Feb 1997
My first Ward leaving of Final Year is over and I am entering Orthopaedics now. We have had one or two postings before this one, nearly a year ago, and I am completely clueless about the subject.
Ortho, it seems, is a one man show. Dr P, who is the Head, is the all and sundry of the Dept, assisted by some Residents, Junior and Senior, one of whom is Manoj, now a Final Year PG about to go for his exams. He still sports that scowl as a normal default expression and I haven't really spoke to him after Vinay and I woke him up at 4 AM last year with our "Wakey wakey" shouts on the microphone. I have generally tried to steer clear from him except for the odd time when he arrives in Snappy on his Red Yamaha and since I am nearly always there, sipping endless teas and wasting endless minutes, we have said "Hi" a few times.
Hopefully, with his exams round the corner, he'll be busy enough for me to not to face that scowl in the OPD.
The posting schedule is more or less the same as anywhere, except that all case taking is done only in the OPD. Just a few days in and I am still at sea as to what to do. The history one has to take is very different from the usual stuff one asks in Medicine/Surgery and it usually starts with some sort of trauma the unfortunate patient suffered. So, questions along the line of "Angle of impact, Direction of force,Movement limitations" etc become the norm and I can't get myself oriented to this at all.
I'm not getting comfortable with the examination techniques either. I need to measure limb lengths with a tape, check for movements of all the joints, feel the bones and see if they feel normal etc, and it's getting frustrating. I'm not very good at this and as the days pass by, I am getting increasingly worried about being completely incompetent in this Ward leaving.
We have constantly been told that for us, the emphasis is on a good history and examination technique. The diagnosis and treatment parts are not that important and will not really decide pass/fail in the exams.
The teaching is good, but my brain freezes somehow when faced with all misshapen arms, legs and joints. But there's plenty of variety. Fractures, some united, some not, some united in weird ways. Arthritis, resulting in stubby fingers that look suspiciously like my own. Bone infections that leave discharging bone bits coming out through the skin.
All these cases can and will come for our exams, but thankfully it's only one short case as part of the Surgery exam. Still 35 marks out of 150 is not something I can afford to skip.
So I'm drifting. Many of my batchmates are using this relatively light posting to catch up on Medicine and Surgery but I'm just spending time worrying how I'm going to get through this.
Rahul, however, has a plan. He has managed to pass his Final Year exams and is now in the starting phase of fairly busy Internship. He and I in fact, met in Labour Room last month where he was the Duty Intern when I was getting hammered with 24/7 deliveries and general paranoia, and I got to see first hand how cool life as a Labour Room Intern can be when all the scut work is being done by the Final Years, aka us.
One evening in Snappy, he tells me and Vinay that he is writing the UPSC Entrance Exam in a few days in Chennai and since it's on a Saturday, won't it be fun if Vinay and I pile on and make a holiday of it. This sounds like an awesome idea and with a pre-arranged taxi and a room he's booked in some Guest House, the deal is sealed.
We set off on the Friday before his exam and reach Chennai by 6. We check in to the room and find that there is one bed, not too big, and a quilt that is fairly thin and has 2 big holes. This could have sufficed had we been of average built but Pondicherry food and drink has taken it's toll, and bar Vinay, who it seems can never get fat, Rahul and I have increased our girths appropriately. This means that "tight squeeze" will be tighter than imagined.
There are no volunteers for the floor and it will be 3 of us, 1 bed and 1 holy quilt.
Holiday or not, Rahul does have an exam the next day and looking over his Admit Card, he suddenly discovers that a pencil is needed for answering and well, there aren't any between the three of us. So, we need to get a pencil.
So we take our taxi chap (booked for the entire trip) and set off for a general aimless sightseeing trip, and to find a pencil. Somewhere along the way, Rahul sees a big billboard put up by a Taj Hotel with pictures of crabs, lobsters and more seafood-"A special Promotion, Chef flown in from Hong Kong" and with a slightly muted shout of "OYE! We must go there", and totally against our better judgement and wallet restrictions, we direct the taxi chappie there.
We still don't have a pencil though.
We pull in and take in the plush 5 star lobby. The dinner is in the Chinese Restaurant and we walk towards it where we find a concierge kind of person just outside. He has a pencil which we borrow permanently.
The place is quite posh. Hushed tones, well heeled crowd, china and crystal on the tables and I am getting nervous. My wallet is not suited to this kind of place. But we're here, pencil and all and get escorted to a table in the middle. The menu arrives.
5 star prices. Wallets are checked for cash. We have about enough to cover some steamed rice (although I want the fried rice, but that's a bit too expensive), some boiled lamb (उबली हुई बकरी , in Rahul's words) and a giant crab. That's it. Anything more and we'll be washing the dishes.
The blame games start. We insist this was all Rahul's idea. He points out that we are here after all, and so we are equally to blame. Plus, we have the pencil.
