Alone

 

When you step into med school you are excited, not only for the joy of learning medical science that awaits you but also for the joy of enjoying college life as a whole. Especially when you are a batch of medicos who have been stuck at home for most of the first year of college due to a pandemic situation, the prospect of actually visiting your college feels like a much sought-after forbidden pleasure. You dream of being free of the rules and regulations that kept you bound at school, dream of finding friends who you can actually vibe with, and you dream of having the time of your lives together.

For a while after coming to college things seem to go according to plan as everyday offers a new experience and you seem to meet new, lovely people every day. But this phase is short lasting especially at med school where the burden of academics grows heavier every year and the level of competition increases manifold. The people you started out with either go far ahead or are left far behind in the race of academics- both ways they just leave your side. Then you end up forming a new group again for another short period, till that falls apart too. Life feels like a book of short stories- where each time you are a new person in a new setting but every time your character is doomed to have an unsatisfactory ending before moving on to the next page which is yet another different story. Sometimes even when you don’t want to leave one story or the characters, you just have to, because the greatest author of all says, “It’s climax time!”

When you read about people choosing extreme ways out of their problems dropping out of the course or even ending their own lives, you are forced to wonder, “Was there no other way? He could have at least talked to someone or given himself another chance.” And it is then that you realize that in this race of MBBS most people have to run the entire distance alone. Even when surrounded by friends, professors, seniors or juniors, the worst battles one fights are internal and the ones no one else knows about. These are the battles that test even the best of us. Some make it till the end while some, though equally brave, just can’t.

P.C-Shuvojyoti Rakshit

“What should I do then?” you ask yourself. The answer to this question, you know, is complex. While an untimely exit should not be an option, continuing this journey also seems to be difficult. These are the days that one needs to remember that though the career path ahead looks solitary, there is life outside med school as well. Bits and pieces of the life you left behind to be here, still exist outside the college. So, pick up the phone and make that call to your weirdo school friend who earned the nickname “Horse” for her love of standing, or that shy, crazy seat mate you had back at middle school who just stared apologetically at you even after you slapped him for destroying your pot painting. After gossiping with them for hours (which unfortunately seem like minutes) and getting the load of academics and college stress off your head you realize that probably, even if you are fighting the battle of MBBS alone, you still have fellow comrades left in the battle of life.

The Voluntary Donor

 

MBBS needs your blood, sweat and tears. While sweat seeps through your clothes in summer months when you have to run from one ward to the other and tears come on the night before examinations, blood is extracted from you not only in the form of physiology practical in first year but also in the form of regular blood donation camps which are supposed to replenish the hospital blood bank. Being a medico who has seen tiny kids suffering from chronic conditions like thalassemia and hemophilia needing regular blood transfusion or a fateful operation in the gynecology OT where the patient lost such a great deal of blood that a med student almost fainted seeing that, one finds herself happily obliging to donate.

There are generally two options- one can either donate at an organized donation camp, or, if one is really crazy enough, she can show up one fine morning at the office of the blood bank in-charge suddenly volunteering to donate blood. If you go with the first option, you get to donate with friends with familiar faces all around, and donation is followed by a delicious food packet. However, if you go for the second option, you are surely up for an adventure.

P.C- Unknown

First you follow a dingy corridor to the donation room where the registrar looks at you incredulously asking a string of questions, “You are a student? You want to donate for a particular patient? No? OMG, you are a voluntary donor? But why? Why do you suddenly want to give up on 350ml of your own blood?” Then you need to patiently answer him explaining how you missed the camp because of family issues but you really want to donate, so you showed up. This is followed by a long form fill up, where the registrar advices you, “Go through the form properly. This is a gold mine of info for competitive exams.” And blimey! He is right! You find the form to be full of info you did not know. Finally, when you reach the phlebotomists, they treat you like some delicate blood donation fairy they have never seen before. They say things like, “I can’t find your veins madam. And I am scared you will be hurt, if I do something wrong. Let me call my senior.” Then the kind registrar comes back and hands you the form asking you to learn it by heart to pass the time. Ultimately the senior phlebotomist comes, only to insert a big fat needle and do a long and weird vein-searching under your skin which causes you to develop angry looking red bruises the next day.

When you are done, you get a pack of cake and juice and send the entire department into a flurry of activities where everyone runs after giving you a certificate and a donor card, but are utterly confused about what to write in the certificate. At one point, you just want to scream, “I don’t want the certificate!” But you cannot as the phlebotomist comes and presents you the certificate almost with a bow, adding, “Come back after 4 months madam. We need more donors like you.” Then you promise yourself to go back the next time and also get a photo of that form for future reference.

