Through the Years

You know what’s unfair? I’ll tell you what’s unfair. Having an exam every week, that’s what’s unfair. You know what’s even more unfair? Having an exam in SPM every week. Can you think of anything worse? No? Our department of SPM could, and did. They are going to send our marks in these rotten exams to the University, so if we do really badly on these, we will not eligible to take our final exams. If you can think of worse stuff to torture medicos with, send your résumé to "The Department of Community Medicine, Some Medical College, Anywhere in India."

In other news, I have passed both my Ophthalmology and (surprise!) SPM end posting exams. The drinks are on me, folks.

Now, since I have a lot of free time coming up, thanks to the lovely exams, I shall be blogging more often now. And my posts will not contain any pictures.* There, you have been warned.

A fan of mine, and a classmate. Has attended exactly one class in these last four years, and that was because he followed me (and my friends) into one. He disappeared shortly after this picture was taken, and has not been seen or heard of since. Anyone possessing information about him, please let me know. You shall be rewarded for your efforts.

"Ha, a poet! Know him by
The ecstasy-dilated eye,
Not uncharged with tears that ran
Upwards from his heart of man."

Our class went to Kodaikanal, Mysore and Coorg a couple of years ago. She carried a notebook and pen at all times, and wrote poetry throughout the entire trip. Oh, the agony. Here you can see her composing an ode to the red flowers that match her clothes. The flowers died as soon as she began reading out her monstrosity to them, and then the security guards came and kicked us all out of the park for committing unspeakable atrocities on flowers. She probably wrote about the pulverisation of tender emotion by the unloving hand of man on the way home.

The Pharmacology people have a lot of charts like this. We are supposed to "explain the graph" and answer the questions on a piece of paper, and when called up, to read it to the examiner, who will then indulge in chori ask us more questions. A friend of mine got this chart, and she started with, "This is a graph showing the effects of different drugs on a dog's blood pressure. A baseline recording-" to be interrupted by the terrifying examiner asking her, "What dog?" Luckily, if she had said the first thing that came to her mind, she would have failed the exam then and there, but after racking her brain for a couple of hours (or what seemed like a couple of hours to her), she managed to hit on the right answer- an anaesthetised dog. In case you were wondering, her instincts told her that it was a German Shepherd. I would have answered that it was one of the stray dogs living in our campus. Now you know what happened to my friend.

This was the last specimen for my Pathology practical exam. The examiner was surrounded by uteri, and she picked this up, and told me I could leave as soon as I answered this last one (having screwed up on all her previous questions). All those uteri sitting on her left side had misled me, and I told her that this was a specimen of uterus containing a vesicular mole (which, in my defence, is also a feathery looking thingy in a hollow cavity). Imagine my surprise when I found out later that I had indeed passed my Path labs. :)

My mom spends most of her free time taking embarrassing pictures of our cat (and also pictures of her daughter staring at a candle flame, and worse) on her cell phone camera. STAY CALM! DO NOT PANIC! This fierce warrior is asleep and will not attack you. I repeat, HE WILL NOT ATTACK YOU! Unless the sound of your running feet wakes him up, of course.

More pictures next time, if there is one. There always remains the possibility of the Park sucking into the void.

*Sarcasm: raw and scornful use of apparent approval to express disapproval. And no, not the meaning I was looking for.

Strike

Remember how the PG students went on strike during our labour room posting? Ans the house surgeons joined them? When I discovered my latent surgical skills when I scrubbed in as the first (and only) assistant for a Caesarean section? When I delivered a baby and gave an amnioinfusion? No? Chhe. It’s over here.

This time, it is the doctors who are on strike. Both teaching (the ones in medical colleges) and the non-teaching (the ones practising in other hospitals) followers of Hippocrates employed by the Government of Kerala have refused to work for the measly salary they are currently given. Biased and unbiased reports can be read here and here.

You know what this means, don’t you? No classes! This rarer-than-an-honest politician event was heralded by a great deal of applause and laughter until we learnt that we get extensions at the end of the strike. Now, the cud chewing baboons at the University of Kerala have already given a six month lag due to their zeal in postponing exams and the lack of it in announcing our results. While my friends who prudently decided to study in medical colleges outside Kerala are in the middle of their final year, I am still in fourth year. Yay. Not.

We are all totally in support of the strike, of course. At least some of us will practice in government run hospitals in the future, and we would really enjoy earning slightly more than a lower division clerk.

