

Dental posting was fun. Every single day was spent at home. I think it was my favourite posting ever. I enjoyed Psychiatry until they took us to the Mental Hospital, where the incurably ill patients were. I still have nightmares about that place. Don't get me wrong, the patients aren't mistreated there. I only discovered that insanity is no laughing matter.

I loved my 2 weeks in Radiotherapy. Not out of any particular interest in the subject, but none of us girls missed a single class. *sigh*

Oh, and how can I forget Respiratory Medicine? It was like going on a picnic everyday. The Resp department is on the top of a hill, about 15 minutes from the college, and the view was awesome. We once bunked class to climb up the terrace, from where we could see for miles. It was Omigosh's class, so we weren't missing out on anything, unless you count our first hand knowledge of the deplorable state of medical education in the state as being insufficient. We know we're a bunch of incompetent idiots, thank you.

The kutti postings were also a a great excuse to catch up on gossip. I think it was during our ROME (Re-Oreintation of Medical Education, or the posting to which all the corridors lead) posting that we took turns measuring each others' shoulder breadth, height, and um, certain circumferences. Mid-arm, O corrupt souls.

I loved chairing the verandah committees, heading the restaurant inspections, organising the pilgrimages to the beach, being initiated as shopping Guru's disciple... Kutti postings. Those were the days...

Wait a minute. I believe this post had something to do with my delight at the conclusion of my month long ENT posting. I knew I was in deep trouble earwax the day I heard a professor say, 'Wax removal is an art.'

Wishing you all a Happy Vijaya Dashami. It's not a very happy occasion for me, in spite of having gotten rid of my textbooks for a while. I don't like the herbivore that has taken over my body.