 

Revisiting old love

 

Many a times when life gets busy and tiresome, when nothing seems to go the way you wish it to, when the friendships you made with so much effort seem to fall apart, you tend to end up thinking that maybe you are not worthy of love and care. It is at these times of despair that revisiting the place and the people who made you feel loved, cared for and confident helps. If you are like this author, that is, your school is the greatest love of your life, then I think it is best to revisit that place where it all began once in a while. This is because your seemingly crazy physics teacher there might actually help you rediscover that “crank pot” inside yourself, whom you seem to have lost in today’s work-a-day world.

But even revisits can be painful when you find that many of the familiar faces are gone, the familiar class rooms and the open corridors where you used to run around with the all-important “Class Diary” to get it signed by teachers have now been remodeled. The terrace where you used to feed croissant to birds, the old color coding of the floors, and your beloved Primary school building which looked like it was right of a world of fairy tales are now gone. Things change with time but some things remain the same, like your fear of seeing your old mathematics teacher whose famous dialogue was “This is hundred per cent wrong” and feeling the same old fear gripping at your heart. So much so that you are ready to scoot after talking to him for two minutes.

When one revisits school after years one also has the privilege of giving a cold shoulder to teachers who made life seem hellish back then, without having to face any consequences. Trust me, no matter what the books say, certain teachers cannot and should not be forgiven for the trauma they give you and when you finally get to walk away without having to stare back even when they stare at you, it is like a dream-come-true moment, as you finally tell your old teenage self, “We had our revenge today.”

While your eyes search for that familiar, formidable grey-haired lady who was always ready with her slaps, nothing seems sweeter than when you hear from your other teacher, “You miss her right? We do too.” You get to pacify your teacher whose son is not being able to score well in his internal assessments at med school by telling her that these exams are not important and MB is all that matters, and it is not that difficult to pass that exam, while hiding the fact that there is a very good chance that her son or you yourself might not pass this year.

Many a times in day-to-day life at med school you feel that you have changed so much from what you were back at school, in the pre-NEET era, and you regret some of the changes your personality suffered. So, when you get back to school and your teacher tells you, “You are the same old X (replace with your name), you have not changed at all”, you are not sure what to feel- happiness for being the same person to your teachers or guilt, knowing that what she thinks is not true. It is this thought that you keep thinking as you exit the school premises with the mental note to come back again next year, probably for one last time.

Photo courtesy- Sayantan Kundu

 

Misdiagnosed

 

One very important problem faced by medical students appearing for clinical subject practical exams is history-taking. Starting from the difficulties arising due to misinformation from the patient to the questions asked by extra-observant professors from the points one thoughtlessly writes in the history, there is a really long list of problems. “What should be the chief complaint?” “Do we have to write this point in the history or will this invite unnecessary questions?” These are some of the questions one keeps thinking again and again while frantically writing a clumsy history during exams.

Here again pdfs come to our aid. Clinical case histories written according to exam pattern come in lovely compiled pdfs handed down to us by seniors. Most people rely on them during exams until their mobile phones are discovered and confiscated by professors, who sing contemporary Bengali movie songs part time. While copying from a well-written history seems lucrative, it is also important to remember that every patient has a potentially different story. And this story is already known by your professor sitting at the viva table. So, even if you think that you don’t really know about a point you should not entirely delete it, not considering its relevance, just because it is not present in the pdf. If one thinks that the professor is going to ask weird questions from the history and it is better to stick to a diagnosis you know everything about, they should rest assured that the professor will also get mad if he finds that the history has no points and gives no relevance to the actual diagnosis which keeps the patient in the hospital and lays the entire emphasis on another accompanying diagnosis which is of less importance. And if one lands up with such a history in front of our respected singer professor, they leave the viva room singing his famous composition “Just let me be by myself!” (Translate to Bengali)

On the exam day, as one walks briskly around the department searching for the assigned patient in the assigned wards, one is forced to halt and question one’s vision when suddenly she observes the letters “Antenatal Ward” proudly engraved on the door head leading to a ward which is supposedly for pre-op male patients. And to find this in a department where “Push” and “Pull” posters are stuck on doors and “Do not sit” stickers are stuck on tables, is totally unexpected. But one learns to ignore such mistakes, especially during exams, as one runs into the “Antenatal ward” to ask a patient about his ear perforation history. There again, one gets creeped out as the patient only gives her a crooked smile and a strange look when she asks “What brought you in, Sir?” However, one needs to learn not to be fazed by inappropriate behavior if one needs to take a proper history. So, she simply moves over to the short case, a well-behaved female this time, making a mental note to come back with the whole group to take the long case history.

