Dr. Jekyll and Chucky

I am in Smallville.

That is how I think about Paediatrics inside my head. Because children are small.

I can't stand Paediatrics.

Literally.

But only literally.

My feet hurt. From standing on them. For hours. About five or six of 'em. Hours, that is. Not five or six feet. Because that would be weird. Not to mention shopping nightmares.

Ow.

So.

A lot of people believe Paeds is all about this:


It is.

Little kids are cute. Small babies are adorable. And tiny preemies are... let's be honest here. Scary. They could die any second.

Children are innocent, sweet, endearing, precious, playful, enchanting, talkative... (Yes, I used a thesaurus. So?)

What they also are, are monsters. Tiny monsters, but still, monsters. Allow me to demonstrate.


Picture a room with forty beds. Side by side, in two rows. Imagine each one occupied by the person pictured above, in that pose. Imagine the noise level. Multiply that by your favourite 6 digit number. Here, your imagination needs these. (I am genuinely sorry about the colour.)

You should totally visit our Paediatrics ward after the nurses have finished giving a round of injections. It will broaden your horizons. Trust me.

One day was devoted to Paediatric Surgery. There was this kid, less than two years old. Her grandmother had brought her to the OPD for post surgical follow up. She had had a surgery for a hernia, which is unusual in girl children. Well, it turned out she was not a 'she' after all. They found a pair of 'undescended testes' inside her during the surgery, and studies showed that the child was genetically male. 'She' had something called testicular feminising syndrome (it is as ghastly as it sounds) and externally appeared to be a girl. Now, the difficulty was in deciding whether to raise the child as a girl or a boy. Since 'she' already looked like a girl, it was settled that she would continue to be one. (The testicles would have to be removed, they were no good anyway, and there is a high risk of cancer later on.)

We rarely realise how lucky we are.

Pancreas & The Gang

Some day, when I am feeling especially sadistic, I will give you a blow-by-blow account of "How Pancreas Writes a Case Record." Write Right now, I just have this really painful cramp in my right hand. I have been writing from last night, and all I have down is eight pages. It may not seem like much to you, but it is for me. I am a little* lazy, to be honest.

Nothing much happened last week. I went back to college after 'Christmas vacation', which is what we called the week long bunking of classes we undertook because we only had Christmas day off, and you can't enjoy it when you have just one day with all the goodwill in the world. Maybe you can, but there wasn't enough goodwill in this part of the world, at any rate.

Yeah, going back to college. There I was, walking, no, running (I was late for class, as usual), down the corridor of the Mother & Baby Hospital when I see a woman holding this tiny, tiny, baby. And I was all, "Aww!" and thought, "ObG isn't that all that sucky."

You think you know what is coming next, don't you? I am going to be all "God, ObG is the BEST" and "Oh, how I am going to miss it", isn't it? Read on, the suspense is killing me too.

I walk into one of the operating rooms, all smiling and happy, brimming over with this LOVE for mankind, when I see a woman with her uterus hanging out her va-jay-jay and blood all over the place. That is when I remembered the reason I can't stand ObG. ObG consists not only of Obstetrics, but also Gynaecology. And Gynaecology involves LALALALALALA family blog. If you really want to know, drop me an email so I can ignore it.

Also last week, A and I were having lunch at a restaurant close to the hospital, and the people at the table next to ours was making more noise than the both of us, and this annoyed us no end. A mere eight puny human beings getting more dirty looks from the others than us? Really, an unpardonable offence. Reinforcements arrived as quickly as they could, and we spent the rest of our meals making faces at the eight at the next table who were glaring at us. Go, us!

Anyway, this incident made me very sad. Not because we surprisingly did not get kicked out of the restaurant, but because we only have a few more months left in college. And then I realised that my beloved readers (all three of you, including the I) don't know any of my friends. And I felt ashamed, and decided to kill myself. But my Mom convinced that a blog post about The Gang would do instead. You can scream at her for this post, but not too loud, she has a slight fever.

Pancreas & The Gang

Adorable Pancreas: Mysterious, immensely talented, blindingly gorgeous, stupendously clever medico who is loved by all and feared known far and wide for her brilliant wit. Is of a skeletal skinny slim willowy build that is the target of much envy. AKA: Skeletal System, Prevaricator

The A: Cuddly baby in her early twenties. Has a voice which can be heard clearly even at an Iron Maiden concert. Claims to be an excellent cook, victims still not out of hospital. A rock in times of trouble, a pain at other times.
AKA: Hypertrophied Triceps, Accident waiting to happen

Twin: One half of a set of identical twins, separated from the other half for the first time in her life. Claims to be one half of a set of fraternal twins who just happen to look identical. Hates colour, wears black to weddings, funerals, and classes. Has two cell phones both of which are either switched off or beyond coverage area.
AKA: Dog doctor, Vanishing Twin

The R: The most mature and quietest member of The Gang. Has an inexplicable tendency to make friends with the wackiest characters around. Had to haver a cell phone surgically removed from her ear once, but the disease recurred. Addicted to chocolate.
AKA: Silencer, Partner in Crime

These are my four bestest friends in the world. Unlike a lot of people, my best friends list also includes me. The extended Gang would take me an entire day to type out, and contrary to popular belief, I actually have other, more important stuff to do. Such as, uh, important stuff. Dear lord, I have exams next month, and I start Paediatrics tomorrow. And I have four library books to finish. Bye!