I don’t understand why the government has such a pathological dislike of doctors. House surgeons, whose absence would paralyse the hospital, are given peanuts. PG students, who actually look after the patients, get slightly more than the housies. Medical officers, who run the show, the ones with lots of training and plenty of experience, are paid a fraction of their worth. And then they act all indignant when nobody wants to work in a government hospital. Until last year, housies did all the blood, urine, sputum, stool, and other body fluid collection and despatching, along with their routine jobs. Now the dearly beloved government has decided nursing students should undergo a period of internment after completion of their course, where they perform the above mentioned activities. The fly in the ointment is, their stipend is higher than that of the medical interns. Government darling, do you even understand how difficult it is for us to go on strike? Contrary to what you think (assuming that you have at least one neuron in your head), our natural instinct is not to increase suffering. Doctors are the one of the most overworked employees on your payroll, and also the most underpaid. I get the feeling that a lot of research is required on brain transplantation, so you can act like something resembling a normal human being.

Anyway, the strike did not prevent my SPM test from being held. *sob*
A large group of professors tried to stop the Parkists, but our SPM prof was adamant. And I was too busy thali-fying about neonatal tetanus in socially handicapped children (or some such) to notice our saviours being ruthlessly struck down.

There is this guy in the department of sleep producing medicine who speaks English with a really weird accent. He is, obviously, not mallu. (All mallus learn to speak Manglish at their mother’s knees.) Let’s call him Romancer, because, well, that is our nickname for him. The SPM echhis do not print question papers for our tests, they just have the Romancer read it out. It took me three whole minutes, and a hushed discussion with Twin to establish that epizemolzigal dryad was not a hitherto unknown species of mosquito that spreads Kyasanoor forest disease, and also that KFD was not transmitted by mosquito bites. All of the Parkists have booming voices to prevent attacks of sleep apnoea among the students during class. Why the Romancer is made to dictate questions at every single exam is beyond me.

One more month, a couple of exams, and I’m in final year. It seems like yesterday that I was a scared first year, who carried around an inhaler of Salbutamol to get out of ragging on the grounds that stress precipitated my ‘asthma’. It’s been fun, even the exams, after the ulcers have healed. :)

Four Eyed

I am posted in ENT next month. If this Ophthalmology posting is any indication, I will be wearing a hearing aid by the end of next month. I got glasses, people. Glasses! Me. Adorable “6/6 vision” Pancreas. Damn.

It all started with a headache. Which, according to the Park (you know, our SPM textbook. Go read this post if you have not. It got published and all, so it should be better than my usual nonsense. It's better than this one, at any rate.) is also known as cephalalgia. Cephalalgia! I kid you not. So, with this cephalalgia that has been bothering me for sometime, I chopped a perfectly healthy tree in my garden, dug up the root, continued digging for another 12 feet, and retrieved my spectacle case from where it had been buried. It was undamaged (it would be, just my luck) and the cephalalgia disappeared like magic when I put them on. This would have to happen. And my mom gave a yell of joy and rushed me to an optometrist, who made her cough up a lot of money and gave me new glasses because the axis had changed or something. I am now the proud owner of a pair of glasses. Yeesh. Anyway, bye bye headache cephalalgia. Don’t bother to send any postcards.

I have two tests this week. Both SPM. Because, you know, I have nothing to do. Ah, how much better can life get?

A lot of my classmates (to say nothing about the kids from our junior batch) have been attending PG entrance coaching classes. I know that the competition is tough-- most people take the entrance a number of times before they get through. What I don’t see is me joining them. It’s not that I am content with just a degree or that I am not ambitious (Dr. Adorable Pancreas, MBBS, MD, DM, MRCP, FRCP, Woohoo!), I just can’t see myself keeping my nose to the grindstone for the next 3 years. I burn up. Fast. It happened with the premedical entrance exams, it happened during the first year exams, it happened during the second third* year exams, and I think I’m heading for one now that the exams are just a couple of months away. I do not even want to think about the hell that is final year. And then the internment. And don’t get me started on the rural posting. I don’t know where my life is going. I am afraid I won’t get to be a cardiologist if I don’t. attend. those. classes. NOW. And right now, I can’t bring myself to care. The heart is the only organ in the body whose anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology and pathology I can recite in my sleep. The only reason I did well on my Pathology exam was because the long question (which carried a lot of marks) was about rheumatic heart disease. I think I’ll die (probably of a heart attack) if I don’t become a cardiologist.

I wish I was in my control of my life. Instead, people who do not even know that I exist are laying the foundations of my future. I am scared stiff. I really need to get my life back on track. Taking it easy is not an option any more.
Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.

Now just how do I go about reforming myself?

*We have no second year. We jump into third year at the end of our first year. Don't ask. Loooong story.