P.C-Shuvojyoti Rakshit

Then begins the long and tiresome process of collectively trying to write a history where everyone tries to mold the case according to their convenience and every student comes up with a slightly different version of the history. But one must remember that the real art is not just writing the history but actually being able to explain whatever trash you have written, in order to make it sound believable to the all-knowing Almighty sitting in front of us.

 

Lights out

 

In this season of love many couples tend to go out for candle light dinners. But only few lucky people get to experience something called a Candlelight Lunch. But as a medico one gets to experience many strange things- be it watching dead people’s skulls being cracked open during autopsy or a candlelight lunch at the college canteen.

P.C- Shuvojyoti Rakshit

Nothing pisses you off more in the morning than when you just put all the spices in to cook your breakfast noodles and then you cannot turn on your electric kettle because of a sudden power cut. Initially you think it’s a mistake and power will come back soon. But 9 hours later you realized that it was a pretty long ‘soon’. If one is lucky enough then one gets a bed near the window in hostel. However not everyone is as blessed and for them a sudden power cut means immediate sunset and a pitch-dark night. So, one is left with no other option but to remember the traditional Indian Gurukuls and go and sit under a tree to read the never-ending syllabus. But unlike traditional Indian Gurukuls where you just had to listen to your Gurus, in modern medicine, practical examination means going through an outrageous number of long pdfs the day before. If you don’t have access to practical pdfs, you are a goner. Some sensible people put their phone on charge right when the charge goes down to fifty percent, but there are some other people who like to challenge their phones: “How long can you live without charge?” For such people power cuts bring a different challenge, that is, to make the best and the most judicious use of the 20 per cent charge on their phones. You need to answer phone calls, go through pdfs, go online and reply to texts throughout the day, all on 20 per cent charge. It is needless to say this it is impossible.

Hence one gets to have the wonderful experience of sitting at a General surgery ward where thankfully power supply is not cut off and charge her phone sitting on a random patient’s bed while being stared at by random PGTs and interns who intermittently come to investigate why on earth a strange girl is studying Community medicine sitting on a patient’s bed at a General Surgery ward on a Sunday afternoon. But desperate times call for desperate measures. And if you are foolish enough to put up a social media update about it you receive a string of “Get wells soon” texts from your friends who assume that you are in for an emergency appendicectomy or something. This is followed by frantic calls from your worried brother who ends up scolding you when he realizes that it was nothing but a prank on your part. Again, it is what it is.

However, the best part is to go to the washroom which seem right out of a horror movie alone, and suppressing the urge to sing “Mere dholna” to avoid scaring yourself and others!

If anyone is wondering what happened to the breakfast noodles, let me tell you that it remained soaked in spices and water all day long and at the end of the day when the cook discovered it, she was confused as to how the noodles got totally cooked even without fire. But the cook did not know that soaking up water and softening is not the same as getting cooked as far as noodles are concerned, so she had to throw away her beloved noodles because they turned out to be unpalatable.

The Grassroot Level

 

Every medico has a story behind choosing medical science- while for some the story consists of sad and uninteresting things like family pressure or an unfulfilled, one-sided love story with engineering, or one scary old lady telling them that they were born to be doctors, for some others there is that one moment when they realized that they wanted to be a doctor. Many of the medicos in government medical colleges come from the rural community and it is the dream to serve that under-supplied, under-staffed rural PHC that leads them to become doctors. But as one grows up and sees the other lucrative job opportunities that the medical field offers to good doctors, the dream is lost. The rural PHC remains empty as young doctors flock to city hospitals or even other countries.

Maybe in order to remind us of our promise to our local PHC, a third-year medico in India has to go for something called a rural visit, where the Department of Community Medicine takes the students to a nearby Health and Wellness center (subcenter) to make them see the working system there. One gets to visit the nearby BPHC (Block level Primary Health Centre), ICDS center (Integrated Child Development Scheme) and meet the rural community. While it might initially set the mood for a picnic when all of you board the bus and leave for the distant PHC, gossiping all the way with your friends, but this visit proves to be a great learning experience. The ANMs (Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife) at the subcenter will be more friendly than any nurse you have ever met and it is an inspiration to find your intern seniors working dedicatedly there to serve people. As you walk through narrow unpaved lanes to get to the ICDS center you cannot help but wonder about the peace and quiet in the area. For once all the scary stories about the torture over doctors at PHCs seem to be false and impossible as you see people waiting quietly in lines unlike that angry, shouting crowd you are so accustomed to seeing at your own college OPD.

