Do you feel honored?

 

MBBS comes with many woes but probably our annual examinations, the dreaded MB exams are the greatest woe of all. It tests the patience and toughness of even the most determined pupil and the knowledge and cramming-capacity of the most studious medico.

These exams are basically of 300 marks total with 100 marks each for the 2 theory papers and 100 marks for practical. The exam routines are made to drive the students to the point of insanity and back (not claiming that we medicos are not insane as it is). The exam dates are generally back-to-back with no or a single day of study leave in between. Thus, the last 2 weeks before exams bring out the serious student even in the most happy-go-lucky person.

The exams end with all of us being relieved and dog- tired, followed by a couple of fun outings with friends and several weeks of making up on all the lost sleep. However, this relief lasts only a precious couple of days. This is followed by a phase of post exam traumatic dreams (where we end up failing in every exam) and the seemingly endless wait for results. After days of prayers and several false alarms, one fine day, the results get declared out of the blue, when one least expects it and of course the day doesn’t remain fine for most of us after that.

Students are of various types, each with their own hopes and aspirations, their own expectations. For some even the pass marks seem like a lot to be thankful for, while for others even a seemingly huge score might fail to meet their expectations. Each category of students remains awed by the thoughts of the other group.

The word “expectations” is the one which creates all this difference. We face the pressure of expectations from family, friends, relatives, teachers and also maybe the next-door nosy aunty. But nothing quite equals the expectations we have from ourselves, meeting or not meeting these expectations decides our happiness or disappointment. So don’t be irritated by the studious kid who has apparently received a great score but is still unhappy and don’t ridicule the back-bencher who goes out partying after barely managing to pass, its all a matter of expectations.

So, its okay to feel sad and angry even after hearing the well-known advice: “It is the application of knowledge that, matters in the field of medicine. At the end of the day, you have to cure patients.” Its okay to keep your phone switched off or stay away from social media if you feel low seeing the so-called “successful” people around you, its okay if you have a breakdown seeing an “F” in your paper. We are all humans after all.

What then, is the way to get out of this mess? To feel yourself again? Just like our expectations our cope up mechanisms also vary. Some people like to spend some lone time, some like to rant and cry in front of friends while some might prefer to gorge on some biriyani to forget disappointment. Universally though, it is important to remember: “Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light”. For someone, occasional rantings in a meaningless blog turned out to be the source of light. What’s your source of light?

The Trap

 

The day we step into college, we are full of hopes and dreams, most of us that is. We feel that we can really achieve almost anything, life seems exciting and full of possibilities. New acquaintances are made, phone numbers are exchanged, the members of the WhatsApp group we make on the day of counselling finally get to meet in person. The air is exhilarating.

For our batch however we were trapped at home due to COVID lockdown for a long time and most of our theory classes had to be conducted online. But when the lockdown was lifted briefly before the Second wave of COVID we too got to have our “First day”, which I am happy to inform seemed as wonderful as it should have, if not more. We were elated to finally step into the college we worked so hard to get into.

But slowly as the lockdown was getting lifted in phases, we got the actual taste of college life, which is kind of like Bertie Bott’s Every Flavored Beans from Harry Potter. For those who are not aware what I am referring to, these beans include delicious flavors like chocolate and caramel, but they also include unpalatable ones like vomit or earwax flavors. What you end up getting, depends on luck!

Some days when we finally understand a difficult concept, when we learn some new practical skill and master it or have fun outing with friends, college life seems beautiful, perfect even. But there are other days when we feel we are far behind everyone else in class, feel homesick in hostel, face rejections or when results come out and our expectations are shattered. Then, we end up feeling irritated, depressed and trapped. Questions like “What if I am not cut out for this field?”, “What if I fail the upcoming examinations?” or “What will people think of me, am I not mature enough to be an adult?” start crossing our minds. At times we really want to talk it out with someone, but mostly we are afraid to share things with family fearing lack of understanding, college friends mostly have their own shit show to deal with and even school friends seem way too far away. We suddenly become completely alone in a sea of people.