PS: The whole thing sounds disjointed and unconnected, no? Welcome to the randomness that is the inside of my head.

PPS: Better post next time. Maa kasam.

Eye Am Back

It is time, folks.


Ophthalmology review posting.

And yes, that is hordeolum internum. I can distinguish it from a chalazion, so yay.

Pissed Happy Children

“These children know nothing about PHCs!”
“You are right, they think it stands for Personal Holding Company.”
“Deplorable!”
“Let’s show them!”

And thus it came to be, that the Pancreas and her friends were released from the torture chamber at the Department of Community Medicine, and sent to live in a village.

The Pancreas, having experienced rustic village life previously, knew exactly what to do. She packed her whole room into a bag, and added the kitchen sink too, for good measure. There wasn’t much space left for clothes, but this did not worry her. She had been informed that the most she would be able to do at the end of the day would be to crawl into bed with a prayer of thanks.
“3 days, 2 dresses, and the one I’m wearing. This will be more than adequate.”
In retrospect, that was an extremely stupid notion.

The Pancreas could not lift her bag. But her friends could, and did. (She loves them all very much, and will be eternally grateful to Skoda, the A and Scarhead.)

The Pancreas was bewildered. Was this the village? The rural village on top of a hill in the middle of nowhere that they were posted in? But it had a shop that actually sold shampoo. Real shampoo, with Sunsilk written on the bottle in big, bold letters.

The Pancreas went to the PHC. She was surprised to see actual, honest-to-goodness patients there, and her eyeballs popped out and did a tango when she saw in-patients.

The Pancreas met some of the villagers. She went into their homes, and saw old ladies watching Ente Manasa Puthri [My Insane Daughter] on Asianet.
“Shampoo and mega serials on cable, this must be a city.”

The Pancreas made her way back to the convent they were going to stay in. This time, the tiles on the floor did not raise her eyebrows, but the toilet did. She nearly wept with joy when she saw that the toilet was better equipped than her own toilet back home.

The Pancreas flourished under the excellent food provided by the nuns. She was very happy, and decided to stay there forever.

The Pancreas had a teacher, known as Dr. Wick. Dr. Wick wanted the Pancreas and all her friends to become experts in SPM. Dr. Wick was loads of fun, and they all loved him, and so they decided to work. And how they worked! They conducted surveys among the people of the ‘village’, they interviewed patients in the PHC, they talked to doctors and nurses and pharmacists and drivers, they formulated health programmes and held discussions about the merits and demerits of immunisation programmes; they ate, slept and thought SPM. And it was fun. For the first time in their lives, they realised how SPM worked, and they were happy.

We had joy, we had fun
We held surveys in the sun.
But the hills that we climbed
Were so steep I had a fall*.

The Pancreas and her friends worked hard, and Dr. Wick was pleased with them.
“I shall take you to a lion safari park on our way back,” he said, and there was much rejoicing.

The Pancreas saw a lion, and four lionesses. The lion saw the Pancreas, and he smiled at her. The lionesses growled, and the lion returned to his den. She told her friends waiting in line about it, and they laughed at her.
“You checked the sex too?” and there was much guffawing. They returned subdued, because they hadn’t realised that lions had manes, and lionesses did not.

The Pancreas returned home, tired, but happy, and kissed her cat, and got scratched on her nose.

P.S: Some people think PHC stands for Primary Health Centre.
P.P.S: I hate Medical Entomology. I don't know, or care about, the species of mosquito feeding on my blood. I will zap them all with my AllOut mosquito repellent, and that's it. Gah.

*Almost.

Happy Vishu

I am finally beginning to like SPM. Before the whole lot of you disown me for crimes against medicos, let me tell you the reason. We have one professor (just one, mind you) in the entire department who is genuinely interested in the subject and can successfully impart his enthusiasm to students. SPM can be interesting, provided your teacher has enough imagination to transform something as boring as the national tuberculosis control programme into something a medico in stage IV NREM sleep can relate to. I have enough of gumption to be horrified the thought of specialising in SPM, but that might have something to do with the way internal medicine calls to me, to use a corny phrase.

The Department of Community Medicine is one of the few departments that owns a LCD projector, and so we are now slowly succumbing to that bane of the corporate world- Death by PowerPoint. Every single one of us is required to present a previously assigned topic. This means that in addition to my own, I am also ‘requested’ to make presentations for some of the hosteller girls, since they are ‘not computer literate anyway’, leaving me with plenty of free time. I made at least five presentations for the clinico pathological correlation classes in (duh!) Pathology last year, for people I barely know, and from the look of it, I think history is about to repeat itself. It is a pleasure to help out only people like Eli, who doesn’t wear a gloating smile, thinking “Sucker!” while I agonise over design templates.