*Word used in its b    r    o    a    d    e    s    t sense.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I won an award!

You got that right. I won an award.

Um, my blog did. Po-tay-to. Po-tah-to. I won an award!

Yay!


"I would like to thank my mom, for all her support and encouragement, my dad, for his unconditional love, my brother, for generally being a pain in the neck, my friends, for lending me money, my cat, for meowing, my neighbour, for playing his crappy music too loud, my teachers, for all that they taught me, and last but not the least, myself, for being so brilliant, gorgeous, funny, gifted, and all around wonderful ."

What? This seemed to call for a cheesy "I would like to thank" speech.

Oh, I would also like to thank Tys on Ice for considering me worthy of this award. I nearly forgot him.

Who said that? "How did an idiot like you win an award?" You are just jealous, mister. I won it because I am a kidu. It says so on the award.

"This award is given to a blog that invests and believes in PROXIMITY - nearness in space, time and relationships! These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award."

See? I am an 'exceedingly charming' and 'kind' blogger who deserves more attention. Ha!

Since I am all for the aggrandizement of others too, and also because the rules state so, I pass on the award to the following eight people:

1. Tangled- Because she thinks I am nice.
2. Silverine- Because I think she is nice.
3. Sayesha- Because she makes me laugh.
4. Tea N. Crumpet- Because she likes me.
5. The Monk- Because he is one of my best-est friends ever.
6. Somebody Else- Because I like her writing.
7. Quietly Amused- Because he is a brain surgeon. Curtsy, fools.
8. Prats- Because she deserves an award.

In other news, I tried to kill myself, and failed. Unintentionally, of course. I ate some shellfish that had eaten some algae that makes toxins in its spare time. Then I spent the night blogging (observe my dedication, and also, cheap shot at getting you to read my post) before ruining everyone's sleep by clutching my tummy and screaming "Appendix! Appendix! My appendix has ruptured and perforated! Get me to a hospital, stat, before I develop peritonitis." I spent a day in the ICU, with people hovering over me watching for signs of respiratory paralysis. On the plus side, I did not have appendicitis.

That was my first time as an in-patient, and I didn't care much for it. I hope I will remember that the next time I see a patient. I have a huge thrombosed vein running down the back of my hand, and it still hurts when I flex my wrist.

My Dad's second home is the ICU, and I now know why he hated it. It comes back to him all the time, doesn't it? I think I'll stop now.

Here's a cheerful thought. It's Christmas day tomorrow! And I have a gift for you all! Because Santa does not.


My gift for you is in the upper left hand side. There. See a green box titled 'Twitter updates'? That is the it. You can thank me in the comments. Merry Christmas!

The Uvula

I miss Surgery. All of you who read my whiny "Surgery is a pile of blood stained shit" post, please retrieve your eyeballs from the screen, and proceed to the next paragraph.

I had an epiphany while watching a patient having his cancerous pancreas removed. (Fitting, don't you think?) However, it was soon clear that the disease had spread to the rest of his body, and the procedure was abandoned. He has six months left, possibly less. It was all very depressing, but the patient was symptomatic, and his last days should be made as comfortable as possible. So they decided to connect his intestine to his gall bladder to relieve his jaundice (which was what brought him to the hospital in the first place). And would you believe it, I got this warm fuzzy feeling inside as the gall bladder was being emptied of its enviable collection of stamps bile, and long story short, I fell in love with Surgery. *gazes dreamily into the distance*

Naturally, I did not go back home and read up every Surgery textbook I have. That would have killed the luurve in my heart. I managed to pass the Surgery end posting exam (a minor miracle), and I now haunt the "Mothers, Old & New" section of the Mother & Baby Hospital. Luckily, I have forgotten everything that I have ever learnt about Ob-G, so uphill task, it is not. Of course, I never knew much, so the vacuum should shorten the second stage of my education. I am so punny today. Please, laugh. A child loses a marble every time you don't, and those of you who don't are responsible for all the insanity in the world. Yes, feel guilty. And laugh.

Do you know what a prolapsed uterus looks like? I do, and I wish to God I did not. Seeda!