But on these days, one must remember to tell themselves: “I am fine, I will get there. Things will be better in future and even if they are not, I can deal with them”. No matter how low you feel seeing your friend answering every question in class on a topic you know nothing about, no matter how bad your semester results are, no matter how much scolding you got from your professor for auscultating apex beat on the right side, always remember that if everyone else can do it, you also can, maybe you just need more time or a different method.

And on the other days, remember to be a bit more compassionate and understanding. Stop before labelling someone as “Boring” or “Lazy”. Stop before spreading gossip about people without regard to their feelings (though it might be difficult to stop considering the fact that other than Fest or sports events, people don’t have much to entertain themselves with at med-school, except for college gossip). Always remember to hold a hand when it reaches out to you for help. You never know, maybe you are the last straw of support for someone.

It is during this uneven, bitter-sweet journey that friendships are made and broken, love blooms and withers and once-carefree teenagers become saviors in white coats. 

 P.C- Shuvojyoti Rakshit

 

Enter the crime scene

 

Our first-year Physiology practical consisted of Hematology (study of blood and related disorders) and Human Physiology (where we learnt the measurements and variations of blood pressure, pulse rate, reflexes etc.) mostly.

Among them hematology, as the name suggests, was a bloody, messy business. A student had to prick his/her own finger and collect blood for doing the practical. Smear preparation was not a big issue as it required a small amount of blood but never shall I forget our bleeding and clotting time practical where we had to draw a substantial amount of blood (enough to fill a capillary tube) TWICE!

Now, one got to see different kinds of students in the physiology lab. Some belonged to the group of people who were courageous enough to prick their fingers but went all light-headed and dizzy (some even fainted) at the sight of the blood.

The second group of people were the over enthusiastic ‘Donors’, that is those who pricked their fingers way too brutally, drew too much blood, and then went around donating the blood to people who were way too scared to draw their own blood! The latter group of people, I would like to call as ‘Receivers’ over here.

The third group were those who pricked others’ fingers for them, that is, ‘The Helpers’. These people were the most priced and yet the most cursed had hated group in the entire class, as the person whose finger they pricked would eventually end up calling them “brutal beasts who have no tenderness in them” and would claim that these people intentionally pricked others’ fingers too hard. Thus, I joined the Donors’ group at times, but never the Helpers’ (I am cursed enough as it is).

Then there were the normal, insignificant people who simply went about the task of blood drawing without much of a fuss and did their practical without being much of a help or problem to anybody. Most of the days, I belonged to this ‘Normal People’ group.

After smear preparation though, setting up the microscope and viewing what we were expected to view was a battle in itself. I shall not go into the technical details over here, but all I can say is, no matter how scary drawing your own blood sounds, the actual difficulty starts after that. 

I remember one hilarious incident where one of our friend’s blood group, on testing in class, turned out to be different from the one she had known all her life. Initially the teacher scolded her thinking that she might have used someone else’s sample. But it turned out later that she had known an incorrect and rare blood group all her life while her original blood group was a very common one. How crazy is that?

With all these practicals going on, and the cleaning episodes being rare, the floor and the tables of the Physiology Lab were almost always stained with a combination of blood and chemical stains, giving them a weird crime scene like appearance in the eyes of anyone who entered for the first time. But as we spent more and more time over there this crime scene became one of our favorite places.

 

 

Into the dissection hall

 

Our batch entered med school during the COVID times, when rules about social distancing and wearing masks were to be strictly adhered to. But as the famous saying goes:

“Exceptions prove the rule.” I understood the truth of this statement on the very first day of offline anatomy practical, when we stepped into the dissection hall.

