Friday Five, Episode One

Surgery is not very nice. Lots of unspeakable things happening in unmentionable places. You know, like, haemorrhoids. I don't want to talk about it. I hate surgery. And then I realised my life sucks, because I have nothing else to talk about. Other than about haemorrhoids. Obviously. And rectal prolapse. You don't want to hear about the others, trust me.

This leaves me with a blog (that nobody reads), and nothing to say. But fear not, for here comes Friday Five to the rescue! Here we go.

1. Could you live without your phone for 1 week for $500?

Of course I could. Especially since I use my mom's phone most of the time. Easiest 500 I ever made, given that I make about $0 a year.

That reminds me. Have you heard this joke about a man with four sons? He was talking to his friend about them, and he said he was very proud of the first three, because they were all doctors. The friend wanted to know what the fourth one did, and he replied that he (number 4) was a useless guy working as a barber, but he (the father) couldn't get rid of him because he was the only son who earned.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

If you made it this far, you are probably sitting next to me with a gun at your temple. Carry on reading, or I pull the trigger.

2. Whom do you talk to on the phone the most?

This honour goes to R (also known as R). Most of our conversations go like this.

Me: How am I ever going to pass final year?

R: I was wondering the same thing.

Me: WHAT?

R: How am I ever going to pass final year?

Me: Yeah. I haven't touched my book today.

R: Neither have I.

Me: Why are we like this?

R: How are we ever going to pass final year?

It takes us a long time to conclude that we are 'like this' because we spend all our time on the phone moaning about how we don't study when we should be hitting the books. How are we ever going to pass final year? Why are we like this?

3. Whom do you no longer talk to on the phone but wish you still did?

Nobody. Really.

4. If you could get ahold of one celebrity phone number, whose digits would you want?

No one in particular. The picture is intended to make my blog look less boring.

5. Do you talk on the phone more or less than you used to?

Of course I'll assist you with the astrocytoma. I love surgery. It's my favourite subject, and I have always dreamed of becoming a neurosurgeon at least half as good as you. I can't believe y- Whuh? What's going on?

I think I fell asleep and had a wonderf-, I mean, weird dream. About the question, I talk less on the phone these days. After spending half the day (that's 12 hours, for those of you who live on other planets) at the hospital, I don't have the energy to even chew, let alone talk. And neither does R. Final year? Sucks. Big time. Let me go look at the picture again, so that I can slobber all over the keyboard calm myself. You guys can get back to whatever you were doing.

*sigh*

The Entire Respiratory Tract

Er, hi. I did not die. But I came pretty close to it. And that statement is not just to make you feel sorry for me, it's almost true. Let us review the events of the last couple of weeks.

1. Medicine end posting exam

You know what that means, don't you? My posting in Internal Medicine is done with, and they wanted to find out how much I'd learnt in the 2 months I spent with them, not having seen anything about my posting on my blog. Ha ha. They don't read my blog, of course. Or they wold have known that I didn't know the causes of massive splenomegaly, and failed me without wasting time conducting exams.

The exam was weird. It's a practical exam, and we're given a real! live! patient and asked to figure out what disease he/she has. If it sound easy to you, **** you. Here's what happened.

Me: Good morning, I am Doctor (cough) AP.

Patient's daughter (PD): Student-aa? Which year?

Me: Final year.

PD: My dad is too sick to be poked and prodded by you stupid students. Go away.

Me (almost in tears): No, no. I have an exam.

PD: OK, on one condition. You don't touch him.

Me (thinks that as long as she does not have a gastrointestinal disease, this should go fine.): What trouble brought you to the hospital?

PD: Vomiting blood. Doctor Saar said my Appa has liver disease.

Me: I am so screwed.

I passed the exam (yay!), but only because the patient's daughter called my examiner a murderer when he palpated for the liver, and he realised why I had commented on the patient's enlarged liver as "liver not palpable."

2. New house

My mom and I have moved to another home, one that didn't feel like my Dad was going to walk in any moment. That reason for the move was stupid, because we can't wait for him to see this house and give it his seal of approval.

It's a tiny place, and the first week here was really hard, because THE STUPID INTERNET PEOPLE TOOK THEIR SWEET TIME WITH MY CONNECTION. As did the idiot cable people and the morons at the telephone department.

3. -itises

So while we were packing up all our stuff to be moved into the new house, I discovered that things? Collect dust. Like magnets. And this gave me allergic rhinitis, which got infected, and the next thing I knew, I was trying to cough up my lungs. The cough was so bad I got laryngitis and everything I said came out as a croak. And while I was getting over the bronchitis, the infection spread to my sinuses and I would spend hours in front of a steamer (not the kind that float on water). Then I found out my antibiotic was not working, and everything came back, so now I have rhinitis, pharyngitis, bronchitis, laryngitis and sinusitis. I haven't attended class for a week.

I have a date with my steamer now. See you next week.

P.S. I love getting "get well soon" cards and flowers. Just saying...

Glow, Siree

Do you know the 12 causes of massive splenomegaly? The 7 radiological findings in a patient with long-standing mitral stenosis? The differential diagnoses in a patient with hepatic bruit?

