La me La di La ci La ne …story continues
I am in Fursatganj again today. With nothing better to do I decided to continue a few more of the medical stories.
This time I decided to include my dear mom, some patients and Dubey Sir in my series…I will say these were lessons rather than humour accounts that I learnt as part of my medical life.
La Innocence
I am the only odd peg in my whole family which comprises of mostly engineers of all shapes and sizes. My poor mother was innocence personified and I, the devil reincarnate!!
For my parents and cousins it was a matter of curiosity about how we were taught medicine, how we were ragged and so on and so forth.They would listen in awe to even the silliest of the stuff that I had to tell.
That, I love rambling and making up stories was something only dad knew. He would always reprimand me saying, "Don't tell cock and bull stories” Nevertheless, he would chuckle at the flight that my fantasy took.
Let me not become a fantasia and come back to the land where mom and cousins were sitting. I was telling them how unclaimed dead bodies were sent our way for learning dissection and that there would be 100 medical students and we were divided into batches of ten, and each batch was given one body for the whole year to practice dissection skills in anatomy.
Out of ten bodies, there would only be one or two female bodies and the rest would be male.
Obviously, female bodies were equally important due to anatomical reasons and we would swap places just to learn and those who posessed the female bodies always acted pricey!!
I began describing the gory details to my mom about how we would dissect the groin region, one student would read, the other would dissect and the rest would either watch or chat away to glory.
So she said, ” aise hi, sabke saamne….so when do you guys remove their clothes?? ”
” Mom, it’s a dead body they don’t wear clothes. They are frozen in formalin. “
” My goodness, so many of you just jump on the bodies, poor souls!”
I was taken aback by her innocence but it set me thinking. So, many things that people of my profession assume as matter of fact must be quite chilling and daunting for others. But I somehow had to pacify my poor mother, so I said to her, "Ma, what these dead people do is a far greater service to humanity than can be comprehended. If it weren’t for people like them, how would we know what to do, and how to treat you living people. ”
“Better to practice on them than you!!”
That answer pretty much shut my poor mother’s questions or chastising exclamations for good!!
Here's to Atmaram, never knew him in life but my companion after his death for 18 long months.
La examiner
It was a lesson I learnt when I was taking my final year exams. For the practicals or the clinicals as we called it the Medical Colleges in general had a pool of patients with roaring clinical signs and symptoms and were called in to sit as exam case patients. These patients would have been doing this service to the colleges for a small amount of money and free meals and more importantly my lecturers believed that they came because they wanted to in some way help the medical students shaping their careers.
I have mostly managed to pass all my exams in first attempt, I say mostly because in second year I did get the so called ATKT (Allowed to continue terms) for pharmacology. But, that is fodder for another post, perhaps.
Due to the mishap of second year and also the fact that final year was far more interesting as it was all patient related, I worked extra hard. This time I did not want to take things callously.
Still, the aftertaste of second year lingered and flashed up once in a while. We also had a group of seniors whom we called, "History Sheeters". All excellent guys but very rarely studied.
Prathamesh Leechra was one such history sheeter who had been giving the exam since we had joined medical school and when I entered the exam hall, I realised his number was next to mine. He was taking the exam again.
I wished him luck and he said, " Yaar Mona, agar thodu sa main atak gaya toh help kar dena yaar!!"
"Haan Sirji, aapko jo poochna hai pooch lo, mujhe aata hoga toh pakka bata doongi!!"
I have never believed in each one for himself and I was willing to help him if I could.
So, the exam began. Manorama Devi a 54 year old lady with florid signs and symptoms of Mitral Stenosis was a patient that both Leechra and I got.
He had finished taking history and examination and was being grilled heavily by the three examiners.
I was nervously waiting twiddling my thumbs sitting next to Manorama Devi for my turn to enter the Dragon's den for the drill.
" Beta, kyun pareshaan hoti hai, tu ho jaayegi paas. Tune mujhse saare sahi sahi sawaal pooche aur examine bhi sab theek se kiya hai. Sab likh liya na tune??" she asked me.
(Beta, why are you getting restless, you will pass. You asked me all the relevant questions and examined me properly too. You have written everything in order, right??" she asked)
"Haan ji, likh liya." (Yes, I have written it all down.) Said, I.
She continued further.
"Woh nahi hota pass. Usne kuch nahi poocha theek se, toh maine bataya bhi nahi. Examine bhi nahi kiya."
"He will not pass. He did not question me properly and neither did he examine correctly. "
At that minute Leechra came out of the examiners room. He had a sunken sucked out look. It was my turn. I finished and came out.
I did not think about this until much later on. Almost a month later, the results came.
I had passed. Needless to say, Prathamesh Leechra had failed. Again.
I remembered Manorama Devi. I knew from then on, your patients know your worth.
Having said all that Leechra is very successful these days running a super speciality or is it multi speciality with dozens of doctors working under him and he is the big boss doing well. Khair. Hota hai. Chalta hai. Duniya hai.
La Positione
Those of you who have read the second episode of my Grays anatomy would know our college dean Dubey Sir. His pristine attitude towards medicine had all of us in awe but at times just to get things right in front of him made us fluster and we sure made a fool of ourselves.
Every week in a group of ten one of us had to a case presentation in a big general ward in front of not only the patient concerned but the other patients. For the patients and the ward nurses it was sheer joy at the way each one of us got screwed openly. So, one such Friday morning it was yours truly's turn.
"Mona, tera kya hai yaar, tu toh angrezi mein phaad deti hai!! Load mat le, theek jaayega tera !!"
I had been having nightmares for almost 24 hours prior. It is one thing to converse with friends; it is an altogether different matter doing it in a group of tens' in front of everyone. I have always suffered from stage fright and to this day I have not been able to get over it.
While presenting the case we had to inform Dubey Sir every single detail of the patient including the name, age, sex, location, position. Just like chat rooms, I say!!
So, the drill began.
"Sir, this patient is Mr Nainsukh Kabadiya, 47 years old, male from Patli Galli, Mominpura who has presented with……" my rambling continued.
"Stop right there, Mona!! What is the position of the patient?? How can you forget such important details? Start again, and tell me the position of the patient."
By then I was deflated. Hammered at the first line itself I fumbled. My mind at such a simple detail went blank and I looked at the patient to decide about the position.
Unfortunately for me, Nainsukh ji was half sitting and half lying.
Dhad ke upar ka was sitting and neeche ka was lying.
" Kya karun, yaar, Kabadiya saab poora let jaate ya poora baith jaate toh achha tha. Ab kya bolun!!" was all that I could think.
" Comeon, Mona get on with it!!" snarled Dubey Sir.
"Yes sir!!" "I will start again sir!!"
"Sir, this is Nainsukh Kabadiya from Patli Galli …." began me.
"No, Mona, just get on with the position and continue from there, will you??" Dubey Sir was losing it and so was I.
"Sir, Nainsukh Kabadiya is comfortably lying in sitting down positon!!"
I felt I had goofed up. So I said immediately,
"No sir, the patient Nainsukh Kabadiya is comfortably sitting in lying down position!!"
By now I had realised I had screwed up big time. And all that for “angrezi tattu” awards that I received in college.
Dubey Sir finally showed some sympathy to my poor existence, smiled and said, "Patient is propped up Mona, just propped up will do."
Everyone was in splits and Dubey Sir the kind man he was, just patted my back and I managed to finish without more goof ups.
Poetic justice, I say.
Thankfully soon enough the title of" angrezi tattu "was conferred on some other poor soul.