Food. Rice is well, rice. The lamb is nice, and somehow expensive food always tastes better than the cheap variety. It has to.
The clincher is the crab. It's massive, occupying a whole plate and has arrived with a set of pliers, which is new to all of us. We call the waiter and specify that we would like the crab de-shelled. He returns a few minutes later and tells us that their "Special Hong Kong Chef" prefers the crab with the shell. And that's that.
The next 45 minutes are spent fighting the crab, eating whatever little meat comes out and convincing each other that it is awesome. To be honest, whatever we managed to pry loose from the shell was quite tasty but this was more of an unequal fight between a stubborn crab and 3 guys who had never used pliers on one before.
After 2 hours, we are still slightly hungry, but 3000 Rs later, no one is going to say so.
We get back, after our first 5 star adventure and decide that since Vinay is likely to use the least space, he should get squashed in the middle. He does, and spends the night with 2 arms poking out through the holes in the quilt.
The next morning, we drop Rahul off at his Exam centre and Vinay and I scout the local papers for any good movies playing and end up watching Independence Day in Dolby Surround Sound, popcorn and all.
Exam over (no comments from Rahul) and we set off back to our little village by the sea. Every time I come to Chennai, I feel like the village lad coming to the big city, and like the village lad, I long to return quickly every time. I'm a small town boy.
Pondicherry to me now means more Ortho and it is as mystifying as ever. I am petrified of the Ward Leaving and on the morning of the exam, I just skip it. I just don't go.
This, I should add, is completely not done. No one skips Ward Leavings. The marks are added for Internal Assessments, absentees are marked and it leaves a terrible impression. But I still don't go.
My first and last bunked Ward Leaving.
It doesn't help when I find out later that Manoj was looking for me during the End Posting and was pretty livid when he found I wasn't there. An angry Manog is best avoided but I manage to bump into him in Snappy the same evening where Shom, Rahul, Manoj, Bong and for good measure, Vinay (who hasn't even done Ortho), take turns about my unpardonable misdeed and the dire consequences this can have.
I spend some evenings in the loneliness that accompanies you when you're the only one who's bunked a Test or Ward Leaving.
But time marches on and it's Medicine next. 2 postings over. 8 more to go and then, it's Final Exams.
The future looks dark and deep. Not lovely.
Definitely not lovely.
My first Ward leaving of Final Year is over and I am entering Orthopaedics now. We have had one or two postings before this one, nearly a year ago, and I am completely clueless about the subject.
Ortho, it seems, is a one man show. Dr P, who is the Head, is the all and sundry of the Dept, assisted by some Residents, Junior and Senior, one of whom is Manoj, now a Final Year PG about to go for his exams. He still sports that scowl as a normal default expression and I haven't really spoke to him after Vinay and I woke him up at 4 AM last year with our "Wakey wakey" shouts on the microphone. I have generally tried to steer clear from him except for the odd time when he arrives in Snappy on his Red Yamaha and since I am nearly always there, sipping endless teas and wasting endless minutes, we have said "Hi" a few times.
Hopefully, with his exams round the corner, he'll be busy enough for me to not to face that scowl in the OPD.
The posting schedule is more or less the same as anywhere, except that all case taking is done only in the OPD. Just a few days in and I am still at sea as to what to do. The history one has to take is very different from the usual stuff one asks in Medicine/Surgery and it usually starts with some sort of trauma the unfortunate patient suffered. So, questions along the line of "Angle of impact, Direction of force,Movement limitations" etc become the norm and I can't get myself oriented to this at all.
I'm not getting comfortable with the examination techniques either. I need to measure limb lengths with a tape, check for movements of all the joints, feel the bones and see if they feel normal etc, and it's getting frustrating. I'm not very good at this and as the days pass by, I am getting increasingly worried about being completely incompetent in this Ward leaving.
We have constantly been told that for us, the emphasis is on a good history and examination technique. The diagnosis and treatment parts are not that important and will not really decide pass/fail in the exams.
The teaching is good, but my brain freezes somehow when faced with all misshapen arms, legs and joints. But there's plenty of variety. Fractures, some united, some not, some united in weird ways. Arthritis, resulting in stubby fingers that look suspiciously like my own. Bone infections that leave discharging bone bits coming out through the skin.
All these cases can and will come for our exams, but thankfully it's only one short case as part of the Surgery exam. Still 35 marks out of 150 is not something I can afford to skip.
So I'm drifting. Many of my batchmates are using this relatively light posting to catch up on Medicine and Surgery but I'm just spending time worrying how I'm going to get through this.
Rahul, however, has a plan. He has managed to pass his Final Year exams and is now in the starting phase of fairly busy Internship. He and I in fact, met in Labour Room last month where he was the Duty Intern when I was getting hammered with 24/7 deliveries and general paranoia, and I got to see first hand how cool life as a Labour Room Intern can be when all the scut work is being done by the Final Years, aka us.
