Chapter 42-Shom gets ENT

May-June 1996

I call up Shom, now in Patna, and hear that he will be coming to Chandigarh, my homwtown, on a job hunting trip. He is still waitlisted for ENT back in Jipmer but there is no news from there, so the newlyweds will try to escape from the joys of being unemployed medical graduates in Chandigarh. 

Shom's wife is from MAMC, Delhi and the two met up 3-4 years ago at the MAMC festival. I've only met her once but will now get a chance to know her better.

Shom lands up in Chandigarh a few days later and one evening, while I am on my way upstairs, I hear Dad telling someone on the phone that he doesn't know anyone called "GOLU". This is alarm-bell time and I rush down to find Shom at the other end, a little confused and wondering if he has the correct number. 

It takes me a good 5 minutes to explain why I am called "GOLU". 

Shom and Sirisha, his wife are stuck in some market near my place, slightly lost and hoping that I will pick them up, About half an hour later, a couple of drinks down, Shom gets a phone call from Chetan. Chetan is in Jipmer and has his finger on the pulse of whats happening to the waiting lists. A weird story unfolds.

A Surgery seat is vacated by Rias who left to do Ortho in Kerala. This Surgery seat vacant was picked by someone (Rajive) who had taken ENT thus leaving a seat vacant in ENT. Now Shom was 2nd on the waitlist and had pretty much abandoned all hope but the person who was 1st on the list and had started Ophthal (Basil) had already bought his Ophtahlmoscope. He considered this to be too valuable an investment to waste and decided to stick on to Ophthal. And therefore, about 8 PM, at my house in Chadigarh, Shom gets the news that he needs to rush back to Jipmer pronto.

He is now an ENT PG.

This means that I will have a place to go to for dinners every now and then since he will take a house outside campus. All in all, this is excellent news.

The other exciting thing that happens is my exam results. I have passed and am now officially in Final Year. Of course, the first 6 months of this are the coolest in the course, or so I am told. The real hell starts next year. These 6 months will be about organizing Spandan and generally goofing off, relatively speaking.

Back in Campus:
After my customary 54 hour door to door car-train-bus journey, I arrive in Pondicherry, eager to kick start my normal life again. I am determined to continue reading with the intensity I had last semester but with no exams and no real pressure, that is not easy.
My exam marks are released. I fall 3 marks short of a Distinction in Path, 6 of which I had left unanswered because I forgot the bloody chit on Lymphomas. I am now sure this is divine retribution. Micro, as expected, was where I scored the least, managing about 57%. I was happily above 65% in the rest. All in all, a decent effort. Which, instead of motivating me has just made me more complacent than ever.
I don't learn from mistakes that easily.

Shom has started work and has bought himself a nice Red Maruti in which we wander around town and around campus. He is on call most days it seems, so he often honks outside my room and I go down for a coffee or a Snappy session catching up on the latest politics in his Department.
One day, I feel my ears are blocked and are paining a bit so I call Shom who reassures me that he will take care of this small problem. After all, this is what he is training in. And so, late one evening, when it's dark and work has finished for the day, he takes me to the ENT ward and puts an authoritative otoscope in the ear, concluding that I have loads of earwax.
It's still very early in Shom's ENT career so, we go to the Treatment Room where all the instruments and lights are kept and an ear syringing is planned.
I sit across Shom, who is armed with his headlight, a big syringe and some water. He also has a book on his lap opened to the page on syringing. While this is not exactly confidence inspiring, I am sure it can't be that big a deal and so he proceeds to syringe my ears glancing at the book to make sure all is correct and proper.
To his credit, large globs of brown wax come out. I am fine and we celebrate with a coffee.

Later that night:
I wake up with phenomenally excruciating pain in my ear at about 4 in the morning. I have never experienced this kind of pain before or since and I run down to the shop across the road, buy some painkillers and take all of them. A cocktail of them, about 5-6 tablets.
I discover, with some significant burning in my stomach, that that was a bad idea. I now have acute gastritis, also very very bad. So I pop some antacids and some agonizing hours later, things are better.

I narrate this to Shom, who is a bit upset but apparently I had a small boil in my ear also that found space to grow after the wax was removed. So Shom wasn't to blame. With a reaffirmation in competence and a sigh of relief, he then packs my ear with Ictahmmol and Glycerine and a day later, I am back in action.

Life was fun. Sure, there were tests and clinics and the odd panic attack, but fun nevertheless. I was getting back on track. Spandan was in a couple of months and Interclass before that.

It was good to be back.