You don't? Well, your life isn't worth living anymore. At least, that was what I was told when they found out I didn't know what albuminocytological dissociation was.

I am way too depressed to be writing about my misadventures in the Medicine clinics. You, my favouritest people on Earth (after my mom and Superman), are going to be treated to a glossary of terms used by the average mallu medico. Yes, things are that bad.

1. Desp

Who doesn't know this one? Short for despondent, it covers everything from pre-exam blues to alimentary failure. Often prefixed by vann, katta, bhayankara, regardless of its appropriateness.

e.g.: Desp exam, dude.

2. Horror

This encompasses that complex range of emotions that assault you upon running into The Vampire when you sneak off to the canteen for a cup of tea.

e.g.: Horror exam, dude.

3. Waste

Garbage, of the performance kind.

e.g.: Waste exam, dude.

4. Kalippu

Trouble, I guess. One if those words that defy the English language.

5. Keeri ottichu

Literally, torn and stuck (onto some surface). What the examiner does to a student on the orals.

e.g.: Dude, how did your ENT viva go?

Keeri ottichu, man.

6. Vann/Katta

Adjectives, meaning very.

e.g.: Vann/Katta desp/horror/waste exam, dude.

AP, that was a katta presentation. :D (They really did say that. Without threats or bribes.)

7. Coople

A derogatory term for couple, used by chronically single medicos.

8. Kidu/Kidilam/Katta

Awesomeness.

e.g.: "Have you seen that katta hottie in Surgery?"

"Oh, yesss..." *drools*

9. I am the happy.

The medico's comment on running into the aforementioned hottie.

10. Sasi (pronounced sha-shi)

A mallu male. The same guy who saved up for 3 months to buy the best pair of jeans ever made, and wore it for a week and raved about its fit, only to find out later that his sister owned the exact same pair.

11. Chronics

Medicos who have not been seen in class since the first day back in first year. Most of them are sleeping or watching movies, some of them drive taxis.

12. SP

A medico (or a doctor) who cannot stop singing his own praises.

e.g.: "I can transplant a liver in less than 10 minutes."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I am a vann kidu."

13. PCP

In use only among my friends. Stands for paapi chellunnidam pathalam, which means that hell is where the sinner is. And the sinner is yours truly. Here is a typical day in the life of a PCP.

"I was late getting up, and had to skip breakfast. I missed my bus, and the auto I managed to get could be outrun by a turtle. And then he charged me twice the actual rate, and I had to pay him, because arguing with him would make me late for class. I broke all speed records on my way to the classroom, only to find the door being shut as the teacher was 5 seconds ahead of me. I was yelled at, marked absent, and then had to sit through the most boring class of the century. In the middle of which, my cell phone rang, and I was severely reprimanded for disrupting the class. (It was my mom calling to ask if I had the plumber's number.) I found out I had forgotten to bring my homework, the one that had taken me the whole of last night to write, because it was kept next to my breakfast. Which I didn't eat, because I had woken up late. Because I was up the whole night doing my homework."

This, peoples, is PCP.

14. Chori

A very irritating person, more or less. More, actually.

e.g.: That narcoleptic in SPM is a horror chori.

15. Chalu

A joke that can cause bodily harm to the teller.

e.g.: What is haste cuisine?

Fast French food.

I think there are more. In fact, I know there are more, but I can't think of any right now. I'll leave you with these now, and go complete my assignment. I have to submit it tomorrow morning.

Drinking Saliva and Other Stuff

Classy title, don't you think?

I went to bed the other night, and when I woke up in the morning (it being a working day, natch, my wake up time on any other day cannot be called 'morning' with any amount of imagination, unless you live in, say, Botswana), my salivary glands had started secreting acid instead of saliva. At least, that was what my throat told me.

Being me, I had to get a look at that lying slime of a throat (I have never known the parotids to secrete acid before), which was why my mom found me standing in front of the mirror with my mouth wide open, and a flashlight in my tonsils. (The flashlight was not in my tonsils, it only looked that way to my mom.)

Do you know what an inflamed pharynx looks like? More to the point, do you know what my inflamed pharynx looks like? If you don't, count yourself out of that unlucky class of people known as my friends. They are also intimately familiar with every crypt on my tonsils, the number of papillae on my tongue, and other stuff they did not really want to know, like the number of teeth in my mouth.

The most disturbing comment about my pharynx came from The Star, who said, "You have a big mouth."

Point taken. :(

P. S. For those of you who are worried about me, it was only a slight pharyngitis (although it felt like I was dying), and I am loads better now.

P. S. 2. My posting is going well, I promise blog about it 'soon'.

P. S. 3. No one but my ENT will get to see my pharynx again.

P.S. 4. This is my 50th blog post. Thank you, all of you!

Happy Onam

I take a few days, all right, a month, off, and the Big Brother, of all people, tells me to get back to blogging. He even suggested a topic, a heinous crime committed by a person who gave us half our chromosomes. Since this is now a family blog (the Big Brother is very proud of the Baby Sister and sent the link to all our cousins), I am forced to cut down on the grotesque details of hosital life. On the upside, I now have a vast readership*. A special hi to Miyumon, for saying all that nice stuff about my writing, which proves that you did not read it, but I won't hold it against you. :)

My mother 'misplaced' my blue umbrella. The pretty one that looked like it was made of denim and was lighter than half a positron, and is not available any more in any of the umbrella stores. She will pay for it. By taking care of me when I fall ill from getting drenched in the rain.