 

While returning from the rural visit many of us renew that old promise of serving the rural community that we made years ago. But in the modern work-a-day world promises are meant to be broken. Thus, after returning back, in a couple of days the dream fades again. The smiling face of the smiling MO (Medical Officer) who taught us such a lot seems like a distant, blurry memory as we get back to the same old path that would lead us to fame and greater financial stability.

This Promise Day let us remember that old promise, that dream which led us to this arduous journey to become doctors and make a vow to fulfill that promise at whichever point in our careers it becomes feasible to do so.

Happy Promise Day.

Photo courtesy: Shuvojyoti Rakshit

Behind the dark spectacles

 

If you are a 3^rd year medico in India, there is one spelling you have to keep memorizing throughout the year and that is O-P-H-T-H-A-L-M-O-L-O-G-Y. Most of you I am sure know the incorrect spelling for this all-important word, because initially we were confused too, especially when we were told that people are so obsessed with this spelling that it became a viva question. Eyes are the mirrors of the human mind, and we all know that the human mind is complex. Hence, needless to say that this complex spelling stands for a pretty complex subject full of micro-surgeries, ray optics, dark room procedures (no pun intended) and………..carrots! Trust me when you are asked in the viva about how to advice the mother of a myopic child about changes in the child’s diet, this is the solitary vegetable you will end up naming. So, juniors grab your biochemistry book and learn by heart all the Vitamin A rich foods in our diet, don’t just say “Carrots” followed by a really long and awkward pause.

Ophthalmology practical exams mainly focus on Cataract (long case) which is the most common cause of loss of vision in our country. The patients wait to be examined by the students in the wards with tags attached to their dresses revealing their identity and which eye the problem lies in. And believe what is written people. Left eye problematic means that you are supposed to look into that eye for problems. Even if an angry red right eye stares right back at you as the patient takes off his dark spectacles, even if the patient gives a history resembling retinal detachment for the right eye, simply ignoring that and focusing on the left one is the way to go. And guess what you report the findings of the right eye as? You report it as NORMAL. Also, please don’t leave any patient before completing the history and examinations, if you leave for other patient (short case) urgently to come back later you may be greeted by an empty bed the next time with the patient nowhere to be seen.

Sometimes writing your long case becomes a race against time as your patient gets prepared for cataract surgery at time same time as explaining his case history to you, only to be dragged away by the OT personnel before you complete your clinical examinations. But how do you report your clinical findings then? Well, if you know, you know.

You know your future is doomed when the in morning of your ophthalmology exam day, instead of learning the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy you try to remember all the eye-related Bollywood songs you have heard till date. (Check out “Aakhon hi aakhon mein ishara ho gaya” after reading this) It naturally follows that when you are asked about the clinical features of congenital and acquired retinoblastoma, you say all made up answers, much to your examiners spite. But, it is what it is.

Obliviate

 

Forgetting what one studied is the bane of existence of all medicos. When you read it, it all seems so clear and easy to remember but when you try to recall at the end of the day, it all seems like a blur. This is a known fact though. But what is not known by all is that forgetful med students grow older to become forgetful PGTs and Professors forming departments full of forgetful people.

It almost seems like an absurd dream when you go to the exam hall one morning and find out that the same people who are always fixated on punctuality are late for their favorite job of quietly observing the confused looks on students’ faces as they blankly stare at the question paper trying to diagnose diseases. Your surprise increases manifold when you find that no one in the department actually knows that you are supposed to appear for the exam on that date. There is no question paper ready, and all the professors are busy with their duties of patient care. Finally, after two long hours of waiting and forgetting all you read, when the only thing you can think about is lunch, does your question paper finally arrive. This is followed by another 3 hours of toiling and trying to figure out what to write, when equally confused people around you keep bugging you for answers you yourself don’t know. Ultimately you submit the answer script and rush to the canteen for snatching away whatever lunch leftovers they have before your friends can get there.

But the next thing you know is that you are waking up from a slumber inside the library. After you wake up you cannot help but question yourself, “Was this real?” It won’t feel real for sure. You feel that maybe it was all a crazy dream till you start remembering other details like how you were texting your senior from the exam hall to find out whether this was a common occurrence, how you saw a bunch of rowdy guys playing football with a bottle outside the exam hall, how all of you took forbidden selfies inside the exam hall, made reels and snatched away each other’s books to keep studying out-of-the-box topics which all of you knew was not going to be asked in the exam. You remember how some of you were making plans to leave and not to show up for the exam ultimately. “Did I really imagine all this?” you ask yourself when your sleepy brain cannot differentiate an unimaginable truth from an absurd dream. Everything feels hilariously unreal. “I guess I’ll never know” you accept as you start studying for the next exam.