Our extended family has many doctors and I had heard many stories about this place from them- like how people faint or become nauseated seeing the cadavers and the bare viscera. Fortunately, or unfortunately the people in my group (our batch was divided into 4 groups for dissection classes) were some of the most courageous people, with the most imperturbable stomachs. Thus, I never had the opportunity to see anyone fainting our getting sick in the dissection hall.

The day I stepped into the dissection hall I realized that COVID norms were to be kept at bay before entering this place, because there were just 2 cadavers for the 252 students of our batch! So, there were almost 63 people per group standing as close to each other as possible peering down at the cadaver.

Needless to say, that with so many students and so less cadavers we never really got to do hands-on dissection. What we mostly did was prosection, that is, we observed as our teachers dissected the bodies and viscera and learnt to identify the parts.

The standing arrangement was always first come, first serve. Thus, it was always problematic for students like me who were stupid and unsmart enough to be left behind tall and healthy people who covered up the entire dissection window with their length and width. Then, no matter how much we wished to be long-necked giraffes or cursed these batchmates secretly, we never got to see anything.

But as the good witch told Chhota Bheem:

“Whenever there is a problem, there is always a solution.” For us the solution presented itself in the form of long wooden stools in the dissection hall. We used to stand on them for a bird eye view of the dissection table. Also, some of these smart, always-forward batchmates would explain the dissection to people like us after Sir would leave. I must admit that at times these explanations were better than the original class, as we had an extremely soft-spoken teacher and people standing on stools could hardly hear him from up above. Also, it helped us to revise the points taught in class and have further discussions based on what we learnt from the book.\

Initially though, we found the stench of rotting bodies and formalin really disturbing but later on people grew so used to the smell that some would even eat lunch sitting right outside the dissection hall! Initially, we would use tweezers to hold the nerves and arteries, but a month or so later I remember myself picking up human intestines from the sink with formalin-water using my bare hands. Its possible to get used to the most impossible stuff too, you know!

I remember being secretly terrified of one of our cadavers- a grandpa with long white hair, so much so that initially, I would never go anywhere near him. But the other one, who was also another grandpa, seemed friendly enough. So I named him “Cadaver Dadu” (Grandpa Cadaver).

Well, with everything else kept aside, anatomy practicals were some of the most enjoyable lessons of first year and I took extreme pleasure in describing the gory details of each of these cadavers and viscera to my non-medico friends or my family members at the dinner table (much to my parents’ spite)!!!!!😂😂

Intoduction

 Hi ! I am an Indian medical student; or in other words, I am one of those extremely foolish people who believed in the famous saying that life after NEET is gala time. 

One gives up on sleep, socializing, family time and what-not for the three hours of NEET exam. But is it really worth it ? This is a question many higher secondary students and more than them, medical students, find themselves asking.

Well, what I feel is that you don't really understand how deep a lake is until you fall into it! Sounds scary?

But another less dangerous (though less effective) way of knowing can be by asking a person who has already fallen into it once. 

Thus, this blog is for those, who are confused about whether to come to this coveted but all-consuming field of medicine. It is also for those non-medicos who are really curious about medicine or are mad at their medico friends for not catching up with them as often as they would like to, or for being the one to cancel all fun outings at the last moment giving the excuse of exams. To all those angry friends: "Sorry people, we also really want to go out with you guys, but unfortunately, we're always doomed to study or rush to clinical postings!"

Through this blog I will give you a sneak peak into the lives of these young people who are just out of school and are immediately expected by friends, family, relatives and neighbors to become great doctors all at once; to become the messiah who carries the solution to all their medical problems.  Give us time people, and we promise to find the best possible solution to your constipation or Irritable Bowel Syndrome!

After two years at med-school I agree with Dr. Glaucomflecken's famous speech at Yale where he mentioned: "Medicine is serious business, but it is also outrageously funny!!!"

Welcome to this journey through med school with me, and remember to tie your seatbelts properly because if you slip off the seat because of the tremendous pace and break a few bones, I am not qualified enough to help reduce your fractures, YET.