My niece is now one, and is the cleverest baby on earth. Of course she would be, she takes after me. Everybody says she looks like me when I was her age. And she can walk, and talk, and pull my hair when she is irritated. She hates bananas, and loves my mom. The cat becomes a mere speck on the horizon when he hears her, and she has single handedly tried to destroy the car even when she was not behind the wheel. Also, her laugh sounds like the call of a hyena being slowly strangled.


Look at that. I am a Mallampati class 1 too! On the plus side, sleep apnoea cannot touch us.

I don't really have a lot else to say. Life is boring, with no knights in distress, no rich patients leaving a fortune to an impoverished medico who held his/her hand while being given an injection and later dies of "unknown causes", no sudden useful inspirations regarding the cure for AIDS (apparently, mine were all idiotic), no winning the lottery (probably because I don't buy lottery tickets, but still, tedious), no sky falling on my head (tomorrow never comes). I did have a crow fall on my head a couple of years ago, but that was worse than having it crap on my head, because the ungrateful beast pecked me for saving it from an ignominious death. It was better than the time a bat crapped on my head. Excuse me for throwing up twice while washing that shit off my hair.

It has been six months since my Dad divorced his body. Visitors are always (tactlessly) enquiring why we do not have a huge framed and garlanded picture of the pater placed prominently in every room. What are we supposed to say? That he is not dead inside our minds? Or that we would have had him stuffed and mounted to show our grief, only he was cremated before we thought of it? Those people make me want to kick them hard. I did not mean to end on this note, but it's his birthday today, and I miss his "I am NOT old" speech.

Matrimonials Mitral Valve

My unit mate is getting married. The wedding isn’t for another ten months, but her formal engagement party is to be held next month.

You could have knocked me down with the proverbial feather (provided it was made of lead) when she dropped the bombshell. I was so shocked, I didn’t even see a hot guy walk past me. Skoda was so surprised to witness that, she promptly fainted, and Arch thought it was because Skoda too was shocked by the news.

Arch is the first of us to succumb. The rest of us are going to start dropping like flies soon. Help! I am too young to die!

That line of thought got me so depressed, I needed something really ridiculous to even marginally cheer me up. And what better place than the Google search terms that sent people to my blog?

the skin on my finger is not my nail

I didn’t know my finger was deformed. The skin on my finger is not my nail either! Oh, I am so going to die…

“proteus vulgaris” pregnancy

Obstetricians everywhere, please take note, we have a woman pregnant with bacteria. Is it some kind of Pelvic Inflammatory Disease? An infected foetus? A pregnant bacterium? If it’s the last one, bacteriologists? We have a net savvy pregnant bacterium on our hands.

frightened wrist surgery

I would advice you not to go ahead with the surgery. Your wrist seems terribly frightened, and probably won’t work too well during the procedure. You will probably have a lot of trouble making incisions and things with an uncooperative wrist.

“ent sucks”

It sure does.

leg muscle weakness, after falling, one leg useless

If it’s useless, I recommend that you chop it off. We don’t want to be stuck with useless things, least of all legs, do we?

mc dreamy photos

I don’t know why, I feel real happy all of a sudden. Extremely happy. I am even beginning to think that I wouldn’t mind getting married.

 medicos cloth collection

He’s looking right into my eyes. I know he is. Be still, my heart, I’m hardly breathing.

Cloth?

spm mneumonics for medical students

Medicos contribute a lot of new words to English. Note the simplicity of this one. It’s obviously a harassed medico looking for mnemonics about pneumonia. The poor guy obviously didn’t hear that my Park is now worm food.

why does it feel like my fingernail is stabbing my skin?

I am afraid I have bad news. You have a terrible disease, and you are going to die from it. It’s called “stupidity”, and there is a good chance your children are going to get it too.

why i have loads of saliva when i wake up

You were dreaming of McDreamy in your sleep. Sacrilege! Think of George Clooney next time, please.

appendicitis mcburney sigh

It’s McDreamy sigh. You get McBurney sign in appendicitis.

german shepherd growth graphs

I don’t know much about these things, but I’m betting they are huge.

mallu urinarry track

This is a Mallu, with UTI. Oh, yes, it is.

pathologist kangaroo caterpillar

I'll tell you after you return from your acid trip.

matrimonials mitral valve

Mitral valve, 25, seeks good looking, God fearing, homely mitral valve who is not stenosed or regurgitant. Contact Chordae Tendineae, Left Ventricle with Echocardiogram report and ECG.

I should be getting back to my textbooks. Final year, and all that, you know. Blogging is pretty tough these days, because even though I have lots to say, I don't find the time. I would love to share depressing stories about patients dying of cancer, the complete lack of compassion in many medicos, the terrible "Surgery hates ObG" jokes, the theatre theatrics, but my nose is too busy being buried alive in some book that weighs more than me.

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...