One evening in Snappy, he tells me and Vinay that he is writing the UPSC Entrance Exam in a few days in Chennai and since it's on a Saturday, won't it be fun if Vinay and I pile on and make a holiday of it. This sounds like an awesome idea and with a pre-arranged taxi and a room he's booked in some Guest House, the deal is sealed.
We set off on the Friday before his exam and reach Chennai by 6. We check in to the room and find that there is one bed, not too big, and a quilt that is fairly thin and has 2 big holes. This could have sufficed had we been of average built but Pondicherry food and drink has taken it's toll, and bar Vinay, who it seems can never get fat, Rahul and I have increased our girths appropriately. This means that "tight squeeze" will be tighter than imagined.
There are no volunteers for the floor and it will be 3 of us, 1 bed and 1 holy quilt.
Holiday or not, Rahul does have an exam the next day and looking over his Admit Card, he suddenly discovers that a pencil is needed for answering and well, there aren't any between the three of us. So, we need to get a pencil.
So we take our taxi chap (booked for the entire trip) and set off for a general aimless sightseeing trip, and to find a pencil. Somewhere along the way, Rahul sees a big billboard put up by a Taj Hotel with pictures of crabs, lobsters and more seafood-"A special Promotion, Chef flown in from Hong Kong" and with a slightly muted shout of "OYE! We must go there", and totally against our better judgement and wallet restrictions, we direct the taxi chappie there.
We still don't have a pencil though.
We pull in and take in the plush 5 star lobby. The dinner is in the Chinese Restaurant and we walk towards it where we find a concierge kind of person just outside. He has a pencil which we borrow permanently.
The place is quite posh. Hushed tones, well heeled crowd, china and crystal on the tables and I am getting nervous. My wallet is not suited to this kind of place. But we're here, pencil and all and get escorted to a table in the middle. The menu arrives.
5 star prices. Wallets are checked for cash. We have about enough to cover some steamed rice (although I want the fried rice, but that's a bit too expensive), some boiled lamb (उबली हुई बकरी , in Rahul's words) and a giant crab. That's it. Anything more and we'll be washing the dishes.
The blame games start. We insist this was all Rahul's idea. He points out that we are here after all, and so we are equally to blame. Plus, we have the pencil.
Food. Rice is well, rice. The lamb is nice, and somehow expensive food always tastes better than the cheap variety. It has to.
The clincher is the crab. It's massive, occupying a whole plate and has arrived with a set of pliers, which is new to all of us. We call the waiter and specify that we would like the crab de-shelled. He returns a few minutes later and tells us that their "Special Hong Kong Chef" prefers the crab with the shell. And that's that.
The next 45 minutes are spent fighting the crab, eating whatever little meat comes out and convincing each other that it is awesome. To be honest, whatever we managed to pry loose from the shell was quite tasty but this was more of an unequal fight between a stubborn crab and 3 guys who had never used pliers on one before.
After 2 hours, we are still slightly hungry, but 3000 Rs later, no one is going to say so.
We get back, after our first 5 star adventure and decide that since Vinay is likely to use the least space, he should get squashed in the middle. He does, and spends the night with 2 arms poking out through the holes in the quilt.
The next morning, we drop Rahul off at his Exam centre and Vinay and I scout the local papers for any good movies playing and end up watching Independence Day in Dolby Surround Sound, popcorn and all.
Exam over (no comments from Rahul) and we set off back to our little village by the sea. Every time I come to Chennai, I feel like the village lad coming to the big city, and like the village lad, I long to return quickly every time. I'm a small town boy.
Pondicherry to me now means more Ortho and it is as mystifying as ever. I am petrified of the Ward Leaving and on the morning of the exam, I just skip it. I just don't go.
This, I should add, is completely not done. No one skips Ward Leavings. The marks are added for Internal Assessments, absentees are marked and it leaves a terrible impression. But I still don't go.
My first and last bunked Ward Leaving.
It doesn't help when I find out later that Manoj was looking for me during the End Posting and was pretty livid when he found I wasn't there. An angry Manog is best avoided but I manage to bump into him in Snappy the same evening where Shom, Rahul, Manoj, Bong and for good measure, Vinay (who hasn't even done Ortho), take turns about my unpardonable misdeed and the dire consequences this can have.
I spend some evenings in the loneliness that accompanies you when you're the only one who's bunked a Test or Ward Leaving.
But time marches on and it's Medicine next. 2 postings over. 8 more to go and then, it's Final Exams.
The future looks dark and deep. Not lovely.
Definitely not lovely.
as a parent,i wonder.....................should i be full of "o my god,o heavens" or,instead,continue to hugely enjoy reading your blog.i think it's the latter since those days are in the past.now for the present...
ReplyDeleteSir this is wonderful...ur language is so gud..me too am a doc..working in a health center..amazed at the way a doc shares his memories ...continue writing..
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