Next weekend will be spent at the primary health centre in some rural area. I am so looking forward to SPM lectures at eleven in the night. (Yes, yes, that was sarcastic.) The department has also promised an Exciting! Trip! to apprehend mosquitoes, cultivated in the campus specifically for this purpose. Dengue haemorrhagic fever, here I come!

The bag I carry to college these days can hold an elephant, and still have space left over for the kitchen sink. I am expected to take the Park, and the freakin’ heavy SPM record everyday. My back is going on strike from Thursday. I wonder what they’ll say to that.

My senior, Vanilla Chechi* got engaged last week. She was one of the house surgeons we chummed up with during the third year Medicine postings. There is something about inserting a nasogastric tube at three in the morning into a patient who is screaming at the top of his voice that we are trying to kill him that cannot but make friends of the brave (and sleep-deprived) souls who are involved in the matter. She was radiantly happy, and we got to see many of our seniors we hadn’t met in a long time. And also her husband to be. Who seemed very nice. I hope you’ll be very happy together.

I googled my friend’s name (a long lost one), and I find her picture on the internet IN THE NEWS, people. Jealous Curious, I googled my own name, and found something about Henoch-Schönlein purpura. I didn’t know that I had done a research paper on HSP, or that I had tuberculosis. I eventually concluded (with a heavy heart) that it probably wasn’t me. This highly talented doctor from Delhi also seems to write poetry, and then moonlights as a nuclear physicist in her spare time. Just to cheer myself up, I googled Adorable Pancreas, and found that four of the ten results on the first page were about me. Ah, fame.

This google train of thought led me to the ‘peculiar google searches’ station. It’s been a while since I did that, don’t you think? No? All right, if you don’t want to know about “medico – long underwear” and “perineum impalement torture” (OWWW!) I won’t force you. Still no? Not even for “the technition did not have gloves on while looking for vains”? Perhaps “written sex stories by medicos” will do the trick. That one got me a number of hits. No? Well, your loss, I say.

Happy Vishu, all! I’m off to set the Vishukkani. Which means I will stand around making uselesssuggestions while Amma arranges the vegetables and gold in front of a picture of Krishna. My role cannot be trivialised. And I shall get lots of money tomorrow. Yay!

*It’s considered disrespectful to address older people by their name. Chechi is the term of address for someone old enough to be a sister, and original older sisters. We Indians have strong ideas regarding respect.

Composting. And Also, Happy Birthday To Me.

I got a phone call from Skoda. She's brilliant, you know. She's the "another distinction here, please" type, topped the Ophthalmology exam (I scraped through, and I consider that a major miracle) and all. She wanted me (please note the point, me) to tell her the dose of salbutamol used for nebulisation. I felt like a real doctor then, and was very happy. (And also, a confidence trickster, but don't you worry about that.) And then I used my brain (what? I have one, complete with 2 cerebral hemispheres and a medulla oblongata.) and concluded that she was too upset to think.

Community medicine posting, also known as composting, is what I go through these days, where they do their best to put me into a coma. Apart form trying to kill me from shock (“YOU THERE, SLEEPING GIRL, TELL ME, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A RANDOMISED CONTROL TRIAL AND A COHORT STUDY?” directly into my left ear while I *ahem* meditate about life in class), they are also doing their best to show me up as an idiot by making me present seminars (or whatever those things are called) on leptospirosis. It’s on Tuesday*, I think. And I have a zillion pages to fill up in my record, and learn statistics. Logistic regression and standard effing deviation. And I joined medicine because I hated maths. Aargh! SPM, I hate you.

The point of this post, peoples, is to tell you that I am very busy these days. When I am not sleeping in class studying statistics and acting as a senior consultant, I am busy staring at my new dress, which is the BEST DRESS ever. Um, did I mention that I am having a birthday? No? Well, uh, I turn the inconvenient age of twenty two next week. I feel like a septuagenarian staring death in the face. Then again, I get gifts, and I’m pretty sure they won’t be dentures, so I guess it’s not such a bad deal after all.

Like all mallus, I have two birthdays, and they rarely fall on the same day. My nakshathram (star) was last week, and I got payasam and a sadya. I also got one of the best birthday presents ever. If The KGB is reading this, it's you I am talking about. It was awesome! So, tell me about Sharon Stone. ;)

I need to go complete that stupid SPM record now. Damn!

*The D-day. Or B-day, which sounds really stupid.

PS: You can send me gifts if you like. Anything to take the sting out of the two twos. :)