Five

Yes, it's a countdown to the number of weeks I have left in college. Completely depressing.

The picture this week is taken from outside our Department of Community Medicine. Yes, that is what the SPM people call themselves now.


That is our college garden. The tree in the foreground obstructs the view of Hippocrates sitting on his dog. One of the best things about our college is that we have lots of trees, and a good many of them are older than our parents.

More pictures next time.

Six

And the countdown begins. Six weeks left...

Unfortunately, apart from marking the end of my college life, *boohoo* at the end of the fateful six weeks, I also have a lot of exams on the agenda. As if that were not wonderful enough, I have to submit my practical records before that time, and well, I have some two hundred pages of writing to do.

Great way to spend my last days as a medico, I know.

It's going to be pictures, the next few posts, I'm afraid.


There. A blurry picture taken on my phone when the unit bunked a day of ROME posting to go to the beach. I don't have a higher resolution (I wish I did), but, guess which one is me and you win a prize*.

*Conditions apply. There is no prize.

The Late Lament

I have 7 weeks left in college.

I realise that this is highly unoriginal, but where did my five years go? It was only last week that we placed our brains inside buckets of formalin, how can I be on the brink of doctor-hood? I don't know where the origin of the pectoralis major is, and that was the very first thing I learnt. What am I doing here?

I didn't know anyone when I joined, and now they are the people I'll be the happiest to run into in the future.
Reminds me of that terrible joke that was doing the rounds in my third year.
Joe: Meet my wife.
Sam: I know her.
Joe: How?
Sam: I've slept with her.
Joe: WHAT?
Sam: Ten years ago. In pathology class.

I could cry oceans.

Why?

Because I could have been spent more time with my books?
Because the library could have been more than a quiet dormitory?
Because I could have poked at more patients?
Because I could have stayed awake in class?

Jeez, who cares about all that? There are plenty of people who do that, and they wear the same harassed expression that I do.

Could I have had more fun?

I remember all of us taking down notes diligently in classes when even the hardiest souls were in NREM sleep. Notes of the lecturer's atrocious grammar and pronunciation.

Once The R and I decided to explore the corners of the campus ordinarily hidden to good, law-abiding medicos and came up on a swing. It so happened that we were both just five years old that day.

The A was watching the river Cauvery (en route to Coorg, on a batch trip) flow by gently, and decided to wade in it. Later that evening, The R and I had a time trying to prevent The A from coming down with pneumonia.

All of us setting out for a lecture five minutes before it began, to reach the class late and breathless, only to find out it had been cancelled.

I remember Eli screaming when her pithed frog showed signs of being un-pithed.

All of us arriving well in time for a class: the lecturer was young and handsome. :)

Singing loud, off-key versions of Chhalak Dhikla Jaa along with the blasting TV enough to disturb the rest of the floor at the hotel in Mysore, and then have the management ring up the guys in the next room to turn down the volume, who had just switched on the telly to 'drown out the unholy din'. Take that, chauvinistic hotel manager.

Grinning across a crowded ward at each other in the middle of yet another night.

Survived the labour room together, with our sanities intact. Or as intact as they were prior to the internment.

Collectively developing vasovagal attacks in the middle of watching autopsies.

Catching the late show of Guru while at Hyderabad, and squeezing each other's hands when Madhavan (ooo, HOTNESS!) kissed Vidya Balan (the BITCH!).

Having nothing to talk about, and sitting around silently like characters from an art movie, and bristling with stories the moment exams are announced, with the peak occurring just outside the exam hall. Always.

Man, I LOVE college! Damn you, for being only five years long.

Foul Mouthed

Bad things have been happening inside my oral cavity. My childhood disdain for toothbrushes has wreaked havoc in my dental enamel, and let's just summarise the results in one word, cavity. Not just any old cavity off the street looking for a sweet tooth, we are talking infected, painful, so-huge-my-voice-echoes-when-I-speak cavity. Combine this with a horizontally impacted wisdom tooth, and another wisdom tooth that chose to become impacted vertically, all of which become complicated at the same time, and you have a fun fest.

The impacted wisdoms will "probably require surgery soon". The cavity needs root canal treatment. ASAP. *gulp*

The only funny (the haha variety) was when the dentist wanted to wait until I was "21 or 22 years old" before yanking out my last claim to wisdom. The lack of wisdom teeth imparts to my face the appearance of a teenager, I guess. Which may be a good thing, because I HATE GROWING OLDER. Gah at you, birthday next month. (Not very subtle, was that? Let's just pretend it was, and say "Let's all gift Pancreas a new cellphone next month, because that is what she desires the most, and we love her.")

The title *ahem* does not mean that I am channelling YELLING BIRD. Nor is it supposed to imply that I suffer from halitosis. It represents the evil-ness inside my oral cavity that is making my life living hell.

I return to Ob-G this week, and I will soon have heart warming stories about old women getting their uteri ripped out by clawed forceps for your reading pleasure. Until then, please, resist the temptation. DO NOT confide your tales of root canal treatment horrors with me, I beg you.

P. S. : My tooth hurts. :(

UPDATE: The deed has been done, and there was no pain AT ALL! and I am doing fine. I have to go back next week to 'crown' it, whatever that is.

Goodbye, Sir Jerry

I am on the review for one of my favourite subjects ever, Orthopaedics. Let's all turn cartwheels for the sheer joy of fractured bones, shall we?

Although I am afraid of a jinx, I will say this, I have been rather happy at college these last few days. I like Surgery, and I enjoyed the review posting. Occasionally, I even got the feeling that I actually knew what I was talking about, because I did not feel blank when my teacher talked about the Bormann's system of classification for carcinoma of the stomach. And also, my current, uh, objet d'affection, knows I exist because I stood up to answer a question in class, and I got that right! So yeah, it's been great.