 

De ja vu

Does this ever happen to you that you see or hear something and feel that you have seen or heard it before? Or you do something and you feel that you have done it before? What if you get that feeling seeing your exam paper?

Now many of you must be thinking that it is bound to be a good feeling because it means that you are getting known questions. However, the syllabi of medical subjects are huge, even when they are paradoxically called ‘short’ subjects. So, the night before the exams you are bound to leave out some topics and almost naturally you end up deciding to leave out the two long question topics from last semester under the impression that a huge batch of new topics have been taught in the new semester and most probably the topics from last semester’s question paper won’t be repeated. But let me warn you, you don’t just get fooled on the first of April. Some departments take pleasure in fooling you each and every day of the year. Hence the topic you left out the night before stares right back at you from the question paper with a big triumphant smile as you feel horrified that a more complicated version of the same question could show up as a long question in this semester as well.

Now all you can rely on is your already sleep deprived and anxious brain to suddenly remember what it read weeks (feels like years) ago. While you get a de ja vu that you might have written that answer earlier as well, you can’t really remember what you wrote. As you look around, you find most of your fellow examinees being in the same mess. You all secretly curse the old lady invigilator who keeps shouting, startling you every now and then. When you find one of your wise friends submitting his answer script within 1.5 hours and smartly walking away from the situation, not ready to deal with the mess, and you end up wondering, “When will I have this kind of confidence?”

The truth is, most of us do not have such confidence. So, we toil along for another hour and a half, with nothing but our creative writing skills and what we studied weeks ago to support us. If you are thinking that why didn’t these people do team work then? Let me tell you that one cannot afford team work, when there is good chance of getting cursed by the God of Exams and quickly receiving a minus forty for evoking His wrath. Though you also wonder, “Will I actually get forty marks that I have to deal with a minus forty? Or am I getting a negative score this semester?”

As you fill up your answer script and extra sheets with truckloads of nonsense while secretly asking forgiveness from the trees who gave up their lives to give you that paper that you are now wasting, you wonder, “Is creative writing enough to make me pass this toxic subject?”

Who can tell?

Happy Propose Day

P.C-Shuvojyoti Rakshit

For the love of exams

 

The season of love is finally here. It is that time of the year when couples will post diabetes inducing photos and reels on social media while the frustrated single population will go on to post pseudo-positive statements and reels about buying flowers for themselves and being there own partner. More on that later.

Some coaching institutions will offer you pizza services so that you can cry alone with a pizza while watching Medicine videos on Valentine’s night. On the other hand, some other coaching institutions will actually understand your frustrated loneliness and go one step ahead to find you a study partner to end your misery. But if you are a lonely single med student, there is a very good possibility that you will end up not registering for any of the above for the fear of being exposed as desperate or meeting other desperate people like your own self who end up choosing an educational app to find a love match.

If you are a Bengali then, for you Vasant Panchami is here too, when you finally get to see your crush in traditional clothes giving you tachycardia. But once you get your heart rate under control you realize that you are dreaming impossible things and you end up thinking how bleak and temporary the real world is. You finally go to bed with a heavy heart. Well, not all of you though. Some of you try to lighten your mood by patiently reading your friend’s nonsense blog.

But if you are a med student you also know at the back of your mind that it is also that time of the year when your real girlfriend visits you. She is so loyal that she visits you even when you don’t ask her, she does not leave you even when you rudely ask her to, she gives you a reality check whenever you need it to keep you on the right track. And everyone knows her name- she is called EXAM.

Yes people. It is also that time of the year when you wake up to your concerned HOD’s motivational messages on the Department group, wonder all day about what all you could have done if there were no exams and how care-free all others seem, and go to bed calculating how much time you have wasted today and how far the others have studied.   

So for all the couples, loners and examinees, this jobless blogger brings to you a set of short blogs for Valentine’s week, where you get to hear all about the hilarious med school incidents that keep occurring on a day-to-day basis during exam season. You will learn to be careful while turning your head during exams and not be surprised even when you find out that a department actually forgot to make your question papers. Are you wondering how that happened? Stay tuned and keep reading for the next six days to find out.

Happy Rose day.