Sword Swallower

I tend to be suspicious of hype. I was totally prepared to be unimpressed. But I didn't expect it to cater to my kitschy tastes. And the result? I fell in love. There you have it. Straight from the horse's mouth, although I am not a horse, and will kick anyone who calls me a mare. I'm talking about Om Shanti Om. It's very unlike me to like a song because I enjoyed the video, but KK's voice has a peculiar way of frying my brain. And, like I said, I'm drawn towards kitsch. I can offer no other explanation. Go watch it.

I'm trying to delay the inevitable, but I can't think of anything else right now. Oh wait, there's this. Very impressive.

By the way, I passed the ENT end posting. I wasn't expecting to.

Do you still want to read about my boring life? Come on, there are millions of better things to do. Like picking your nose. Um, you still want to know about me? Although it beats me how anyone could be interested in the dreary event that is my existence. OK, here goes. *gulp* I have a confession to make- I love Orthopaedics. Who would have expected it to be so fascinating? Mind-blowing, utterly bewitching, yada yada yada. No, this sudden change of heart has nothing to do with the cute PG student in my unit.

First day. We entered the ward, and scanned it for the presence of white-coated figures. There was one. Bandaging somebody's leg. The figure straightened, and we went up and introduced ourselves as the new batch of students posted in Ortho. He said he was a PG student, and told us to go meet the unit chief. Suddenly, a child with CTEV handed him a toy, and he turned and smiled at her. I immediately went into ventricular fibrillation. Oh. My. God. That kind of smile should be made illegal. No wonder the sex ratio in the state is plummeting.

I was so disoriented that I agreed to present the case. That too on the first day, when no one knows what to do. Needless to say, it turned out to be a joke.

A little boy brought with a painful, swollen knee. I had to bribe him with chocolates before he allowed me to examine him. That brought back horrible memories of a child with Tetralogy of Fallot in Paediatrics. The case sheet (which we aren't supposed to refer, so we never fail to do that) said he had septic arthritis, and I was in no state to disagree. As luck would have it, the child turned out to have pyogenic osteomyelitis. Fortunately I'd mentioned it as a differential diagnosis. Seems it's really hard to distinguish between the two clinically, unless you do some special scans. That was forgiven. The rest was not. The skin overlying the swelling was not red, as I had stated (gundadi, roughly translated as bluffing, is my birthright), in order to give added weight to the diagnosis of an inflammatory condition. I'd forgotten that the kid was coloured like coal. I also managed to knock over the X ray lobby, after which I got so flustered I held the X ray upside down. I don't know how to read an X ray, stop asking me to do that. Anything other than a chest X ray, that is.

The next day, a PG, who had been present during my joke presentation, took a class on fracture neck of femur. Dammit, he didn't have to tease me about the red skin. Like we needed a reason to laugh. My unit mates are notorious for giggling at inappropriate moments.

Our teachers are having a lot of trouble digesting the fact that we had a month's posting last semester. They also cannot believe that we have, in fact, passed our Anatomy exams. I was forcibly reminded of the existence of structures like the rotator cuff and bicipital aponeurosis. If teachers ask unnecessary questions, they should be prepared for our answers. We also teach them new things, like, the nerve supply of the supraspinatus muscle is the axillary nerve.

I'm rambling, am I not? Blame the PG for scrambling my brain. I'm not the only one, by the way. Skoda had diligently read up fracture neck of femur when she came the next day. I can tell you everything about the Gustilo and Anderson classification of open fractures in my sleep. Arch is an expert on the different types of sequestra. I would have topped every single exam if all the departments could boast of at least one specimen of such magnificence.

Dear lord, how time flies. I have to go read chondrosarcoma now. The PG said he'll ask us questions tomorrow. Skoda and Arch stand no chance against me. Hah!