I am in my final semester of med school. 5 months left. I can’t believe it. It feels just like yesterday I was a fresh faced 1st year, trying to memorise all the muscles of the flexor compartment of the forearm and trying to get through each day without dying from the sheer stress of studying anatomy. Now I’m in final year and
~I don’t even study 1/4th of how much I did back then
~I forgot what the flexors of the forearm are. One of them is flexor digitorum I guess?
~I should be knowing the flexors of the forearm though because I have my orthopaedics rotation now and it sucks.
I have 5 months left and I feel like I know nothing. I only know how to jump across spit puddles and used syringes expertly but that isn’t going to help me for my final exams. I feel like I need to go into a cycle of panicking and panic-studying but I still don’t feel as stressed as I was in first year. I mean who would be stressed? When you know that one of these days the ortho guys are going to drop one of those huge ass drills on your head and kill you, you’re not going to need to give finals. Right? Or maybe my professor would summon me from the afterlife to quiz me on CTEV. I need to be ouija immune. Are there antibodies for that?
So 5 months away from the biggest exams yet and I am still lazing around being complacent enough to take afternoon naps. Am I crazy? I might be. (note to self: read classification of antipsychotics)
First six months of rotations I didn’t do anything except sulk about waking up at 8 am and having to drive back home at a time comfortable for me and having no labs or classes back at college. I lead a tough life what can I say? Looking back at the last 6 months, I can only remember doing the following (apart from taking too many naps)
1. Gynaecology and obstetric rotations were a complete blur. I remember doing a 12 hour shift in the labour room and seeing a woman frantically pacing despite being told many times to lie down. She gave birth standing up and my resident had to catch the baby mid air in a sick, almost superman-ish swoop. It was amazing to watch, except I had to help the lady drenched in amniotic fluid and blood back up on the stretcher because I was supposed to remove her placenta. My shoes had placenta and amniotic fluid stuck everywhere. I incinerated them.
2. I went to medicine rotation everyday only to take hemiplegia case history everyday. One day our resident said he’d surprise us with a new case. Guess what it was? Quadriplegia.. WITH TB. Fml.
3. All Ortho surgeries make my head spin because its like carpentry but instead sawdust here is replaced by blood and bone bits? I was brushing my hair out after a knee replacement surgery one day (they made me scrub in just so I could take pictures for them) and I found enough bone bits in my hair to make a small voodoo doll out of them.
4. Even though I was the most enthusiastic about my general surgery rotation, I don’t remember what I did. I know I starved everyday because all the hydroceles and inguinal hernias and the oral cancers put me off any solid food. I think I also cried every time my professor asked me weird ass questions like “Why is the X-ray called the X-ray” or “ Why are you shaking so much examine the massive hydrocele case” and my favourite “Why do you think super specialists are better than general surgeons”
Excuse me while I deal with my PTSD in one dark corner of my room
5. My friend just reminded me I have a paediatrics exam in 10 days and all I know in paediatrics is that ‘growth’ and ‘development’ are two different things.
I mean they’re tiny humans, aren’t they supposed to be LESS complicated? ‘I must start freaking out at this stage because I haven’t even looked at the other chapters’- said she while breathing into a bag because of excessive CO2 washout during hyperventilation and hysteria.
6. I have noticed this more than I have noticed green sputum produced by TB patients, but it is so useless to wear make up on OR days?
I feel like the surgical mask manufacturers wanted to double them as makeup removers, because I try and do my makeup early in the morning so I don’t look anaemic and cadaveric when I go to hospital, but whats the point when post-surgery I take my mask off and with it comes my foundation, lipstick, and somehow even my mascara and that weird body glitter I was obsessed with when I was 12. So despite my herculean makeup efforts, I end up looking even more anaemic and cadaveric than usual because someone accidentally threw a used mop on me. I have blood on me but it wont help my anaemia. The irony.
7. I feel like you need to carry 2-3 pairs of shoes any time you go to a hospital attached to mine, more so if it is a ob/gyn hospital, because I feel like instead of land mines and booby traps we have placenta traps. Here instead of being blown to bits and dying in an explosion, you fall into a sea of placenta and clamped umbilical cords, which is 10 times worse.
Or the other danger is running into a pregnant woman who thinks theres something wrong with her (which is 98% of them). They will physically drain you of your energy and extinguish you of your glycogen stores even after you show them that all their tests AND the repeat ultrasound is normal. Carry some candy along with those extra pairs of shoes or you will go into a hypoglycaemic coma from answering all their questions.
8. Its been a year since my horrible experience with orthopaedics and I still hate orthopaedics? I know surgical subjects are supposed to be interesting but orthopaedics is so repetitive and lumberjack-esque. And I’m pretty sure the C-arm is giving me cancer.
And also it’s cute when orthopaedic surgeons are taking a class and they have to explain something medical, and they’re just like “uhhh yeah so fuck that, we need to insert an intramedullary nail and thats all you need to know”. It’s very comforting to know that someone else is just as bad in medicine as I am.
9. I have become an expert in coordinating the time of my hospital entry to the time they mop the floors because otherwise I have to make faces and skip around puddles and run away from stray cats which sounds relatively benign but is extremely hard when you have to do it in corridors with no lighting (both artificial and natural) and you’re wearing heels.
Tbh running in a hospital corridor while simultaneously dodging stray cats which want to give you cat scratch disease and not stepping on used gauze or syringes should be an Olympic sport. Like an obstacle course, but even harder and even more deadly because MRSA is not an easy hurdle to jump. (cue nervous sweating)
10. Instead of learning important things for exams, like obstructed labour and stuff like that, during my obs rotation, I learnt that I have to rap battle the nurses for oxytocin. I tell them I need oxytocin for a patient and they will spit verses back at me telling me they are running on a short supply. Well i guess we won’t deliver this baby today then?
Its safe to say I won’t be pursuing gynaecology or obstetrics in my residency.
Study up kids. Don’t be like me. Or do. You could be an olympian one day. If the olympic committee makes hazardous obstacle race an event. Thank me later losers.
humerushumorous 