Oh, by the way, final year is nice. I have nine textbooks for one subject alone. And that's the nicest part.

Happy Onam, all of you. You'll get a new post soon. Very soon.

*I have a family jungle that would put the Amazon forest to shame.

Move Over, Rembrandt

SPM is finished, so hallelujah! hip hip hurray! and all the rest.

The exams were not a cakewalk, and the qwerty* who set the ENT question paper ought to be taken bungee jumping. Without a rope. The less said about those painful two hours trying to answer (the operative word being 'trying') questions about the treatment for CSF rhinorrhoea (when cerebrospinal fluid leaks out through the nose, usually due to an injury) and resorting to my imagination for the answer (I actually wrote “endoscopic cauterization of the leaky area”. Don’t try this at home, kids.), the better.

Nothing very funny happened during the practical exams this time. Last year, I dutifully enumerated the names of inhalational steroids when asked about inhalational anaesthetics, and named the drugs used for MTP (medical termination of pregnancy) when I misheard the question as the drugs used for MDP (manic depressive psychosis). I suppose we are all becoming old and dignified now. Even me. What a horrible thought.

Oh, no, wait. I did goof up in the Ophthalmology case presentation. I proudly defined astigmatism as the refractive error in which a point source of light cannot be made to produce a punctuate image upon the retina by any spherical correcting lens, and promptly proceeded to assert that the type of lens used to correct astigmatism was spherical. But this was the only incident. Oh, and proclaiming that menstruation is a contraindication for adenoid surgery. (Adenoiditis is seen only in young children, in case you didn’t know.) Yeah, that is all. The incident during the SPM viva does not count. The one where I rattled on about the treatment of tuberculosis patients and did not hear the examiner ask the next question. Three times. But that could happen to anyone, right? RIGHT?

You might assume, on reading this report of my ‘stellar’ performance in the exams, that my passing the exams with air travelling hues is a given. You could not be more wrong. The bane of my existence continues to be, well, the bane of my existence. As in, SPM may not be done with me. Take a look at some of the diagrams in my practical record book.

I hear you, peoples. And that the fuck is a head louse, female. As the actual thing looks like this, on the right, you can rest assured that it does not live on people's heads. This is why we should be worried about nuclear bombs. You can never tell about those mutations.

You didn’t need my helpful little label to identify him, did you? This is the bad guy that spreads bubonic plague, among other things. Look at him closely. If you ever see anything resembling the thing in that picture, contact your nearest Pest Alien Control Centre. I shall not object to your using that image to scare your kids who don’t eat their vegetables. Or even adults, for that matter. Just send me lots of money every time you do. I shall soon be rich. *rubs hands in anticipation*

And now, for the gem of the collection. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome

Cuuuulex larva! Observe the graceful little tufts of hair(?) on its head! The eyes open wide in innocence and wonder! The cute little respiratory siphon at the bottom! All it lacks are a few pairs of arms and a bazooka.

The only point in my favour is that the record books carry only 1 mark, out of the 200 allotted for SPM. But this being SPM, you never know. Those Parkists are weird.

The classes for final year should start soon. THE final year. It feels like yesterday that I was a scared little first year, thinking 4.5 years was a LOT of time and the future was far away. *sigh*

About my dad, I still miss him terribly, and I still can’t believe he’s gone, just like that, but somehow, sleeping is a little easier now. It’s been 8 whole weeks without him, and somehow, wherever he is, he must be missing his little baby too. I hate getting preachy, but I would just like to remind you smokers that someday, it might be your little girl grieving for you. Acha quit smoking with his first heart attack 15 years ago, and it still got him in the end. We never even got to say goodbye…

I was wrong. It still hurts as much as it did.

*If you are not a QC fan, click here.

I'm Back. Sort of.

It's been more than a month since my dad left us, and it still feels like yesterday. I want to tell you about him. About how he loved potatoes, Louis L'Amour's books, silly Chinese martial arts movies, and me. About how he would make disgusted noises every time I gave him a hug, and grin from ear to ear while pretending to push me away. About his silly quirks, like counting the number of greys in his chest hair. I wish I could go on, but the screen looks really blurred now. I can't talk about my Acha yet. I'm putting it off until some other day, when it doesn't hurt quite so much.
Thank you, all of you, for being so supportive, even though you don't know me or my family.

I have been having exams from the week he died, and it was loads of fun, I tell you. < /sarcasm> I have two more exams to go, and three practical exams, and then I'm done with fourth year. I'm all set to chuck my Park into the fire. That reminds me, I found another excellent Parkist quote the other day while reading for my exam.
"River: A direct connection between the alimentary tract of those living upstream and the mouths of those living downstream."
That's when I found out that I hadn't forgotten how to laugh, I just thought I had.

I'll see you all after the exams.