But things at home have not been wonderful, to balance out the good. My Mom was diagnosed with periarthritis of the shoulder joint, which has been giving her a lot of pain. She might need surgery, because her response to drugs and physiotherapy is not as satisfactory as it should have been. And my cat died. He disappeared one day, and a couple of days later, there was a terrible stink from somewhere outside the house that is too overgrown to explore. We put two and two together, and got four. I miss him.


Rest in peace, buddy.

Now that I am in a melancholy mood, I will probably start talking about my Dad, and then I will start to cry, and my Mom will want to know what's wrong, and then we will both end up using a lot of tissues, and be depressed enough to skip dinner. And since I am trying to gain weight (an exercise in futility, a more accurate description would be 'trying not to lose any more weight'), skipping dinner is inadvisable. Therefore, TTFN, before I start blubbering.

Exam Fundae

I ought to be all "My exams are over! Yay!" but I actually am "Damn! It's back to class again."

Now, I can hear a lot of excited voices ask me, "How were your exams? We want every little detail." I realise I am hallucinating, but I have a feeling that the the voices have got to be answered, or the Universe will implode. On the other hand, if I do that I will lose all my readers (namely, me, my cat, and uh, me. I am not sure if my cat can read, but he stares at the screen for long periods.) So there will be only a few details about my exams. Very few.

But.

But.

But.

Before that.

I have some good news.

No, it's awesome news.

It's the best news I have heard in a year.

I came second on the Paediatrics end posting exam.

< pause for applause, and letters of congratulation >

Come on, you stupid cat, clap your paws.

Ow!

< /pause >

Anyway, that was old news, because the end posting was a couple of weeks ago.

So, the theory exams. The very important ones that contribute 20% marks to my final total. They sucked.

The Paed people, you know what they did? They announced that the portions included were the first ten chapters of O P G hai (which is Mr. Cow's* book is known as in certain circles), and then proceeded to set a question paper based on chapters 11 through 20. I would have boiled them in oil if I hadn't come out second on the end posting exam.

I don't think I have said this before, but ObG is my favourite subject**. Not a word of what I read got implanted in my head. Except for that bit about 'multiple sexual partners' being a risk factor for carcinoma of the uterine cervix. As you might have guessed by now, there wasn't a single question about risk factors for carcinoma of the cervix.

During the Surgery exam, I got a full blast of the tropical sun RIGHT IN MY EYES and I don't really remember much else about the day.

Medicine was not any better, either. I did not know most of the answers, but I couldn't finish writing them out by the end of three hours and they had to forcibly eject me from the exam hall.

Although you are going to find this hard to believe, I did learn a lot of new things.

That's good, right? Please say yes.

Here they are.

No, I am not going to talk about Lyme disease, which is caused by Borrelia burgdorferi and is transmitted by the bite of Ixodid ticks. It has three stages- early localised infection, early disseminated infection, and late persistent infection. Whew!

The Things You Learn During Exams

• No matter how long the study leave is, you start reading in earnest only the day before the exam.

• The night before the exam, you will ring up your friends for 'moral support' and end up chatting for an hour.

• Your appetite increases exponentially while you read, only to disappear when you are at the dinner table.

• You have to keep your lids propped up by the time it's eight the night before the exam.

• You can stay up comfortably till two if you watch some TV for a 'wake up break'.

• The topics you painstakingly spent hours over will not be asked.

• If they are, you won't remember them.

• But the areas you skipped will find their way into the question paper.

• Every time you get stuck for an answer, you will see everyone else around you writing furiously.

• Nobody else ever gets stuck as much you do.

• You notice that the exam hall has quite a lot of lights and fans.

• Your voracious appetite returns.

• Occasionally, you might write an answer incompletely and then leave some blank space, where you scribble "Think, dummy!" with a pencil.

• You never remember to erase such comments from your answer sheet until you do the same thing on your next exam.

• You don't remember to erase those bits in the next exam, either.
  

• The cleverest of insights don't enter your mind until the invigilator holds out his hand for your answer sheet.

I am sure there are more, but my tortured brain is still reeling from the effects of the clinical features of viper bites. I never knew that windscreen vipers bit you. See? That's another thing I learnt. Don't you wash your car ever again.

That is the message of this post.

DO NOT WASH YOUR CAR.

I can already see the Big Brother jumping for joy.

* 'Gai' is the Hindi word for 'Cow'.
** Refer sarcasm.

Being Examinated

So I have good news and I have bad news, like in all those terrible jokes. And to stick to the formula, I'll tell you the good news first.

The good news is that I have completed my Paediatrics posting, and probably even passed the end posting exam because my examiner kept saying "Very Good!" at the end of every answer. But he was a vann kidu who expected me to know the three stages of Lyme Disease, and I was all "Lyme disease has stages?" And then it went downhill from there, and turned uphill after a brief visit to the Underworld, then I was on level ground and then rose and fell so many times I lost count. Hopefully, the highs and lows will balance themselves out and he meant it when he appeared to be impressed by my answers*.

The bad news (get out those tissues, you are going to need them) is that my semester has ended *sob* and what's even worse is that I have exams. And to add insult to injury, I have just one more semester left in college. *bawls*

Think of it as my funeral, and let the tears flow. That probably requires tear gas, but please, oblige a heart broken medico who knows nothing about the stages of Lyme disease.

The exams last a couple of weeks. Until then, it's farewell and adieu to you, sweet readers. If you can manage it, say a short prayer for me. It doesn't matter if you don't believe in God(s), just hint to Hippocrates that some day he's going to be proud of me for being THE expert on Lyme disease, and he will do the rest.

*My head keeps saying "Fat chance!", but I shall ignore it for now. Please, please, God, let me have passed.