I Wanted A Thesaurus During My Exam

I have exams now.

No, not my finals.

These are internals, but they are like the finals. So that we get a feel of things, and all.

First up was Internal Medicine.

You know, the toughest subject there is. It's quite a handful (the smallest textbook has 1500 pages), and most people who do not clear final year attribute it to Medicine. So it's very important.

I like to think that I know my basics well (this just might be my imagination at work), but for an exam, it's not enough. You need to be topic oriented, and to be able to memorise a lot of points to core well. The grading of lupus nephritis, the extra articular manifestations of ankylosing spondylitis, the complications of, oh, I don't know, something with a suitably impressive name? Like Cerebral Autosomal Dominant Arteriopathy with Subcortical Infarcts and Leukoencephalopathy? Things my brain could retain for 24 hours, max. So I tend to study the most the day before an exam, like a lot of my friends.


We have two papers in Medicine. One about all the general stuff (infections, intensive care, immune disorders, stuff like that) and diseases of the respiratory system. And the other one is all about the cool aspects (cardiology, neurology, nephrology, gastroenterology, etc.).

And you know what happens for the first exam? They gave out the wrong question paper. I got punched in the face by pulmonology when I was filled to the brim with the causes of seizures in the elderly.

The invigilators were very reassuring.
"You have been learning Medicine for five years. Stop talking and start writing."

I was livid. Which is how I almost ended up becoming explicit in my answer paper.

"...and eventually, the thermoregulatory mechanisms of the body get fucked up, and the patient develops..."

I was also scared, which is why I wasted two whole minutes thinking of a more suitable, medical sounding alternative for fucked up. Other than screwed up. Or messed up.

A lot of my answers can be attributed to my being an exponent in the art form known as dummy idal. The term is derived from a Mallu movie from the 80s, where the 'CIDs' would drop a dummy from the roof, no matter how the victim died. (One of my favourite movies, ever!)

No matter what the question is about, we write about the things we know. So I wrote pages on fulminant hepatic failure when asked about Paracetamol poisoning (which is one of the causes for FHF), about Lambert-Easton myasthenic syndrome for the non-metastatic manifestations of bronchial carcinoma, the causes for splenomegaly since I did not know much about tropical splenomegaly... You get the idea.

I had worked rather hard for the exam, and having it all go waste killed something inside me, and the next exam (which was about FHF et al) went down the drain, too.

Two down, five more to go.